Welcome to another edition of the McKenzie Journal. Today we're going to be talking about the increasing benefits and use of Online Memorials. An online memorial is a webpage to honour a deceased and allow for family and friends to interact with one another to tell stories, share photos, and come together to remember their loved one.
At our funeral home in West Vancouver, we're seeing an increasing demand and request from families for their use. Many families will want to have an online memorial page for the following reasons:
Creates a Lasting Legacy for an Individual:
Online Memorials create a lasting memory of your loved one and can stay online for as long as you wish. Many times growing up as a child we may have wondered what our grandparents or great grandparents would have looked like or what they loved. In our grandparents generation they didn't have the luxury of creating online memorials. We, as children or adults, would have to find old photo books or heirlooms to have some connection. Now though, if we look ahead into the future towards 20-60 years from now, our children and grand children can simply go online to find a memorial page to see their relatives photos, obituary, and their celebration of life information with the click of a button. My establishing an online memorial page, we're creating a digital legacy for our families.
Provides Service Details:
Many of our families that we service love the fact that the celebration of life details can be placed on the online page as it is an easy way for family and friends to see the location and time of the event. Likewise, on our online pages through mckenziefuneralservices.com, our pages allow for guests to receive directions to their phone to the event location if they're coming from out of town.
Allows Family & Friends to Share Memories, Videos and Photos:
Our online pages make it extremely easy for friends and family to upload priceless memories and stories of the deceased. Those who knew the deceased can upload photos or videos directly from their smartphone of desktop directly to the page. Likewise, online memorials allow for friends and family of the deceased to write public and private messages of condolences directly to the family. In turn, many of these message boards can be a place where heartfelt stories of the deceased can be shared as well.
Obituary Length: It's no secret that printing costs with newspapers have increased over the years. That's why we encourage families who wish to place an obituary in the newspaper but are concerned about costs that they can upload or write any length of obituary and upload to the memorial page on our website at no cost. Furthermore, we ask that if they're placing an obituary in the paper that they may wish to add a line at the bottom of the obituary to direct people to the url of the online memorial page.
Sharing of the Page:
Some families now a days may not even put an obituary in the paper. They will simply use an online memorial page provided by our funeral home and can share the notice and page directly through their email or social media sites. It's quick and easy.
Donations and Flower Options:
Many online memorial pages are set up to allow guests to make donations to a charity of the families choice or order flowers to the service. All flowers are ordered directly through a local florist in our area. We even now allow the option of guests to plant a tree in remembrance of their loved one.
Online memorials are not for everybody however. There are security and privacy risks that to deter people from publishing online memorial pages. If you have any questions comments, or would like to know more about online memorials, feel free to comment on our blog or reach out to one of our staff.
