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Happy holidays! ’Tis the season proclaimed to be the most wonderful time of the year.  Richmond-based Can-Trust-Funeral’s professional death care specialists know that December is an emotion laden month. In a season full of expectation to be outwardly cheerful and to meet traditions of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and the New Year with Vancouver funeral directors at Can-Trust offer these words of comfort and support to remember the gifts of grief. 

Know you are not alone  

• Despite outward appearances not everyone is as happy as they seem. We all have our own systems in place to hide our feelings of loss or anxiety.  

Allow for the gift of others to support you    

• You are not alone in this season of grief. You are entitled to fully feel your emotions. We often go along and cover up how we feel. Our feelings inform us and are part of the process of grief. It’s an opportunity to let others in who might themselves benefit from your sharing and being given the opportunity to help. A surprising vital connection may form when you don’t hide behind a social smile or a colourful hat.  

Give yourself the gift of time to reflect 

• A counterpoint to the hubbub of the preparation for holidays and the planned feasting is taking the time to look inward. Give yourself the gift of being with your emotions, whatever they may be. How you feel is how you feel. Let these feelings pass through you, and remember that they do not last forever.  Read tips on self-care in this season here.    

Can-Trust’s licensed funeral directors understand loss at any season of our lives. 

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.   

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.   

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.   

Phone: 604-376-7975   

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com   

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral   

Learn more at the Can-Trust Funerals Ltd website 

Even while we are dealing with grief, the glitter and lights of the season may push us into the expected festive feelings and beyond to a kind of toxic positivity. We may act, almost excessively happy despite being in a difficult emotional state. Grief is highly personal. And, personal rituals help to cope with the depths of grief now in festive weeks and into the onset of darker winter months say the professional funeral directors at Richmond-based Can-Trust-Funeral.  

As licensed funeral directors, they have seen the challenge to hope and faith in the future as grieving families go through funeral arrangements, memorials and celebrations of life. Many choose to benefit from rituals at the funeral service and long after look to help them move forward and to live life as best as possible. Rituals acknowledge reality and honour a person’s feelings of missing loved ones in the fray of festivities.  

Examples of meaningful rituals shared by families with the funeral directors who have helped plan funeral arrangements in Richmond, Steveston, Vancouver, or funerals in Burnaby, funeral services in Surrey and funeral services in New Westminster have included:  

At the funeral, memorial, celebration of life or cremation services  

• Graveside actions such as ripping of clothes, or attaching a black ribbon or arm band  
• Shoveling earth into the grave 
• Cut flowers  to throw into the grave or floral arrangements to place on the casket  
• Visit the cemetery or a memorial site on the anniversary of a death  
• Vancouver funeral services often revolve around an offering- something said, something to take away, such as a memorial card as a keepsake  

At home:   

• Light candles 
• Set a place for the dead at the dinner table 
• Put the memorial card from the services in a place of honour at home and to hold as a keepsake.    

The possibilities for relief through rituals are endless as it all comes from the heart. 

Should we be able to ease your mind as you consider advance death care arrangements in the Metro Vancouver area or need to talk to us now, please contact us for a consult. You are never under any obligation. 

We wish you the best at this time.  To all we extend the guiding principal that helps us help others, Compassion, Always 

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.   

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.   

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.   

Phone: 604-376-7975   

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com   

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral   

Learn more at the Can-Trust-Funeral website 

The bustle and bright lights of the holiday season can bring with it difficult days for people experiencing deep grief for a recent loss, or long lost loved one, or a sudden and traumatic death. Now, with the pandemic precautions, we may feel even more bereft of human comfort. The team at Can-Trust Funeral has some suggestions based on serving families preparing to mark loss in funeral home services in Richmond, funerals in Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam and greater Vancouver. 

Mourners have the opportunity to express anguish and tears of sadness at the time of a funeral or memorial. Mourning is public. It is acceptable and encouraged. 

Grief is the silent, private part that endures with no predictable limit. It can be anticipated as a recurring reminder of our loss, recent or long ago, or it can ambush us – brought on as we see holiday decorations going up, or receive invitations for rounds of merrymaking and celebrations for a great new year ahead. 

Can-Trust’s Funeral Directors offer this advice on how to care for ourselves and perhaps to ease our feeling of being alone with the distress and also our worry about spoiling the time for family and friends.  These two main ideas of feeling and action might be of help. 

1. Take time to mark the moment 

Choose from any of the rituals to honour those who passed and to mark your personal remembrance of them, even well after their funeral or memorial. 

• It is customary in many religions and societal traditions to remember the dead with visits to the physical grave. Christmas like the anniversary of the death is a natural time for family and friends to visit the grave. 
• Bring flowers or other objects to remember the deceased. These are sometimes placed on the grave as a sign of respect.   

