I've since used Harmony Funeral Care for my mom's passing, my dad's passing, and my grandmother's passing.

And what was the hardest thing when your mom passed away?

Ah, emotionally, of course. I think emotionally was the most difficult. I had two sides of my brain, right? One was the emotional aspect because you're right, I was super close to my mom. So, the emotional aspect of it was extremely difficult. It's very difficult to function but at the same time the right side of my brain was more of a okay operationally we have to do all this because if you remember it was during covid yes so I had to get help from friends family and stuff like that because we were only allowed 20 people under that that multi-purpose hall at a single given time cuz I had never personally gone through something where I was responsible of really having to arrange everything right but I have somebody who's very very close to me as well. She helped me tremendously during that period. But yeah, that was very challenging because what was what entailed with the whole thing? What what was I supposed to do, right? I had no clue. I had no clue what I was supposed to do. But I had to be arranged, you know, from backdrop to color to Jesus

I had a very close family friend, right? She had gone through a a death herself, right? And she had utilized your funeral services and she told me, you know, they were very good. Just use them. The start of it, I remember you guys came over quite late actually because the whole thing was really quite late. My mom's passing and everything with all the packages, the coffin colors, the backdrops, the styles, the thematics, etc. And that was super helpful because at least I immediately had guidance on what we had to do, what options I had, how much it was going to cost me, of course. And no, there was no point that we felt pressured. I suppose actually I feel like at some points I should be asking you that question because obviously sometimes we are overcome with emotions, right? And I know myself I can be maybe a little bit more brash or a little bit harsher because I'm like hey you know this this this but the answer was always it was always done already and stuff like that.

I thought the services were fantastic. I don't think we ever skip the beat whether it's you know those those red uh red threads or whether we are lacking of say hey you know I last me I think I'm going to get food you know. You were always able to kind of like get everything together for me and that was helpful uh I think that was important for me because my brain couldn't think of anything else at the point but for me, that stood out because that's the last thing I want to think of when I'm handling people who are coming to pay the last respect. I don't want to be thinking whether got peanuts you know oh got chair oh does this look clean or not what. I don't want to think about that right obviously there were more important things and I thought harmony funeral services really helped us out there.

how do you actually cope with grief

I think it's okay to talk about it. I think it's okay to cry if you need to cry. I think it's okay to reminisce if you need to reminisce. I think the grief does fade from grief to acceptance to remembering the person right. I think they're all very different you know. Sometimes you might be angry why did this happen you know. Why was she taken away from me why was he taken away from me and stuff like but after a while you stop thinking about why this happened, but everything else that you've been through before and stuff like that and I appreciate the time I had with my parents. I was a very lucky individual. How to cope with it is to be as good as if not better parent than they were to me to my daughter. It's part of the whole coping process, right?

I know a lot of people find it difficult to speak about your emotions and stuff, but they should. I think acceptance is part of it.

The grieving process itself has five stages, but it's very fluid. It doesn't mean like when you in acceptance and then you can move on to the next stage. We always go back and forth as humans. .