Greenwood Funeral Homes and Cremation – Arlington Chapel

The death of a loved one is one of the most difficult experiences you will ever face.
My wife passed away from cancer on the 17^th of this month (April 17^th, 2012). She had been in hospice care, at home, for a couple of months. Based on her rate of decline we knew she would soon pass, so we started calling around to various funeral homes and crematoriums to find out what would be involved in fulfilling her final wishes.
Most of the companies we called immediately dove into a sales pitch once they got us on the phone. We quickly discovered that, even if you are handling virtually all of the services yourself and ONLY need to process the cremation, death is a very expensive business. Several companies actually tried to discourage us from cremating her, as she had requested, pushing for a vastly more expensive funeral. Those that didn’t push for a funeral instead chose to push for gilded urns and bundled memorial packages.
I know people are vulnerable at this time, but my honest opinion is that you should NOT try high pressure upsell tactics to someone who is trying to bury their wife (and in the in-law’s case… daughter).
Then we called Arlington Funeral Home. The first words out of their mouths, when we explained what information we were looking for, were words of condolence. The second was an offer to send someone out to the home to discuss things with us, rather than asking us to come in like everyone else did. Let me restate that, they offered to come to us when nobody else would.
When the representative came out, the very next day I might add, there were no attempts to push us into anything. He listed to us when we told him what my wife’s wishes were and produced a pamphlet, listing the prices of service. He broke everything down, asked us which we wanted, and that was it.
After they took possession of her body we had to go up to the funeral home to identify the body (a legal requirement) and finalize the paperwork. They restated everything that we had agreed upon, didn’t push us on a SINGLE thing, and made the entire experience as easy on us as they possibly could. No upselling, no pushy sales tactics, and simple direct answers to our questions.
They walked me through one of the most difficult experiences in my life, the handling of my wife’s corporeal remains, with care, compassion, and professionalism. And I thank them for that.