• Bring candles, a wreath or take comfort by making your own ornaments as a meaningful gesture to decorate the monument. 

2.   Look Up and Out, Never Giving Up 

Try to be ‘outgoing’ and try to look outside yourself to see the positive moments and people around you. This is possible even with the distancing requirements and social restrictions due to pandemic precautions.  

• You can be true to your feelings yet join in as you can in activity with others. 
• Get outside to enjoy fresh air to restore energy to the body and perspective to the spirit. Now a must –do action for everyone, so you will be alone yet together in nature.  

• Feel and act at your own comfort level. There’s no need to push beyond what you can do, only to be open to do something and not isolate yourself during this season.  
• If you are having more hours of isolation, perhaps a meditation practice to calm thoughts might be good to star.   

We have been working closely as a team at Can-Trust-Funerals for years. We know the mix of heartbreak and happiness in memories that flood us at this time of year. That includes you and the care we encourage you to offer yourself. 

Should we be able to ease your mind as you consider advance death care arrangements in the Metro Vancouver area or need to talk to us now, please contact us for a consult. You are never under any obligation. 

We wish you the best at this time.  To all we extend the guiding principal that helps us help others, Compassion, Always 

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.   

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.   

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.   

Phone: 604-376-7975   

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com   

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral   

Learn more at the Can-Trust-Funeral website 

National days are dedicated to honour and remember the dead in countries round the globe. Rituals observed closer to home, say the death care professionals at Richmond-based, Can-Trust-Funeral, can help individuals who come from those traditions to heal after funeral services in Vancouver or cremations, graveside funeral services or memorials throughout the Lower Mainland, too. 

Public memorial and death related experiences on a national scale  

You may have heard of Mexico’s Día de Muertos a holiday that honors the dead and is so renowned that it is celebrated well beyond its borders. 

This month of November is when many countries have a national day for families and friends to gather in tribute to their deceased loved ones. They days often include festivities, with plenty of colour, loud music and food and then allow for quiet, private reflection and remembering,  

A few examples of how entire countries observe remembrance of funeral services are:  

Brazil’s Dia de Finados, is far less a pagan influenced celebration and is a Catholic holiday. Mass is shared in the community and then private reflections are in effect 

Ecuador has its Día de Todos los Santos and Philippines’ All Saints’ Day is named similarly, but has in addition to feasting, travel by Filipinos back to their homes.  

National rituals in Asia, Europe and South America observed on a dedicated day may include time to tidy up cemeteries, place flowers on graves and light candles in honor of their relatives who have passed on. One of these is Chingming, or Tomb Sweeping Day, to venerate the dead in China, in the spring. Graves are cleaned off and only cold foods are served yet the tradition also greets the oncoming springtime.  

Guatemalans fly huge, colourful and extravagant kites painted by hand and prepared months in advance.   

Haitians funeral rituals revolve around singing, dancing, drinking and sacrifices that take place close to the cemeteries and recall both the powers of death and fertility.  

Halloween in the USA and Samhain in Ireland occur at the end of October. Like at other celebrations skeletons, torches, outdoor activity and feasting focus on the community’s sharing in the remembrance.  

Close to home, Can Trust’s funeral directors have observed personal rituals drawn from the Lower Mainland citizens’ countries of origin.

Examples of some personal choices are: 

• Offerings at funerals in Surrey 
• Touching comments at cremations for New Westminster family members who passed 
• Candles lit at celebrations of life in Burnaby 
• Memorial cards to hold as a keepsake at funeral services in Richmond 
• Flowers in the sanctuary or strewn onto caskets at funerals in Vancouver  

Funeral Directors working with families in Richmond, Steveston, Vancouver, or in planning funerals in Burnaby, funeral services in Surrey and funeral services in New Westminster help families create the meaningful rituals to connect and together to face the reality of the death.   

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.   

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.   

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, funeral services in Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.   

Phone: 604-376-7975   

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com   

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral   

Learn more at Can-Trust-Funerals Ltd. website  

The most important thing about ritual is that it is done, say the death care professionals at Can-Trust, who help families with funeral arrangements in the Lower Mainland. As licensed funeral directors they are prepared to help families with funeral arrangements at ‘time of need’ or when pre-planning funerals, in any cultural or religious context. Rituals are respected, whether they stem from religious traditions, or closely held cultural superstitions or designed especially by the family for the funeral service they are arranging. 

