After cremations as part of Cleveland, OH cremation services, the grieving process begins for the family members who have lost a loved one. When these family members are friends or extended family, we immediately are moved to comfort and support them, but we don’t often know if we should say anything, or if we do, what would be the right thing to say.

In reality, sometimes more silence than words is okay if we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid that we might say the wrong thing. But we can acknowledge the loss of a loved one and we can express our sympathy to our grieving friends and extended family members.

When someone is grieving, they may simply want to talk about their loss and their grief (some people don’t want to and we should respect that as well). They are not looking for advice or wisdom or counsel. They just need to be able to express to another person how they are feeling. We can show our hearts in this case by just listening with an empathetic ear.

Many of the feelings of loss and grief are complicated. They can range from anger to sorrow to fear and to regret. It can be hard to hear grief out loud, and we might be tempted to try to counter what our grieving friend or extended family member is saying by, in essence, disagreeing with how they feel and what they are saying. This can make things so much worse.

What we need to do instead is step back and put ourselves in their shoes. What would we want someone to say to us if we were in the throes of grief and emotional turmoil? Something kind and understanding that comes from an empathetic and gentle heart would sooth our wounds of loss instead of aggravating them.

Another way to show and speak from our hearts is not to disappear after a few weeks of supporting and consoling our grieving friends or extended relatives. One way to disappear is not making the time to check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing. They may not be up to in-person visits, but we can text or call them to let them know we care about them.

Another way to disappear is more subtle, but also much more hurtful. This disappearance consists of being impatient with our friends’ or extended relatives’ grief by essentially telling them that it’s time to move on and get over it. If you want to damage, or possibly destroy, a relationship, this is a sure way to begin the process.

Grieving takes time, and no two people grieve openly – grief, in some shape or form, lasts the rest of ife – the exact same way or for the same amount of time. It takes a lot of patience sometimes to listen to some of our friends and extended family members say the same things and express the same feelings over and over for an extended period of time.

But this is a part of healing and we need to affirm the validity that they are feeling these things and give them a safe and supportive environment to work out their grieving, no matter how long it takes. That’s friendship and that’s love.

For more information about grief resources as part of Cleveland, OH cremation services, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit our funeral home at 2165 E. 89th Street, Cleveland, OH 44106, or you can call us today at (216) 791-0770.

Grief resources are among cremation services provided in Shaker Heights, OH. Elderly people are affected by grief in very profound ways. When elderly people lose loved ones, which is more frequent and often includes spouses, existing health problems can get much worse, living arrangements may have to be changed, and stress gets much more intense.

Because the elderly experience grief more frequently, as friends, family members, and peers die, they may sense that their time to die is closing in on them, which can lead to greater feelings of anxiety and loneliness.

The emotional and physical ways that grief may affect elderly people are different than for younger people. Grief always has an impact on physical health. However, elderly people are much more susceptible to severe health problems after a loved one dies because their stress levels are significantly elevated for a longer period of time.

A decrease in appetite is one physical symptom of the effective grief on the elderly. Many older people have a normal decrease in their desire to eat. They will eat fewer meals and their meal portions will be smaller. However, grief can decrease their appetites even more, which can lead to malnutrition and dehydration.

Feeling confused during the grieving process is common at any age. However, among the elderly this confusion can be much worse and lead to periods of forgetfulness, disorganization, and disorientation. Since these are many of the same symptoms associated with cognitive impairment and dementia, testing should be done to eliminate these conditions as the source of confusion.

Elderly people are more likely to experience significant life changes following the death of a loved one, especially a spouse, then younger people. For elderly spouses who were married for many years, the loss of the other spouse creates a void in caring and support. The surviving spouse may find themselves having to leave a home that they’ve lived in for many years and either move into small apartment, in with their families, or into an assisted living facility. These kind of life changes magnify the stress of grief.

Another loss that elderly people may experience following the death of a spouse are financial difficulties. Unless there is life insurance or financial investment that ensures financial security, many elderly people who lose their spouse also lose the fixed income that the spouse received. So instead of living on to fixed incomes, the surviving spouse has to make it on one fixed income. This is also an extra stress added to the grieving process.

Another source of stress associated with grief among the elderly are the feelings of being isolated, alone, and lonely. Losing a spouse, a close friend, or close relative can mean losing someone to confide in, to talk to, or to spend time with. Younger family members are usually wrapped up in their own lives with and raising families, so they don’t have a lot of extra time to spend with older family members (and they don’t realize what older family members are feeling and experiencing). This can lead to elderly to believe that they are truly all alone in the world, which can exacerbate the stress associated with grief.

Grief support and grief counseling are good resources for elderly people who are dealing with extra stress and different grief than their younger counterparts. Many of these resources are free.

If you’d like to learn about grief resources and cremation services in Shaker Heights, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.

Helping write obituaries is among the cremation services provided in Warrensville Heights, OH. Although there is a growing trend toward writing more creative obituaries, most obituaries still follow a traditional format.

You have the choice of where you want them published. Both digital and print editions of newspapers have a cost associated with them (most charge by the word) for obituaries. Funeral homes will publish obituaries on their websites as part of their service to you and your family. There are other digital options for publishing obituaries as well. Some may be free and some may have a cost associated with them.

Traditional obituaries have several elements included.

The first is the announcement of the death. It includes the deceased’s name, age, and residence at the time of death. Do not include street addresses, because there are people who regularly scan obituaries to see when homes will be empty so they can burglarize them. Simply include the city and state.

There are many ways to say someone has died. While some people are comfortable with using the word died, others feel it’s too harsh, so they’ll use phrases such as passed away, went to their heavenly home, and went to be with the Lord. There’s no right or wrong way to express that someone has died, so use the phrasing that you are most comfortable with.

The next element in an obituary is a list of the immediate family members who have died before the deceased, including parents, siblings, spouses, and children.

A brief biography is the next thing that should be included in a traditional obituary. This should include important events, qualities, contributions and connections in the deceased’s life. These are things like the date and place of birth, parent’s names, date and place of marriage, birth name of spouse, education, work, and military service. Within this, the impact that the deceased had during their lifetime should be highlighted.

The next element in an obituary is a list of the family members and friends-who-were-like-family who survive the deceased. The order should be surviving parents, surviving spouse, surviving children (and their spouses’ first names in parentheses), surviving grandchildren, and any other family members or friends that were special to the deceased.

Arrangements are listed next. These will include the arrangements for visitations, funeral or memorial services and burial (if the deceased is not being cremated). Dates, times, and locations of all funeral arrangement events should be included as well.

The next section of the obituary is for special messages that the family of the deceased would like to communicate. This is where requests for donations instead of funeral flowers should be placed as well as thanks to hospital staffs, hospice staffs, and individuals who may have been involved in taking care of the deceased before they died.

Photos are now very common in obituaries. If they’re being published in a newspaper, they are an additional cost (color photos cost more than black and white), while they are part of the funeral home’s services if they’re published on their website. Choose a good quality (good lighting, no smudges or creases, and dressed nicely), recent photo of the deceased for the obituary.

If you’d like to learn more about writing obituaries and cremation services in Warrensville Heights, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.

Helping with suicide awareness is among the cremation services provided in Warrensville Heights, OH. Americans, in general, avoid talking about suicide. We skirt the subject and obituaries and death notices by saying things like, “passed away suddenly” or “passed away unexpectedly,” even though it’s clear to anyone reading them that the person was neither sick nor elderly.

The stigma against suicide in the African-American community is even stronger because it is seen as a sign of weakness. There are unrealistic expectations among African Americans about the constant outward display of strength. We are expected to have it all together all the time. There is no discussion about mental health, emotional health, or seeking help from qualified professionals when we need it.

Yet we only have to look at a few names to understand that suicide, in the mental health issues that preceded them, is prevalent among the African-American community.

Don Cornelius, the genius behind the very popular TV show, Soul Train, which introduced many still-popular African-American entertainers to the world, died from a self-inflicted gun wound in 2012. Cornelius, who underwent complicated brain surgery in the late 1980s, said that he never felt the same mentally or physically after the surgery. Finally the pain and the mental strain caught up with him.

The singer and actress, Phyllis Hyman, committed suicide with a drug overdose in 1995. The suicide note Hyman left said, in part, “I’m tired. I’m tired. Those of you that I love know who you are. May God bless you.” She was 46 years old.

