Richard’s Almanac: Don’t delay … plan today

I believe that there’s a great deal to be said in favor of planning our final arrangements. Those of us in our last quartile sometimes do not want to think about the inevitable. And the inevitable gets closer every day.

What brought this to mind was an event in my life that that occurred last week. My 96-year old mother died. She’d been failing for the past few weeks. It was time but one is never ready.  I was, however, very lucky to have had her for such a long time.

She did have a will that she and my late father had drawn up many years ago. Very important. If you do not have a will now, get one done right away.

I am the executor of my mother’s estate so I had to meet with the funeral director. I have always found funeral parlors very scary places. So I had to steel myself. They ask so many questions that do not have answers written down anywhere.

“Do you want a wake? How many days? Do you want an open coffin? Do you want a cremation or  a burial? Do you want a church service?”

My mother did not have any of these questions answered in print anywhere. It was up to my siblings and me to decide. I happen to own a cemetery plot so the burial question was easy to answer. For the other answers we went with what we thought were the traditions she would like.

And as the funeral director said, all the ceremony is there for the survivors.

When I asked him about cost and told him that I had seen TV ads for life insurance saying that the average cost for a funeral is about $8,000, he quickly replied, “Not here. Maybe out in the Midwest somewhere but not on Long Island.”

The total cost came to well more than twice the figure in the ad. Of course that can be reduced with no wake, cremation and no church service.

These are some of the reasons we should take care of these details in a notarized statement before our demise.

Some individuals make plans that even include the hymns to be sung at their church service and the menu for their post funeral dinner. These details make life easier for the surviving loved ones.

I remember that my grandparents even had their tombstone bought and placed on their plot. My grandfather had his picture taken sitting on it and smoking a cigarette.

I was reading in the business section of the Post last week that coffin manufacturers are being impacted by the increase in cremations. Last year, cremations went up 5 percent and they now make up more than 50 percent of all arrangements.

When I asked my daughter about whether or not this topic was a bit to dark to write about, we both agreed that it was O.K. and older folks should take care of details before they go.

To me it seems a bit creepy, but it is necessary.