|
Announcing
2013 Annual Conference
Home Funeral in Community: Reclaiming the Lost Art
October 18-20, 2013
Doubletree Hilton Hotel, Raleigh, NC
Registration and program details coming soon!
|
Welcome to the NHFA
We are a group of home funeral educators, guides and advocates all across the United States who have formed a non-profit alliance for the purpose of educating the consumer about the intrinsic value of a home funeral. We also promote education and community building among home funeral guides, green funeral advocates, and all those who support the rights of families and communities to care for their own dead.
What is a home funeral?
A home funeral is a family or community-centered response to death and after-death care. Families and communities may play a key role in:
- Planning and carrying out after-death rituals or ceremonies (such as laying out the deceased and home visitation of the body)
- Preparing the body for burial or cremation
- Filing of death-related paperwork such as the death certificate
- Transporting the deceased to the place of burial or cremation
- Facilitating the final disposition such as digging the grave in natural burial
- Home funerals may occur within the family home or not. (Some nursing homes, for example, may allow the family to care for the deceased after death.)
- The emphasis is on minimal, non-invasive, and environmentally-friendly care of the body.
- Support and assistance to carry out after-death care may come from home funeral educators or guides, but their goal is to facilitate the maximal involvement of the family and its social network.
Photo Above: Springtime at a natural burial cemetery where wildflowers are encouraged and fertilizers
and pesticides are never used. With home funerals the emphasis is on minimal,non-invasive,
and environmentally-friendly care of the body, and earth.
