PROGRESS 2024: Love Funeral Home welcomes 'personalization' of funeral services

Apr. 2—Since opening in 1935, Love Funeral Home has remained family-owned and operated throughout five generations, offering traditional funeral services and a "high standard of quality," said Lindsey Jenkins, a funeral director and embalmer at the funeral home.

"We always want to have our doors open and be that place where individuals who are grieving can come," said Jenkins.

Jenkins said the funeral industry "has changed a whole lot" in the last couple of years. There has been an increased focus on "personalization," something the funeral home has tried to adapt to.

"Everyone's needs are constantly changing, as are their expectations as to what they expect in a funeral service," she said. "It's no longer just traditional burials or cremations, now everybody has their own ideas. There's a lot of personalization now in funerals that there didn't used to be in the past."

Jenkins said she appreciates that.

"We really like it," she said. "I always encourage families to talk about their loved one or pick out things that were important to them and incorporate that into a service."

Sometimes, that involves less traditional ways of conducting a service.

"Nowadays, some families will bring items of the person or even have their loved one's favorite candy for people at visitation," she said. "Little things like that."

Hannah Joyce, Love Funeral Home's treasurer and Jenkins' sister, said it has been a recent goal to embrace the change in how services are held.

"People will bring in so many different cultures and have different ways of how they want to do things," Joyce said. "We've had several mariachi bands, we've had burning of incense. It's about letting whoever is here do what they are comfortable with and want to do. There's not a right way or a wrong way to do it."

Instead, it's about "what's important to them," Jenkins said.

"A lot of people now will call funeral services more of a 'celebration of life,'" she said. "It is definitely a little different than the traditional service."

Jenkins said there are many new ways to honor a departed loved one that have been seen during the last few months.

"One of the big things we recently had a family ask about are diamonds," she said. "It's a thing now where you can actually make someone's ashes, or their hair if it's a burial, into a diamond. And it's not a bad price either. One of my goals has been to find ways like that to help them remember their person in their own unique way. That's really cool and something that they can keep forever."

Another recent development is the popularity of memory stones.

"Instead of just having someone cremated, you can have the ashes made into memory stones that you can put around your house or keep and hold on to," Jenkins said. "Some people are also getting buried or cremated and made into trees, so that they'll become a part of a tree. Or they will be made into a coral reef if they loved the ocean. There are so many different things out there now, so we want to do our job of being able to help people when they have these ideas."

Joyce said it's about finding ways to help on a more personal basis.

"It's not just like we're going to cremate or bury them and that's it," she said. "But it's about bringing more ideas of how to remember their person."

Jenkins said another aspect that Love Funeral Home has made strides in during the last few months is grief support.

"A lot of people in our community have a good grief support system, but a lot of them don't," she said. "We kind of see that pretty regularly. So, we've been trying to put some programs in place where we can reach those people that do not have a good support system, so that they may feel more comfortable coming into a funeral home versus if they don't have any family, friends or church family."

One new grief support program began during the holiday season last year, Jenkins said.

"This past Christmas, we did the memorial tree," she said. "We put a live Christmas tree outside of our building and we made supplies available inside to people for making angel ornaments. It didn't cost anything and it was for the community as a whole, not just for people that chose to use our services."

Instead, anyone could create an ornament for a loved one they were missing during the holiday to place on the tree.

"We really try to think about ways to make it easy for people," Jenkins said. "We chose to put the tree outside so that if someone wasn't comfortable coming in or was more private, they could still come up at night or on their own time and hang something."

Joyce said the memorial tree was well received.

"We had a really good response and we definitely want to do it every year," she said.

Jenkins said their hope is to see it continue to grow.

"We'll put as many Christmas trees as we need to," she said. "We want people to come and continue to remember their person. Grief doesn't always just go away. Even if somebody lost someone five years ago, they're still grieving them or thinking of them during the holidays."

Joyce said Love Funeral Home looks to be a "bridge" for people looking for support in times of grief.

"It's our way of just saying we're not just here to help them the day they have someone pass, but that we're still here if they need anything. We want to continue to help them after their loved one has passed or to be that bridge that can help connect them to groups, whether it's a grief support group or they're just looking for a church group. We just want to kind of lead them in the right direction."