Welcome to CCAirwaves! CCAirwaves is the official podcast of the Catholic Cemeteries Association. Our hosts, Paige Muttillo and Joel Hansel, will provide informational and inspirational segments that will help you work through your grief in a healthy way, learn more about our Catholic faith, and much more. CCAirwaves is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Buzzsprout, and other streaming platforms. If you have a topic you'd like us to discuss, please email us at podcast@clecem.org. We look forward to forging relationships with our Catholic community!
CCAirwaves welcomes Brian Strauchon, our Pre-Planning Coordinator!
This series is designed to equip you with all the essential information for pre-planning your final arrangements. In this episode, you will meet our Pre-Planning Coordinator, learn about the steps of pre-planning, and gain insights into the burial planning process.
Do you have a topic you'd like us to discuss? Please email us at podcast@clecem.org!
Please feel free to "Connect With Us" via our website at www.clecem.org.
Hello everyone and welcome back to CC Airwaves. My name is Paige Matillo and today we're going to talk about an important topic pre-planning your final arrangements. Our pre-planning coordinator, brian Strahan, will be joining us today to introduce himself and guide us through the steps of pre-planning, as well as review the burial planning process. Hello and welcome. My name is Paige Matillo and it is my pleasure to guide you through the Catholic Cemetery's associations video series on pre-planning. This series is designed to equip you with all the essential information that you need to pre-plan your final arrangements. Today, we're going to introduce you to our pre-planning coordinator, go over the steps for pre-planning and review the burial planning process. So let's start by meeting our pre-planning coordinator, brian Strahan. How are you?
Speaker 2:
Good Paige. How are you? I'm doing good.
Speaker 1:
No problem. So why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Speaker 2:
Sure. I started with the Catholic Cemetery's association last year, so my tenure has been relatively new. In that time I have learned an awful lot. Prior to that, the majority of my professional career has been also through the diocese, but in an educational setting.
Speaker 2:
I've worked at a few high schools within the diocese at the secondary level, both as a counselor and as an administrator, so my primary responsibility is now through the Catholic Cemetery Association as the pre-planning coordinator, correlates a lot to what I was doing in the past and that simply is just to educate people on the importance of pre-planning your burial arrangements through the Catholic Cemetery's Association. I'm an e-cider, born and raised.
Speaker 2:
As I know, we have discussed that and likewise you are and we're not too far from one another Married with two small girls my oldest is soon to be five years old, who also goes to school at St Pascal's, and I have a one-year-old girl as well. So again, we're proud parishioners of St Pascal, baylone School and Parish. And that's just a little bit about myself.
Speaker 1:
That's very nice to hear. So, brian, what is pre-planning?
Speaker 2:
Pre-planning is more or less peace of mind. If I could boil it and sum it into one statement, it's peace of mind. It's a very difficult conversation to have. Obviously nobody wants to talk about their own mortality or their final arrangements. So, having said that, it is very important, important for not only the individual but important for that individual's loved ones who are left behind, both family members, close relatives, friends, all the above. It really gives a strong sense of peace of mind, not only to the individual person but again to the family and the loved ones.
Speaker 2:
It is performed through, again, our Catholic cemeteries. There are three simple steps that I like to say when it comes to pre-planning your burial arrangements. One is attending a seminar. Those seminars are conducted by myself and they occur either at one of our eight offices throughout the diocese our cemetery offices or they happen at a specific parish. Folks would be notified of those seminars in multiple ways.
Speaker 2:
One they can always check for the 2024 seminar schedule at our parish offices through our homepage, our web page. They are posted there. You can also check your local or your parish bulletins. Announcements go out about a month prior, three to two weeks prior give or take, depending on the parish on when a office seminar is going to be conducted. And then you can also check your your parish bulletin for when the specific parish seminars are being held, what date and what time, and usually there's a two-week buffer through the bulletin, meaning two cycles the the announcement should appear in two cycles prior to the scheduled date at the parish. So again, step one is attending a pre-planning seminar. Step two is scheduling a meeting with one of our family service representatives at one of our eight offices. That's very important because it really gets the ball rolling on the pre-planning process and you really dive into specifics. You have all the information you need at your fingertips.
