I was called at 6:40 AM. It’s been several months that my mother had been in and out of the hospital in Toronto, and I have my own kids, my own job, and live 4.5 hours away in Montreal. Even though the doctor said “stable” then “you should come,” I wasn’t able to get in the car until my husband arrived home from his night shift.
What Long-Distance Families Should Know
She died before I could get there. I’m writing this partly so that if you’re in the same situation – physically away from your parent, the phone in your hands, no idea what to do next – you know that “not being there” doesn’t mean you’re being a failure at any of that.
The hospital provided me with a handful of numbers and I began to call around for direct cremation Toronto services, primarily because I didn’t know what else to call it. I figured we would have to get on the plane right away to sign all the paperwork. I had so many mistaken assumptions that morning.
I ended up using this provider and they took me through everything over the phone, from being brought to their facility to signing all the paperwork, the cremation itself, everything. I had to sign a bunch of papers from my kitchen table in Montreal, electronically. It was weird, of course, because it shouldn’t be that easy, everything went so hard this week.
What I found the most interesting is how the whole thing would have been done if it had been my mother-in-law here instead of Montreal. A few weeks later, out of morbid curiosity, I asked what the direct cremation in Montreal entails, both to see what my husband would be going through someday and to make sure I didn’t find the two cities so very different in how it works. They weren’t. Same basic shape: a call, a transfer, paperwork done for you, ashes delivered-don’t have to go get them.
I did not fly to Toronto this week. A month later, I flew for our own little event, on our own schedule with the people who were able to make it. The most helpful part of the entire process was the lack of a time between the cremation and the proper farewells. Nobody was rushing a service on availability of flights while still in shock.
Also Read: Tollefson Funeral Home Location Services and Working Hours
If you are reading this at 6am with a phone in your hand, and a City of literature between you and your parent, you don’t need to solve everything today. The answer is that you primarily need to make one call.