Can-Trust-Funeral’s funeral directors help mourners fulfill rituals because these actions will assist them to accept the death of a loved one. These are the universally held benefits of rituals:  

• Rituals, much like routine, lends a structure that makes people feel safe and secure as they move to accept the death of the loved one as real. 
• Clear expectations guide the way to acceptance and set up supports for grief   
• Knowledge of what is ahead prepares the mourners and allows others to join in and help families move through the grief process. 

Rituals at a funeral service give an identifiable and familiar context. Beyond planning a funeral service, and the paperwork that a funeral director handles for the family, Can-Trust’s funeral directors listen. They listen as they are called on in their service to grieving families to adapt funeral services to Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish and many other denominations and life paths. While the modes of disposition of the remains of a loved one our society offers are:   

• Encasement such as a mausoleum or a tomb subsurface 
• Internment such as burial with a graveside funeral or funeral home service 
• Cremation such as the burning of a body at a crematorium. 

Can Trust’s funeral directors want you to know that you have control over the rituals in which you express your unique connection to the funeral service, cremation, celebration of life or memorial.  The licensed funeral directors help realize your choices from the first consult on funeral arrangements at time of need or when pre-planning. Ritual gives unlimited and unique expressions of connection to the community the loved one has left us, or to the invitation to have others join in through established or newly implemented family rituals.  

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.   

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.   

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.   

Phone: 604-376-7975   

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com   

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral   

Learn more at Can-Trust-Funeral Ltd website 

The eulogy speech you present will give a sense of comfort and closure for mourners. They will listen closely to your words in person, live streamed or delayed viewing video due to pandemic regulations for attendance at funeral service, cremation, burial or celebration of life arranged in the Lower Mainland. Richmond, BC based Can-Trust-Funerals has some tips to support you in the honour you have been given and your responsibility in delivering the eulogy speech.  

Find tips in writing the eulogy in a previous Can-Trust-Funerals post or you have the option to hire a professional funeral celebrant. They sit with the family, listen and prepare and then deliver what the family wishes. Funeral celebrants on the professional funeral directors’ team can deliver the eulogy or read other words from those that are too overcome with emotion.

Focus on the positive points of the person’s life and keep the tone inspirational, from beginning to end. Can-Trust has these tips to help you present the eulogy speech you have written:

Practice beforehand. 

Some say read your speech aloud in private in advance up to 20 times. Practice in an empty room, in front of a mirror or in front of other family members to help calm you, and smooth out any awkward or difficult passages.

• Knowing what’s coming makes you confident to control the pace, not hurry your words and look up more, and stare down at the paper less. 
• You’ll know where in your speech you are the most emotional and you will be ready to take a breath or a drink of water and reduce any anxiety at speaking in public. 
• Practice the pauses as this will help you make your speech more memorable in honour of your friend and for the mourners to follow you more naturally. Simply write PAUSE to give your audience a chance to absorb the comments and stories you are sharing.

Bring notes with you

• Have about 5 to 7 minutes of material, although anywhere between 3 and 10 minutes is appropriate. You don’t have to memorize your speech but be familiar through practice so you can speak at a good pace and not speed up nervously. 
• Manage these smoother presentation points by printing out your speech fully or have it as bullet points on cards. This assurance of the words in hand helps you remember and share more naturally.  
• Choose a large font, double space it and print only on one side. Keep the notes flat on the lectern. Numbering the pages in case of an accidental shuffle. 

Be Yourself  

• Do introduce yourself, your name and your relationship with the deceased before you begin. This provides context as it is unlikely that everyone at the funeral service will know you well. 
• Do know your audience wants you to succeed and will be appreciative of your effort as the storyteller that connects the recollections you are all share and to remind them of the memories in their hearts and minds. You are helping others with their own grief. 
• This means you must also take care of yourself. Be prepared both mentally and physically. Plan to be rested. Bring tissues and have water nearby in case you need to take a moment to compose yourself, even mid speech. 

How to end your eulogy presentation?

Conclude the eulogy with sincerity and a measure of reverence for the deceased. As with any presentation ending, especially one that has attempted to represent someone’s life, feel free to summarize points made throughout your speech. 

Make eye contact with your audience at this closing moment, if you can. Or, as it may be in these pandemic times, look into the camera as you touch on the spirit and the impact the deceased has had. In this way you offer an uplifting end to the eulogy. 

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.  

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.  

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.  

Phone: 604-376-7975  

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com  

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral  

Visit us online for more

What can we do before we die or before we lose someone?  Talk about that inevitable – death. Funeral directors at Richmond-based Can-Trust-Funerals Ltd. find that people don’t generally like to talk about death. It’s not a comfortable or usual topic in our society. 

