The Funeral.com Journal

Resources to help you create tributes as unique as the people (and pets) you love. Learn how engraving, photos, colors, and symbols add meaning; discover scattering rituals and at-home memorial ideas. We focus on the details that matter—because small choices can carry a lifetime of comfort.

The Physical Symptoms of Heartbreak: Can Pet Loss Make You Sick?

The Physical Symptoms of Heartbreak: Can Pet Loss Make You Sick?

The morning after your pet dies can feel unreal in a way that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. The house is still. The routine is broken....

It’s Just a Cat: How to Handle Insensitive Comments from Friends

It’s Just a Cat: How to Handle Insensitive Comments from Friends

The comment rarely lands gently. You might be standing in the grocery store aisle, moving on autopilot because you ran out of coffee filters. You might be at work, answering...

Why Am I Not Crying? Processing Shock and Numbness

Why Am I Not Crying? Processing Shock and Numbness

The first thing many people notice after a pet dies isn’t a flood of tears. It’s the quiet. The house sounds different. The routine has a missing step. The leash...

Navigating Workplace Grief: Should You Take Bereavement Leave for a Pet?

Navigating Workplace Grief: Should You Take Bereavement Leave for a Pet?

The morning after a pet dies can feel strangely ordinary from the outside. The alarm still goes off. The calendar is still full. Emails still arrive with the same urgency...

Grieving a Lost Pet (That Hasn't Died): The Pain of Rehoming or Runaways

Grieving a Lost Pet (That Hasn't Died): The Pain of Rehoming or Runaways

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come with a “final moment.” No last breath. No goodbye you can prepare for. No clear place to set your grief down....

Types of Headstones and Grave Markers: Materials, Styles, and How They Age

Types of Headstones and Grave Markers: Materials, Styles, and How They Age

Choosing a headstone can feel strangely difficult. Not because you don’t love your person enough to decide—because you do—but because you’re being asked to translate a whole life into a...

Dealing with Veterinary Malpractice: Grief Mixed with Anger

Dealing with Veterinary Malpractice: Grief Mixed with Anger

There are losses that arrive like a soft wave—sad, heavy, inevitable. And then there are losses that land like a collision: sudden, confusing, and threaded with the kind of anger...

The Burden of the Decision Maker: When One Spouse Decides and the Other Disagrees

The Burden of the Decision Maker: When One Spouse Decides and the Other Disagrees

There’s a particular kind of silence that can settle over a home after a pet euthanasia appointment. It isn’t only the quiet of missing paws on the floor or the...

Grief and Sleep Problems: Night Waking, Dreams, and Practical Ways to Rest More Deeply

Grief and Sleep Problems: Night Waking, Dreams, and Practical Ways to Rest More Deeply

If you’re grieving and sleep has become strange—hard to enter, hard to stay in, full of jolts and vivid dreams—you’re not imagining it. Grief changes your nervous system. It changes...

Ambiguous Loss: Grieving When There’s No Body, Clear Ending, or Traditional Funeral

Ambiguous Loss: Grieving When There’s No Body, Clear Ending, or Traditional Funeral

When someone is gone—but not fully gone in the way our brains expect—grief can feel like it has nowhere to land. There’s no hospital discharge summary, no funeral date that...

Senior to Puppy: The Shock of Raising a Baby After Caring for a Senior

Senior to Puppy: The Shock of Raising a Baby After Caring for a Senior

When you’ve spent months (or years) caring for an elderly dog, your life quietly reshapes itself around gentler things: slower walks, softer food, medication schedules, and the way you learn...

When a Death Is Expected After a Long Illness: Fatigue, Relief, and Complicated Emotions

When a Death Is Expected After a Long Illness: Fatigue, Relief, and Complicated Emotions

When someone you love has been ill for a long time, the idea of their death can hover in the background for months or years. You may have braced yourself...

Exotic Pet Loss: Why Grieving a Reptile or Bird is Valid

Exotic Pet Loss: Why Grieving a Reptile or Bird is Valid

When someone loses a parrot who greeted them every morning for twenty years, or a bearded dragon whose quiet presence carried them through depression, the grief can be surprisingly intense—and...

What to Write in a Sympathy Card: Messages for Friends, Coworkers, and Acquaintances

What to Write in a Sympathy Card: Messages for Friends, Coworkers, and Acquaintances

Staring at a blank sympathy card can feel strangely intimidating. You care about the person who is grieving, you want to say the right thing, and yet every phrase you...

Cremation vs. Burial: A Guide to Aftercare Options

Cremation vs. Burial: A Guide to Aftercare Options

The hardest decisions after a loss often arrive quietly—after the appointment, after the goodbyes, after the first night when the house feels different. For many families, that’s when “aftercare” becomes...

What to Do with Their Belongings: To Donate, Keep, or Throw Away?

What to Do with Their Belongings: To Donate, Keep, or Throw Away?

In the days after a pet dies, grief rarely arrives as one clean emotion. It comes in waves—sadness, numbness, relief if they were suffering, guilt about decisions, and a quiet...