Bellingham, WA cremation service will be significantly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the globe and which has already dramatically affected the state of Washington.

With the American recommendation of social distancing and that groups of no more than 10 people gather, as well as the impact on older people (younger people may experience mild to moderate symptoms and eventually recover if they are otherwise healthy, but they can expose more vulnerable members of the population to the virus), the way we remember and memorialize our loved ones will change.

You will not be able to hold a traditional funeral service or memorial service for your loved one before or after their cremation right now. This will be very hard, at least initially, to deal with and to accept because this goes against all that we have traditionally done in the United States, since its founding, to pay our respects to and to honor our deceased loved ones.

However, just because you can’t hold a traditional funeral service or memorial service for your loved one right now, it doesn’t mean that you won’t ever be able to hold one for them. When this pandemic ends you will have the opportunity to remember and honor your loved one in a traditional way that brings people together to share memories about them.

However, funeral services and memorial services have a two-fold purpose: to pay tribute to your deceased loved one and to provide comfort and support for you and your family. They are also an important step in closure as you accept that your loved one is gone.

Delaying these important aspects of the funeral process can leave a lot of loose ends emotionally and mentally, and it can intensify the sense of aloneness that the loss of your loved one inevitably brings into your life.

So, what do you do?

Plan to have a traditional funeral service or memorial service for your loved one when you are able. But also plan to have a non-traditional service for your loved one in the near future.

Before planning a non-traditional service, be sure to work with the funeral home to create a tribute video consisting of pictures and music for your loved one that can be included with the online obituary.

Share the obituary via social media (after you’ve personally notified other family members and close friends) so that you can get the word out. Ask people to share their good memories of your loved one either on your social media site or on the obituary’s tribute wall.

Although there’s nothing like face-to-face interaction with people when you’re grieving, this is a great way to share in the comfort, support, and love of others when you can’t be with them in person.

The funeral home director can help you with creative ideas for hosting an online service using popular applications like FaceTime, Facebook video chat, or Google Hangouts so that you can have a virtual service that your friends and family can be a part of without anyone having to leave their homes.

You may want to include some of the traditional elements of a service in this virtual service or you may just want to use it as a way to remember your loved one with storytelling and memory sharing. In either case, this will give you some sense of closure as you move forward in accepting your loved one’s death and it will provide much-needed love and support in your time of grief.

If you’d like to learn more about a virtual cremation service in Bellingham, WA, our empathetic and knowledgeable staff at Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory can help.