Why Plan A Virtual Funeral?

Major changes due to Covid19 pandemic are preventing people from grieving and mourning for loved ones and who knows when it will end.

The global pandemic has caused many changes especially how we live our lives, have social gatherings, quarantines, travel restrictions and transportation industry restrictions and shutdowns.

These changes have even resulted in lockdowns prohibiting you from having a funeral for your loved one or only allowing immediate family members to attend. If you can’t have a funeral, then the only other two options that we available was to go without or postpone the funeral service where the family members have to wait to grieve until later? This puts limitations on honoring, mourning and saying goodbye.

Even previous to the pandemic, sometimes many friends, family and loved ones couldn’t attend funerals to say goodbye, due to economic and travel distance issues and other reasons due to health or weather.

A virtual funeral can help with all of these problem.

If a virtual funeral is done right, it can actually provide a better solution for everyone to Pay Their Proper Respects, Grieve and Say Goodbye.   

Just think, if you would have told people before the pandemic that you were going to stream a funeral by Facebook or Zoom they would have thought you were crazy and insensitive.

What is a virtual funeral?

Virtual funerals were given birth, primarily due to the pandemic and as they are a new concept, they are also quickly evolving and changing as improvements are constantly being made.

As a result, there’s been some innovative services popping up to support funerals online with this new virtual funeral trend. One service provider that has been around for a while and has kept up with the all the advancements is FuneralNotification.com.

They have taken the idea of an online virtual funeral or celebration and created a platform which allows people to, grieve, share feelings, memories and to attend services online no matter where they are. Their service offers a memorial walls online that allow everyone to gather together to grieve, post stores, videos and service details. These memorial walls continue to stay online providing an everlasting memorial. A great service that allows you to do this and more is FuneralNotification.com and is worth looking into.

The memorial wall allows everyone to celebrate life moments of the individual and people to share memories, feelings and comment these moments no matter what time it is or where they are. It also allows people to send Flowers & Gifts and RSVP add a click of a button making things streamlined and easy. Also all the comments are saved online as a virtual memorial for years to come celebrating their everlasting life in memory.

From Creating An Online Obituary, to Planning Ahead where you can send text and video messages after your gone, all are coming together to be part of this new “Virtual Funeral” Experience. This new “Virtual Funeral” or “Online Funeral” experience ignited, when attending funerals were banned due to the pandemic and people began streaming their funerals online. In moments of desperation, people began using Facebook live and Zoom meetings to share and hold funerals so that the immediate family and friends could attend the funeral.

As with so many other services during the pandemic like, shopping, restaurants and food delivery, people wishing to hold a funeral and supporting services have also moved online.   

Virtual funerals require some preparation, with the ability to generate a funeral notice list from your contacts and email funeral notifications to invite everyone to attend. This funeral notice would give details of the in person and virtual funeral services as well as well as the ability to RSVP and send flowers online.  In addition virtual details such as the zoom meeting link, as well as access to a memorial wall for the deceased. This memorial wall allows people to share their feelings, condolences, memories and the ability to upload pictures and videos to share and memorialize. This is one of the most important features of holding a virtual funeral.

The virtual funeral can be participated by a cell phone, computer or even a family sitting around a smart TV from anywhere.

The first thing you might say it how do you grieve on a cell phone, in front of the computer or with your family sitting around a TV?

People said the same thing, like, how can I share pictures and family moments with my friends that are all over the world before Facebook. Now it’s an everyday thing.

As Facebook addressed this issue, a new service provider FuneralNotification.com is has become the FaceBook of online obituaries and addresses all the issues for having virtual or online funerals. They solve all the problems and provide a complete solution to say goodbye and provide a comprehensive way of grieving.

Virtual funerals are now becoming commonplace in conjunction with a tradition funeral or stand alone, they provide a better way to mourn say goodbye.

So now could you see yourself sitting down with your family in front of a smart TV in the living room, on a computer or cell phone and participate on the memorial wall? Giving you the ability to add pictures and videos, commenting on memories from other friends and family, posting to the same Memorial wall which has not have be possible until now?

This FuneralNotification.com also has a pre-planning facility for people that are elderly, First Responders, military personnel and people that just like to have their life in order. This pre-planning feature allows people to record video messages as well as send text messages to friends family and loved ones. Messages can be sent individually or as a group to say good-byes after their gone to tell people how they really felt and loved them.

A virtual funeral can be a godsend and allow friends and family to say their goodbyes and grieve together no matter where they are, from around the world or in the future maybe even off of this world if Elon Musk gets his way!

Benefits Of A Virtual Funeral

  • It could be used alone or combined with an in person event.
  • Restrictions due to the pandemic are requiring social distancing. Virtual funerals provide social distancing which is the New Norm to accommodate funerals.
  • Economic Benefits.  Not only is it expensive to plan and hold a funeral, it is also very expensive for people to travel to, and attend a funeral, especially during the pandemic situation.
  • Travel Interruptions, sometimes travel can be interrupted from one place to another stranded in people unable to reach their final destination and prohibiting people from traveling as they don’t know if they’ll meet their destination. A virtual funeral eliminates this worry.
  • Holding a virtual funeral can I also cut down the size of and the event cost.

