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.

POLST Explained: Why It’s a Medical Order, Not Just a Preference

POLST Explained: Why It’s a Medical Order, Not Just a Preference

Families often describe POLST as “the form that tells everyone what we want.” That’s close, but it’s not specific enough to be useful. The reason POLST matters is not that...

Advance Care Planning 101: What It Is and Why It Reduces Family Conflict

Advance Care Planning 101: What It Is and Why It Reduces Family Conflict

Families don’t fight about end-of-life care because they don’t love each other. Most of the time, they fight because everyone is scared, everyone is interpreting the same person’s wishes differently,...

Hospice for Heart Failure and COPD: Planning for Breathlessness and Anxiety

Hospice for Heart Failure and COPD: Planning for Breathlessness and Anxiety

Heart failure and COPD often create a specific kind of fear at the end of life: the fear of not being able to breathe. Families can manage a lot—fatigue, weakness,...

Hospice for Cancer at Home: Common Symptom Concerns and Planning Tips

Hospice for Cancer at Home: Common Symptom Concerns and Planning Tips

When cancer reaches a stage where cure is no longer realistic—or no longer worth the burden—many families choose home hospice because the goal changes. The goal becomes comfort. Not “doing...

Hospice for Dementia: What Changes, What Helps, and What to Expect Over Time

Hospice for Dementia: What Changes, What Helps, and What to Expect Over Time

Families living with dementia often describe the experience as a long goodbye. The person is still here, and yet the familiar parts of them change in slow, uneven ways. Because...

When Someone Refuses Hospice: How Families Respond Without Fighting

When Someone Refuses Hospice: How Families Respond Without Fighting

When a loved one refuses hospice, the refusal often lands like a second diagnosis in the room. You may feel scared, frustrated, and helpless all at once. You may hear...

Hospice and the Hospital: When Medicare Still Covers ER Visits and Admissions

Hospice and the Hospital: When Medicare Still Covers ER Visits and Admissions

If your loved one is on hospice and someone says, “We might need to go to the hospital,” it can feel like the ground shifts. Families often assume hospice means...

Hospice and Chemotherapy/Radiation: When Comfort-Focused Treatment Can Still Happen

Hospice and Chemotherapy/Radiation: When Comfort-Focused Treatment Can Still Happen

Families often arrive at hospice carrying a sentence they do not want to say out loud: “We can’t keep doing this the way we’ve been doing it.” Sometimes that sentence...

Can You Keep Your Current Doctor on Hospice? What “Attending Physician” Means

Can You Keep Your Current Doctor on Hospice? What “Attending Physician” Means

When a family is considering home hospice, one of the first questions is often the most personal: “Can we keep our doctor?” That question is rarely about paperwork. It’s about...

Does Hospice Provide Medical Equipment at Home? Beds, Oxygen, Wheelchairs, Supplies

Does Hospice Provide Medical Equipment at Home? Beds, Oxygen, Wheelchairs, Supplies

When a loved one is on home hospice, the house can start to feel like it’s changing overnight. A walker appears. A bedside commode is mentioned. Someone says the word...

What Medicare Hospice Covers (and What It Doesn’t)

What Medicare Hospice Covers (and What It Doesn’t)

When a family is facing hospice decisions, cost anxiety often sits right beside grief. People want comfort for their loved one, but they also want clarity: What will Medicare actually...

Does Hospice Pay for Medications? What “Related to the Terminal Illness” Means

Does Hospice Pay for Medications? What “Related to the Terminal Illness” Means

When families start hospice, medication questions often become the center of everything. Not because people want to obsess over pills, but because medications are where comfort is won or lost....

Hospice Respite Care: What It Is and When Families Can Use It

Hospice Respite Care: What It Is and When Families Can Use It

Caregiver exhaustion is one of the quiet realities of end-of-life care. Families often tell themselves they should be able to do it all, especially if the person they’re caring for...

Hospice in a Nursing Home: How It Works Alongside Facility Care

Hospice in a Nursing Home: How It Works Alongside Facility Care

When a loved one is living in a nursing home and hospice is mentioned, families often feel two opposing things at once: relief that there may be more support, and...

In-Home Hospice vs Inpatient Hospice: How Families Decide (Without Guessing)

In-Home Hospice vs Inpatient Hospice: How Families Decide (Without Guessing)

When a family asks whether hospice should happen at home or in an inpatient setting, they are rarely choosing between “good” and “bad.” They are choosing between two kinds of...

How Long Can Someone Stay on Hospice? What Recertification Means

How Long Can Someone Stay on Hospice? What Recertification Means

One of the most common questions families ask—sometimes with relief, sometimes with suspicion—is simple: “How long can someone stay on hospice?” The question usually comes from a very human place....