Yet, frank talk before a death is imminent, may help. Preferences can be confirmed about funeral arrangements, feelings about memorials, and celebrations of life or final disposition by cremation or burial. Conversations can also yield compassionate connection and insights that may help loved ones that will be left behind cope better.  

Losing someone to death is painful, and a licensed funeral director can guide mourners so that the funeral arrangements at least don’t have to be painful. 

What is the top advice offered by Can-Trust-Funerals team members when a family meets with them to discuss funeral arrangements in the Lower Mainland? Have the conversations if you can. If a death is imminent: Don’t worry about the funeral arrangements, spend precious time with the dying.

In the days prior to someone dying, family members may feel the need to do something. A professional funeral director empowers the loved ones in these fraught moments with assurance that there is always time for the arrangements. 

Talk about death

• The “good death” many hope for is very personal and can be imagined as exiting in a blaze of glory to a peaceful passing. The main thing Can-Trust’s professional funeral directors and celebrants will encourage is that families spend the time with dying loved ones. Or, if coming in to prearrange a funeral service, to talk about their life and now their preference in death, sooner than later.
• As many of us do not have avenues to talk openly about death unless we’re forced to, opening conversations with your loved ones is valuable. 

Carry out the funeral arrangements  

• You might find that as you ask practical questions of a funeral director about transfer of the deceased, funeral home facilities and preparation of the body – you begin bridging your mental preparation and the emotional reality ahead of you.
• Professionals are there to help handle the practical burdens so you can focus on the funeral service and all it is designed to do.  

Rituals for the experience and the emotion  

• Advance planning and the actual ritual are two completely separate experiences. 
• Funeral rituals give us the reality of the death and signal acceptance and the ability to move forward.
• Rituals associated with the funeral, cremation or celebration of life can be familiar and traditional or designed by the family. They give a concrete way to express our grief and share it with other mourners. Discussing the plans can help families cope.

Even though we all know death is part of our lives, it still seems to take us by surprise. Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.  

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.  

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.  

Phone: 604-376-7975  

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com  

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral  

Visit us online for more information.

The eulogy speech at a memorial or funeral service remembers the person who died and can be delivered by a family member, close friend, member of the clergy or celebrant. It is one of the rituals that funeral directors at Richmond based Can-Trust-Funeral know helps mourners shift from the reality of losing their loved one’s personal presence to sharing their memory.       

Are you the one writing a eulogy? Then you are tasked with presenting a life in brief, at an emotional time. You are expected to share your thoughts publicly with a certain flair to both comfort and to inform other mourners at the funeral service. It can feel more stressful if you felt close to the deceased.  

Even as families in Greater Vancouver, Richmond, New Westminster, Burnaby and Surrey have a greater hand in arranging funeral services and carrying out rituals, they welcome the guidance offered by Can-Trust’s professional funeral directors when it comes to writing a eulogy.  

Here are the most useful tips the team offers based on their observance at funeral services:  

Feel big yet think small 

• In your sincere testimony, select a few specific memories that show important moments in the deceased’s life.  

• Illustrate their traits such as humour, generosity or kindness. Those smaller moments and their unique details will speak to all the people leaning in to listen to you. Your examples will spark their own memories of the loved one. 

Organize comments around a theme 

• Capture the ideas that flow to you into a theme. A love of nurturing plants may start out as a small colourful story, as an example. Yet, it expands into memories that might depict this trait as compassion and special care of people in that person’s circle of family and friends.  
• If a theme doesn’t present itself clearly, take a stroll through photos and memorabilia. This often sparks comments to share.  

Do share the expected  

Deliver what we all expect to hear at a funeral service, memorial, cremation or celebration of life. Balance your respectful sharing of intimate moments of a life, with information that is a bit less emotional such as: 

• Milestones in life, achievements, childhood or lifelong interests and mentions of family, marriage, and the education and career years of the loved one who has passed.   
• Aim for 5-7 minutes as it is an emotionally charged time and this would give space to others who might want to share readings, memories and prayers and poems.  
• Do be respectful of the deceased’s values and their standing in their community, family or faith to speak and use humour and personal stories appropriately.   

Can-Trust’s funeral directors offer families caring guidance on all options in the Lower Mainland community. We provide reliable, straightforward and affordable service, and with compassion, always.  

Before you engage with any funeral homes, please call Can-Trust-Funeral at 604-376-7975 or email to book a free professional consultation. You are never obligated.  

Our Can-Trust team of licensed funeral directors, provides funeral services in Burnaby, funeral services in Richmond, Vancouver and throughout the Lower Mainland.  

Phone: 604-376-7975  

E-mail: can-trust-funeral@outlook.com  

WeChat: Cantrustfuneral  

Visit us online for more information.