When someone passes

1 · The first hours

There is less to do right now than it feels like. Only a few things are truly today’s.

• Don’t carry it alone. Call one person and ask them to come be with you.
• If they passed at home, unexpected, with no hospice or doctor involved — call 911. This is normal and expected, and the dispatcher will guide you.
• If they were on hospice — call the hospice number. The nurse comes to you and handles what’s official.
• If they passed at a hospital or care facility — the staff will walk you through the next step. You don’t need to know it in advance.
• Call a funeral home when you’re ready. They will come at any hour, and coming to get them is part of what they do. If you don’t have one yet, it’s all right to say so — you can choose arrangements later.
• Nothing else is today’s. Not the service, not the paperwork, not the phone calls. Those keep.

If you remember one thing: you don’t have to decide anything important on the hardest day.

2 · The first two weeks · a checklist

Go slowly. Most of this waits patiently, and none of it has to be done by you alone — these are good tasks to hand to people who ask how they can help.

Papers

• Ask the funeral home for certified copies of the death certificate — ten is a safe number. Banks, insurers, and agencies each want their own, and ordering more later is slower.
• Find the important papers when you can: a will, insurance policies, deeds, their Social Security card. A shoebox’s worth is enough to start.

Calls and letterseach one can be someone else’s task

• Social Security — 1-800-772-1213. The funeral home often reports the death, but call to confirm and to ask about survivor benefits.
• Their employer, if they were working — ask about final pay, life insurance through work, and retirement accounts.
• Life insurance companies — claims usually need a certified death certificate and a simple form.
• Banks and card companies — the account may be frozen or transferred depending on how it was held. Bring a death certificate.
• If they served — the VA (1-800-827-1000) has burial benefits, a flag, and sometimes a headstone or marker. The funeral home can help request these.
• Their landlord or mortgage company, when it applies.
• The post office — forward their mail to whoever is handling things. Watch the mail; it quietly tells you what you’ve missed.
• Pause what renews — phone, utilities in an empty home, subscriptions, memberships. The mail and their bank statement will show you most of them.

Gentle warnings

• Scammers read obituaries. Be slow with anyone who calls claiming a debt, and never pay a “fee” to release an inheritance or a benefit.
• Don’t pay anything twice and don’t be rushed into paying anything at all. Grief and a deadline should not share a sentence.

3 · Words for the hard calls

No one teaches us how to say it. Short and plain is kindest — to them and to you.

Telling close family

“I have hard news. Mom passed away this morning. She wasn’t alone. I’m here, take your time.”

Say it in the first sentence. The gentlest thing is not making them wait for it.

Telling their employer

“I’m calling about my father, Robert Ellis. He passed away on Tuesday. Could you connect me with whoever handles final pay and benefits?”

The voicemail version

“This is Sarah, Eleanor’s daughter. I have some family news — please call me back when you can.”

Don’t leave the news itself on a recording if you can help it.

When people ask what they can do

Give them something real. People mean it, and a task is a mercy in both directions.

“Actually, yes — could you call the post office about her mail?”

“Could you bring coffee Thursday morning? That’s when it’s hardest.”

When you don’t know what to say back

“Thank you for loving her too” answers almost everything.

4 · Planning the service · one page

A service is a hundred small answers. Here they are in one place — fill it in as the answers come.

People

• Officiant or leader:
• Speaking or reading:
• Pallbearers, if any:
• Music — played or performed:

Choices

• Flowers, or donations to:
• Photographs for the room — who is gathering them:
• Printed program — who is making it:
• Livestream for the ones far away — link:
• Food after, and who’s bringing what:

Worth knowing — the FTC’s Funeral Rule means a funeral home must give you prices over the phone, show you an itemized price list in person, and let you choose only what you want. You may decline packages. Any funeral home that makes that hard is telling you something.

5 · Gathering what matters

In the first weeks, everyone is in one place — and everyone has pieces of them the others have never seen.

• Ask now, while people are together. The photographs in a cousin’s phone, the voicemail a grandson saved, the story only the neighbor knows — they scatter again when everyone flies home.
• Ask for the ordinary ones. The blurry kitchen photo says more than the posed one. Saturday mornings, their chair, their handwriting.
• One place, not five group texts. Choose a single spot for all of it — a shared album, a shoebox on the table at the reception, or a memorial page anyone can add to — so nothing gets lost in someone’s camera roll.

A tribute page at imissyoumemorial.com holds all of it in one place — photographs, stories, and voices from everyone who loved them, free, forever. Only if it helps.