Speaker 2:
The FSRs are the real professionals when it comes to pre-planning every cemetery, every office does things just a little bit differently and so for every cemetery, that FSR is really the the expert as to all the details in the intricacies that go on with regards to the burials at that specific cemetery. And then the third step would be finalizing those, those plans, again through the cemetery. But it's important to understand, from step two to step three, that timeframe varies depending on the, the couple or the individual. Some like to get their pre-planning done out of the way. Sometimes they do it in just one meeting. Others like to take their time and they like to meet with that FSR in multiple meetings and that can be spread over quite a long period of time, and that's okay. That's okay. Ultimately, what we want for each couple or each individual is for them to feel spiritually at ease and financially at ease, that they've made the right decision in their own time and not only that, that they had all the essential information they needed in order to make that decision.
Speaker 2:
So again, that's a little long-winded, but those are the three steps that that we look for in pre-planning your burial arrangements through the Catholic Cemetery Association okay, and then what are the steps for the burial planning process?
Speaker 2:
well, the burial planning process is a little bit more involved and in future podcasts we'll go over in greater detail the five steps to the burial planning process. But process, excuse me, but very specifically, the burial planning process starts by really the two most important factors, I think, in pre-planning, and you really need to ask yourself these two questions where am I going to be buried and how am I going to be buried? Once you have those two questions answered, you can kind of start with the end in mind and work your way back and everything really starts to fall into place. So you want to start with selecting your cemetery and then you want to start with selecting your burial type. Okay, are you going to be a traditional burial? Are you going to be a cremation burial? Are you going to be above ground or in ground right? There's a lot of different options, okay, so people need to understand what their options are, okay, before, obviously, making a decision.
Speaker 2:
Step three is selecting your place of burial and your memorialization. So, specifically, within the cemetery, what section, meaning what location, am I going to be in? And then, when we talk about memorialization, what we mean is, more commonly, for a traditional in-ground, a headstone, anything above ground etchings, things like that. So again, there's a lot of detail that's involved with that. So in future podcasts we'll go over that again in greater detail. Step four is planning your funeral and your wake, and that's going to happen primarily through your funeral home of choice and your parish. Okay, they can coordinate amongst themselves with regards to specifics, dates, readings, music, all those things that the funeral home in the parish will help you with, and then, more specifically, through the funeral home, dates of the wake and transportation. And again, there's a lot of specifics involved with that.
Speaker 2:
But that's handled primarily through the funeral home. And then, last is finally, you know once, once you've you've finalized all your plans is sharing that with your family and your loved ones. So again, what I'm saying is, when you're talking about planning the five steps to planning your burial, prayer planning process, it's important to understand you're working with three separate entities. One is the cemetery, okay. Two is going to be the funeral home and then three is going to be your parish of choice, where you would like that funeral mass, okay. So it's important for people to understand that. Three separate entities, which is going to constitute three separate meetings, which is going to constitute also three separate decisions. So people need to understand that.
Speaker 2:
But I always recommend, once you've answered those two real important questions where am I going to be buried and how am I going to be buried, okay, you start with that, again, the end in mind, and you work your way back. It really alleviates folks from potential problems or pitfalls that could happen along the way. Again, keep the end in mind, work your way back and everything should happen in a very systematic fashion which, again, either in a pre-planning scenario or certainly in an at-needs scenario the less stress that a family can endure during a very difficult time, the better off they're going to be and the more at ease they'll be during a very difficult obvious situation thank you so much, brian.
Speaker 1:
That information is very helpful and I'm sure our viewers are appreciating all the steps and knowing exactly what they need to do and who they need to contact for those specific things so happy to be here.
Speaker 1:
Thank you so much for joining us today. That's all we're going to cover for today and, as Brian said, in future episodes we're going to be going into more depth into the burial planning process. So in our next episode we will talk about selecting a cemetery. Thank you for listening to CC Airwaves. For more information on how to pre-plan your final arrangements with the Catholic Cemetery's Association, please follow the link provided below. Stay tuned for future episodes where Brian will share more insights on pre-planning topics.
