Question about making a donation vs. sending flowers for a family member who passed away

[SirDuff]

Good to know. I've made several donations to larger charities, but they were still local (but not small like a school). In most cases, there was an area for me to fill out something for a card that would be sent. Each time, I did get a thank you back from the family noting that they were aware of the donation, so I guess in my case it worked. But good suggesting on letting them know in a sympathy card!

We did get notification from both the more local charities that we named (we didn't request it) and some major national charities that we didn't. In one case, the person making the donation included a personal card (sent to the charity not us - this person knew my mother through work but years before) and the charity forwarded the card to us (in hindsight, I'm not totally sure how they even had our address since the person doing the donation clearly didn't give it to them, since he didn't know it and we hadn't set up anything with this charity - I guess they found the obituary on line and figured it out (this was 1999).

 

[_19disnA]

In this case though, the obituary from the funeral home simply says that memorial contributions can be made to two different places, but it never says "in lieu of flowers".

I consider it being respectful of the families wishes when they mention donations and interpret that as their 'preference' even if they don't specifically mention flowers. Exactly why they choose to do that is their business and the reasons can vary by family.

 

[thanxfornoticin]

Clearly, everyone should do what they feel comfortable with. I'm older now, but with my parents and grandparents, sending flowers seemed like a generational tradition they felt was important. For me, when I go, my preference is to have people not spend the money on flowers (if they were planning to do so), but instead donate those dollars to something worthwhile. My family knows how important the local food bank is to me, so I'd rather they feed families in my memory. I'm sure we each would have our own wishes in that area. I expect that's why 'in lieu of flowers' has become much more common for family wishes in recent years.

 

[clh2]

Honestly though flowers are beautiful, they can actually be a burden to the family. After my MILs funeral we stood around her dining room table looking at all the flowers, trying to figure out what to do with all of them.

I agree 100% with kymom99. My mom recently passed away, and we had only 6 floral arrangements to deal with after the funeral. They were lovely, tall, huge, and in glass vases. There is no easy way to move these in small vehicles.and then…then something needed to be done with them.