Home and Blended Funerals

We strongly recommend thoroughly researching your options and learning about the process long before the actual time of need. We are here to answer any questions you may have, and to assist you in any capacity you choose.

What Are Home Funerals?

Home funerals occur when families keep or bring their deceased loved one home for any period of time following their death. Family members often bathe and dress the body, keep it cool, and may invite friends and neighbors to the home for visitation. If desired, clergy, musicians, and others may come to the home for an intimate private service. The next-of- kin or a designated agent is responsible for filing all paperwork, and the family may transport the body to the cemetery or crematory.

What are Blended Funerals?

While families have the privilege of caring entirely for their own after death, weekends and off-hours may make it more feasible to hire a professional to file the paperwork or take care of transportation from hospital or facility to home, or from home to the cemetery or crematory. Blended funerals are ones where families take up the tasks they find most meaningful, while partnering with a funeral director to help with other details or services.

Where Can I Learn More?

We at Hazel Green Funeral Home are dedicated to being a resource to you in the event that you choose a home or blended funeral. Call us any time at 256-828-0035. We will always encourage each and every family to participate in a funeral in whatever manner or level they are comfortable with. We are more than willing to share with you the experience we have gained through the years of assisting families at their time of need, in order to make a home funeral all that you want it to be. Whether it be with guidance at no charge, assistance with Alabama's electronic filing of death certificates, or just simple suggestions of how to do something a little easier, we will be here to help you.

To further help you prepare, here are some sister organizations that provide practical,
comprehensive information about home and blended funerals:

National Home Funeral Alliance

A home funeral resource for anyone seeking to learn what is happening in the US and Canada, this site includes practical guides for families, and directories for finding teachers, speakers, home funeral guides, celebrants, home-funeral- friendly funeral directors, and much more. http://www.homefuneralalliance.org

Crossings: Caring For Our Own at Death

Learn the compelling story about how Beth Knox came to start this nonprofit that provides a resource guide in home funeral practice free on her website at http://www.crossings.net