Musician Donny Hathaway was 33 when he plunged to his death from his 15th floor hotel room in New York City in 1979. Incredibly talented, Hathaway was known not only for his skills as a musician and as a writer, but also his incredibly smooth sound both as a solo artist and as a duet artist.

Hathaway suffered from severe depressive bouts at the height of his career. After seeking professional treatment, Hathaway was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Psychiatrists prescribed a very strong medication to help control the symptoms. However, Hathaway’s wife, Eulaulah, said as Hathaway got busier and more popular, he became less diligent about taking the medication.

Hathaway’s mental instability during the 1970s created havoc in his personal life and resulted in several hospitalizations. At the time of his death, Hathaway was in the recording studio with his frequent duet partner, Roberta Flack. They were doing a follow-up album of duets after the release of the widely-popular “The Closer I Get to You.”

However, Hathaway’s behavior both in the studio and outside the studio was increasingly erratic. The day Hathaway died, he had become paranoid and delusional, claiming that white people were trying to kill him and had hooked his brain up to a machine to steal both his sound and his music. The record producers decided to stop the recording session and send everybody home. Within hours, Hathaway lay dead on the sidewalk outside his hotel.

Mental illness and suicide show no partiality. We must, as African-Americans, seek professional help if we need it and not be afraid of what other people might say or think. Our lives are at stake and the lives of our community are at stake. Each of them is valuable and worth saving.

But when suicide hits our families, we should not be afraid to say so, so we can finally break down these walls to keep us from getting the help we need.

If you’d like to learn about cremation services in Warrensville Heights, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.

Grief resources are among the cremation services provided in Warrensville Heights, OH. When a loved one dies, intense grief and mourning are the natural human emotions that are evoked. When they are expressed and processed in a safe and supportive environment, healing occurs as the nature of grief is transformed into memories and the hope of seeing our loved ones again.

However, some people believe that showing grief makes them look weak, which, in turn makes them feel more vulnerable. And when people feel vulnerable, they can also feel powerless.

The Western world has indoctrinated us with the idea that we can’t show emotions because they will leave us exposed as a target for bullying, derision, and even potential violence. Therefore, we’re taught at an early age to hide our emotions and our feelings and act as though we don’t have them.

Boys are taught at a very early age not to cry. When they fall down and skin their knees or get a few bumps and bruises, they’re told, “Buck up and take it like a man.” If they do cry, they are often called sissies or crybabies, something no boy ever wants to hear. This indoctrination is so intense that by the time boys become men, they’ve become very adept at stuffing every emotional reaction deep inside and putting on the stoic face of indifference.

Girls are allowed to cry and get upset when they’re very young. But as they mature, the same limits that are imposed on boys start being applied to them. Women who cry and who express their emotions publicly are held in less regard than women who put on the same stoic face of indifference as men.

However, the intense grief of losing somebody you love makes it very hard to uphold the Western tradition of stoic indifference. Losing somebody that you love hurts deeply. It not only rips your heart out, but it tears your soul in two. Containing that kind of emotion is virtually impossible.

But in some cases, some of us still try to stuff all those emotions down and carry on as if nothing has happened. In men, this is often expressed as silence. They simply don’t talk about it. In women, this is often expressed as busyness. They simply stay is busy as possible to avoid having to think about or feel grief.

Because grief is an expression of love, trying to contain it, deny it, or avoid it takes a serious toll on us physically, mentally, and emotionally.

The physical toll of suppressing grief manifests itself in health problems. Blood pressure goes up, headaches abound, fatigue nags constantly, stomach issues arise, and sleep often eludes us. This may, in turn, cause us to seek relief in alcohol and drugs, which create more physical health problems.

The mental and emotional toll is immeasurable, and can actually result in severe depression and even suicidal thoughts.

Grief demands our attention. If we choose to ignore it, we do so at our own peril. We are denying a basic part of what makes us human, but all the denial in the world will not make it go away. It’s better to deal with it immediately and reap the benefits of healthy grief processing.

If you’d like to learn about grief resources and cremation services in Warrensville Heights, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit us at our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.