What Happens When A  Death Occurs?

When one contacts the funeral home and tell us that a death has occurred, we will ask you some immediate questions. What is the name of the person who died? Where is the deceased? Who are you and what is your connection to the deceased? Where are you? What is your telephone contact number(s)? What are any immediate questions that you may have?

You may even want to tell us any information that you may feel is important. Maybe you are waiting for other family members to arrive to see your loved one before they are removed from their place of death or there are legal authorities involved and you need us to speak to them. We will assist you and we will try to help you make sense of all that is happening. We also can assist you if the death has occurred outside of the immediate area. We are licensed for the entire State of New York and have many funeral service colleagues from across the country that will assist us.

We will tell you that we will need to get together to make "Arrangements". We will set a time that is convenient for you and your family to meet with us. In some instances, just coming up with a place and time to meet can take more than one telephone call. We feel that a meeting at the funeral home may be the best place to meet in order for you to see the facilities and to view the merchandise "in person". However, if you (or other members of your family) are not comfortable coming to us, we will come to you.

When we meet, we will ask you what type of services you had in mind. We will give you a copy of our Keegan-Osbelt-Knight Funeral Home’s General Price List. Every service and item that we offer with its cost will be contained in this list. We will also offer you a copy of our Casket Price List and Outer Interment Receptacle Price List for your review.

We will assist you with all types of memorialization options. There are a myriad of options to choose from: traditional earth burial in a cemetery or entombment in a mausoleum. Cremation (with or without services), cremation with earth burial or niche entombment to follow, anatomical body donation to Medical Science, immediate burial or immediate cremation and even a "Green" burial option. We can even assist you in planning a "Celebration of Life" as opposed to a funeral. Any option that you can think of, we can assist you. Some families want traditional calling hours (also called visitation) with a funeral Mass to follow the next day with graveside services after the Mass. Still others prefer to have all of the services in one day or no services at all. Public vs. private—we can assist you.