What is the Proper Etiquette to attend the virtual funeral service?

Here are a few pointers and tips to assist you with attending a virtual funeral.

1. Presentation and attire. If you’re attending a normal funeral you would dress appropriately, wear black and be presentable to pay respect. This is the same thing for attending a virtual funeral. If you are in a live stream, people can see you as well, so be prepared and behave the same as for an, in person funeral.

2. Join early or on time do not arrive late. Again, as you’re paying respect this is should be something that is understood. In fact, when you are attending a virtual funeral it is less likely you’ll have reasons to be stuck in traffic or be late to get to the service.

3. Don’t be, or get distracted from apps on your device. If possible, turn off your, messenger apps, social media accounts and cell phones, as well as any other devices that may interact with or distract you. Remember you’re paying your respect as if you’re physically at a funeral service. 

4. Find a quiet location. Go find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed to attend the virtual funeral. Go to place where you won’t be bothered by any other distractions. Also consider your surroundings call me make sure it’s quiet and presentable as people could be seeing you in a video stream and your background.

5. Mute Your microphone. You might want to mute your device in case there’s any unexpected sound in the background that also may disturb the proceedings.

6. Be awake and alert. Attending a virtual funeral allows you to be halfway across the world in a different time zone.

So plan ahead get sleep and wake up early if you are in the opposite time zone. Give yourself time to wake up and prepare.

Funerals During the COVID-19 Corona Virus Pandemic – What To do

Friends, family members and loved ones of someone who dies during  COVID-19 are being denied the opportunity to grieve and say goodbye. 

Not being able to say goodbye to friends, family members and loved ones, and not being able to attend funeral services, or to find a permanent resting place for a loved one is changing how people grieve.

The two new main hurdles and restrictions due to the Covid-19, Corona virus, with attending funerals, is the time and cost it takes. 

The Covid19 pandemic has created unprecedented challenges to even attend a funeral due to local and international travel restrictions, as well as required quarantine periods.  With the length of quarantine periods and it taking longer with the reduced transportation schedules, it is almost and in some cases, impossible to attend a funeral on time.

The high travel and quarantine costs are also another restrictive challenge of attending funerals with increasing airfares and quarantining costs being unaffordable. This high cost of travel doesn’t guarantee stability either, as governments at all levels implement travel restrictions without notice and airlines changing schedules without notice periods and most not issuing refunds if they don’t fly to the destination anymore. 

The instability between the airlines dependability and the last minute governmental restrictions that can be imposed, is like rolling the dice whether you will make it and/or loose your money and we haven’t even the mention of the risk of catching the virus on the airplane. 

To add more stress and confusion to the situation, States and Provincial governments at one time ban funerals outright and later allowed immediate family members to take part, throwing funeral arrangements into chaos. As the seriousness of the pandemic changing daily and so do the regulations and restrictions.

In coronavirus hot spots, the funeral industry struggles to keep up with the sheer volume of COVID-19 deaths forcing families to postpone their funerals and their grieving.

Whats the answer?

One of the things that the Cold 19viruses has had a major impact on is the Quick adaptation of technology. Many people have moved to online shopping, food ordering and watching movies on Netflix at an unprecedented rate which is never been seen before. One major reason for this is due to the global lockdowns and forcing people to stay in their homes. The virus has changed peoples behavior not just for the short-term but also long term as well.

This is the same for funerals as a result of the virus where technology is providing opportunity to allow families to hold funerals share feelings and grieve. When you solution has been is to stream funerals on Facebook live fourth resume meetings. Although we’re not specifically designed as a streaming solution for funerals, it has provided an easy means to stream a funeral and help deal with the family’s grief. 

Another easy solution that is designed for funerals and also integrates with zoom is FuneralNotification.com.

Not only does FuneralNotification.com allow you to send out funeral notices with a zoom to notify Friends family and loved ones of a person’s funeral, it allows detailed information of the funeral and its location, other events, attendees to RSVP for the funeral as well as the option to send flowers and gifts whether they are attending or not.

FuneralNotification.com also allows you to create an online obituary with a memorial wall where everyone can interact and share with each other including posting pictures, videos, comments, stories and sharing their feelings and condolences.This allows everyone to share feelings and grieve together, no matter where they are or if anyone cannot attend.During this current period of the Covid endemic this could be a better solution for so many families.

I have left the best to last as FuneralNotification.com also has a preplanning option which allows you to record personalized text and video messages until after you are gone. This are kept confidential until your funeral notification is sent out so you can share your last wishes and feelings with your friends, family and loved ones.

Their tagline is “Give everyone the chance to say Goodbye” and their memorial wall provides a way to accomplish this as well as an ongoing online memorial for years to come.