Don’t Rush When Picking a Headstone

If you’ve recently experienced the death of a loved one, you can unfortunately expect to be bombarded with brochures, flyers and other sales materials from companies looking to sell you headstones, burial plots and monuments. All this does is put an unnecessary amount of stress on family members who are already having an emotionally difficult time in the aftermath of the death of a loved one.

One of the things we hear most often from our customers is that they appreciate not being pressured or rushed into making a decision. People want to be able to take their time and make decisions that they think are best for their situation and align with the desires of their recently departed loved one. We agree with this mindset, and believe it is important to “let the dust settle,” so to speak, so the family can achieve some sense of clarity before making decisions.

With this in mind, here are some tips to help you take your time and focus to make the proper decisions regarding headstones and cemetery monuments in Phillipsburg, NJ.

Prioritize what needs to happen immediately

One of the biggest sources of stress people have in the aftermath of the death of a loved one is that there will suddenly be a lot of tasks they feel like they need to accomplish, when truly not everything needs to happen immediately on the first day. Take some time to prioritize what needs to happen and when. Are there things that can wait until tomorrow or the day after, or be delegated to someone else?

The decision regarding burial monuments is not one that needs to be made immediately. Take care of the other important decisions before you spend any time thinking about the kind of marker or monument you wish to place at your loved one’s grave. Otherwise, if you try to think about or take care of too much at once, you’ll find it to be a needlessly stressful experience.

Cut out the outside noise

This isn’t to say you shouldn’t accept any help that’s offered to you. But know that you are going to have a lot of people offering unsolicited advice, aid or information about all sorts of topics after the death of a loved one, which can quickly become overwhelming. Most of this advice and information comes from a place of genuinely wanting to help you, but it might simply give you too much to process. If you can find a way to limit this noise and keep the decision making to a tight circle of people, that will help you a lot, both with monuments and other issues.

Focus on what your loved one wanted

Your job becomes significantly easier if your loved one left behind instructions in a will or other estate planning document about their burial wishes. Otherwise, let what you believe their wishes to have been be your guidepost during your decision-making process.

For more information about the process of selecting cemetery monuments in Phillipsburg, NJ, contact the team at Phillipsburg Memorial Company today.

Categorised in: Headstone