Planning the Funeral

• Are you allowed to plan for a funeral or do you have to leave your baby at the hospital?
  • even if you are not allowed to plan a funeral for your baby, you can still plan a memorial;
  • if you are allowed, but you decide not to organise a funeral, you can still plan a memorial at a later stage;
• If you are planning a funeral, here are some points you might want to think about before being rushed into taking decisions you might regret later on:
  • Color of the casket (for babies they mostly offer the white option);
  • Cross or any other religious sign on the casket?
  • Do you want to have a ceremony?
  • Who’s presence do you wish for? Only family & close friends, or also colleagues, neighbours, fellow mother-baby courses-participants? (I seem not to be an isolated case: the idea of seeing pregnant women or babies was far beyond my tolerance threshold: so you will probably not invite your fellow mother-baby courses-participants, but you might want someone to contact the teacher on your behalf and ask her to inform them and to very politely ask to be excluded from any birth-participation message or baby-shower).
  • How shall you invite them? Ask for assistance
  • Which music would you like to play? Chose your own or let the funeral house take care of it?
  • Would you like that a priest / rabbi / religious representative / friend / family member says a prayer for your baby?
  • Is (s)he going to be buried or incinerated?
  • If buried, do you have a family cript or…?
  • If  incinerated, do you want to keep the ashes or do you want to disperse them? Where?
    Each of these questions is very painful, I know that from the experience of having to plan both Samuel’s and Zachary’s funerals, but it is better to be prepared…you’ll avoid regrets of having taken the ‘wrong’ decision later on…

The Funeral Home that took care of Zachary’s remains offered me to plant a tree in his name: they kindly planted a tree also for my other two Angels upon my request.

Tree Planted in Memory of Samuel:

Tree Planted in Memory of Ranocchietto:

Tree Planted in Memory of Zachary: