These are the days of arrangements. Bring another person to every appointment and every phone call — a second set of ears is worth more than any expertise right now.
Choose a funeral home — after two or three phone calls Prices for the same simple funeral can differ by thousands of dollars between two funeral homes in the same town. One quick round of calls is the single most protective thing you can do this week. Federal law (the FTC Funeral Rule) gives you real rights here in one line: funeral homes must give you prices over the phone, must hand you an itemized price list in writing when you visit, and must let you buy only what you want — no forced packages. Send the steadiest person you have to make the calls, or sit beside them while they do. You are shopping while heartbroken; that is exactly when a second person matters. Words to borrow: “I'm calling for prices. My mother died and we're planning a simple burial. Can you tell me your basic services fee, and roughly what a simple service and burial would total? I understand you can give me prices by phone.”
Embalming is not legally required in most cases Plainly: no federal law requires embalming, and in most situations — including North Carolina, for typical timelines — state law doesn't either. Refrigeration is a normal alternative that funeral homes offer, and direct cremation and immediate burial never need embalming. A funeral home may require embalming for a public viewing they host, and rules can differ if the body crosses state lines or much time passes. But if anyone tells you embalming is simply "required," ask them to show you the requirement. It is a service you may choose — usually several hundred dollars — not a law of nature.
Order at least 10 certified copies of the death certificate Nearly every institution — each bank, each insurance company, the pension office, the DMV — wants its own certified copy, not a photocopy. Families who order two or three end up waiting weeks to re-order mid-paperwork. The funeral home will ask how many you want; say ten or more. Copies cost a few dollars each and ordering extra now is far easier than ordering later. If in doubt, count the accounts and policies you know about and add five.
Tell the wider circle — and their employer Once the inner circle knows, delegate the rest. Give one cousin the family list, one friend the neighborhood, and let a short group message do honest work: nobody expects individual calls beyond the closest people. If they were working, call their employer within a few days. Ask for HR, and take notes — jobs often come with money the family doesn't know about: final pay, unused vacation payout, and frequently a life insurance policy through work. Words to borrow: “I'm calling because my husband, David Moore, worked in your shipping department. He died on Tuesday. Can you tell me who handles his final paycheck, unused vacation, the family's health insurance, and whether he had life insurance through work? And is there anything with a deadline I should know about?”
Save their voicemail greeting and voice messages — todayTIME-SENSITIVE Phone carriers delete voicemails on their own schedule — sometimes within weeks — and once a greeting is gone, it is gone. Of everything on this list, this is the loss families tell us about most. Do it the simple way, today: call their number from another phone, put it on speaker, and record the greeting with a second device's voice-recorder app. Then open their saved voicemails and record each one the same way. Perfect audio doesn't matter; having it matters. Do this before anyone cancels or changes their phone plan. Later, when you're ready, those recordings can live somewhere safer than one phone.
Look for a will, prepaid funeral plans, and written wishes Before you buy anything, check whether they already decided — or already paid. People prepay funerals and never mention it; wishes get written into wills, filed with lawyers, or tucked in the drawer with the important papers. Look in the obvious places: the file cabinet, the desk, the safe, the lawyer who did their estate papers, the funeral home in their hometown. Ask the relative most likely to know. Ten minutes of looking can save thousands of dollars and, more importantly, gets them the goodbye they wanted.
The obituary: optional, and yours to shape An obituary is not required by anyone. Newspapers charge for them — often hundreds of dollars, sometimes more — while posting online is free. Many families now publish a full remembrance online and, at most, a short paid notice in the paper with the service details. If writing feels impossible right now, that's normal — you're being asked to sum up a whole life in your worst week. Our free obituary writer at /resources/tools/obituary-writer walks you through it gently, question by question, and the result is yours to use anywhere.
If donation is possible, the window is hours — ask nowTIME-SENSITIVE Organ donation is generally only possible in hospital settings, but tissue and cornea donation can sometimes happen after other deaths — and the window is measured in hours, not days. If your person wanted to be a donor (check the driver's license, or you may simply know), tell the hospital staff or funeral home immediately. The hospital or a donation organization will handle everything from there, and donation does not prevent an open-casket viewing. If the window has already passed, let it go without guilt — the wish to give was theirs, and it counted.
Deal with the mail If their home is empty, have someone collect the mail every day or two — a stuffed mailbox announces an empty house, and important papers (bills, checks, insurance letters) will keep arriving for months. If nobody lives nearby, the post office can hold mail temporarily or, if you're handling the estate, forward it to you. The mail is also how you'll discover accounts and bills you didn't know existed, so don't throw anything out unopened for a while.
Tell the children's school If children in the family lost a parent, grandparent, or sibling, call the school within a day or two. Teachers who know can catch what the family can't see — the child who goes quiet, the one who acts out at recess — and most schools have a counselor who has walked kids through this before. Words to borrow: “I'm calling about my daughter, Emma, in third grade. Her grandfather died on Saturday and they were very close. We wanted her teachers to know so they can keep an eye on her. Who's the best person to talk to about support at school?”
Start one folder for everything Get one folder, box, or big envelope, and from today, every paper about the death goes in it: the funeral home contract, receipts, the death certificates when they arrive, every letter from every institution. Don't organize it. Just contain it. In the coming weeks you will be asked for documents constantly, by people who all seem to want them yesterday. "It's in the folder" is the entire filing system a grieving family needs.