Pre-planning is a mitzvah.

The conversation worth having before it has to be had.

Most of the families we serve have planned ahead, even when they think they haven't. A note about the music. A passing mention of the cemetery. A spoken preference for plain pine. A bag of soil from Eretz Israel stored in the closet, set aside thirty years ago. Pre-planning is the gathering of these scraps into a record, and the addition of the parts no one ever thought to mention.

We sit with families at the kitchen table or in the chapel parlor — your choice — and walk through what the day might look like. The chevra kadisha. The choice of rabbi. The cemetery plot. The aron. The shomrim. The shiva and who will host it. The stone, eleven months on, and what the inscription will say.

There is no charge for the conversation. There is no obligation to choose Sanctuary at the end of it. There is, in our experience, a quiet relief on the part of the person who has done the choosing — and on the part of the children, when the time comes.