A woman who is navigating loss clutches a picture of her loved one as she stares out her bedroom window.

Navigating Loss: A Checklist for Managing Affairs After Losing Someone You Love

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A woman who is navigating loss clutches a picture of her loved one as she stares out her bedroom window.

When navigating loss, practical tasks may seem daunting, but each step brings a sense of closure.

Losing someone you love is one of the hardest experiences you’ll face. While grief demands much of your energy and attention, there are practical matters that must be addressed. These tasks, though difficult, are necessary and can help provide a sense of closure. To make things more manageable, we’ve created a simple checklist for navigating loss and managing affairs with timelines for you to follow.

Immediate Steps

  • Legal Pronouncement of Death: If your loved one passed away in a hospital or nursing home, staff will handle this automatically. If the death occurred at home, call 911 so the person can be transported for an official pronouncement.
  • Notify Family and Friends: Decide on the method that feels best for you. Whether it’s making individual phone calls, sending an email, or asking someone to spread the word, there’s no wrong approach.
  • Contact a Funeral Home: If arrangements were preplanned, reach out to your loved one’s chosen funeral home. Otherwise, select a funeral home to begin planning next steps.

In the First Few Days

Plan the Funeral or Memorial Service: Coordinate with the funeral home, your loved one’s religious organization, or, if applicable, the Veterans’ Administration to finalize the service.

  • Ask for Support: Identify family or friends to assist with tasks such as writing the obituary, organizing pallbearers, or sending thank-you notes.
  • Handle Immediate Concerns: Arrange care for pets, secure valuables in the home, and remove perishable food. Notify the post office of the person’s passing to forward mail.

Within Two Weeks

  • Obtain Death Certificates: Request about ten copies of the death certificate from the funeral home or county records office. Many organizations will require them.
    Locate the Will: Identify the executor and take a copy of the will to your local probate court to start the process of settling the estate.
  • Notify Necessary Organizations: Contact the Social Security Administration, life insurance companies, financial institutions, and other key entities. Close or memorialize email and social media accounts.
  • Manage Bills and Accounts: Make a list of ongoing bills and subscriptions. Cancel any services no longer needed, such as utilities or streaming subscriptions.
  • Consult Professionals: Meet with an attorney to address estate settlement and a CPA to file the final tax return.

We know that navigating these tasks while grieving is a heavy burden. If your loved one’s passing leaves behind an elderly spouse in need of assistance, Harmony Home Health & Hospice is here to help. Contact us online or give us a call at 1-877-I-NEED-CARE (1-877-463-3322) for support.

A brother and sister explore elder mediation to help resolve their conflicts over the care of their elderly parents.

Resolving Family Disputes Over Senior Care With Elder Mediation

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A brother and sister explore elder mediation to help resolve their conflicts over the care of their elderly parents.

Sibling relationships can thrive when elder mediation is used to address caregiving disagreements.

When it comes to working together to make sure the care needs of your older parents are met, even the closest brothers and sisters may find themselves in conflict. Stress levels and emotions are, naturally, running high. Couple that with your past family history and dynamics, which tend to resurface during challenging times, and it’s easy to see how problematic this phase in life can be for each of you.

The most widespread areas of controversy among siblings include financial decisions, different opinions on medical treatments or living arrangements, and an unfair balance of tasks pertaining to caregiving, just to mention a few.

In some cases, regardless of how hard you try, you and your brothers and sisters may be unable to come to an understanding on precisely how to best care for your aging parents. An impasse similar to this is quite common, often resulting from complex family dynamics and unresolved disagreements. However, there’s a solution many families are not aware of that can be extremely beneficial: enlisting the help of elder mediation.

What Is Elder Mediation?

A professional skilled in resolving conflicts, an elder mediator brings an independent, third-party voice to family meetings. They can help defuse elevated emotions and outbursts and guide the discussion in a way that leads to an outcome that all parties can accept.

Elder mediator Susanne Terry explains, “Most of the time siblings want what’s best for the parents. They just look at it in a different way. Our goal is to help them figure out what their common interests are, so they can work together to find solutions.”

Unlike family therapy, which helps families work through struggles little by little over a long period of time, elder mediation is a targeted, compacted strategy that commonly results in an agreeable end result in only a couple of sessions.

Elder mediators give siblings the opportunity to both offer input and listen respectfully to one another. The objective is not only to try to find the very best outcome for the elderly parents, but to help the rest of the family retain healthy relationships with one another in the process.

When exploring elder mediation solutions, there are several questions you should ask:

  • Are you a member of the Academy of Professional Family Mediators (APFM) or other professional associations?
  • What is your education, training, and background?
  • What amount of experience do you have in our particular situation?
  • What are your fees?

To locate an elder mediator in your area, visit APFM’s mediator directory. Once you and your siblings make a decision on the best path forward in caring for your parents, give Harmony Home Health and Hospice, the leading home health care company in Salt Lake City, Ogden, Albuquerque, and throughout Central New Mexico and Northern Utah a call. We will be happy to discuss how we can help ensure all their care needs are met. You can reach us any time at 1-877-I-NEED-CARE (1-877-463-3322).

Woman wearing a Santa hat sitting in Yoga position.

Simplify the Season: Managing Caring for Older Loved Ones During the Holidays

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Woman wearing a Santa hat sitting in Yoga position.

Make caring for older loved ones during the holidays more enjoyable and less stressful with these tips.

The holidays are an ideal time to spend time with friends and family members, but it’s rarely considered a relaxing time of year. The hustle and bustle of the holiday season, from shopping to social gatherings to family gatherings, can be incredibly stressful, and when you are caring for older loved ones, your own tasks can fall by the wayside.

Wondering how you’ll get everything on your to-do list done in time for the holidays? Try the following recommendations from our expert caregivers in Provo and the nearby areas to help you stay on task.

  • Skip the shopping mall & shop virtual. Going out to a crowded mall can be a challenge this time of year, especially when the person you are caring for is challenged by mobility or health issues that make leaving home difficult. Online shopping can be done from pretty much anywhere, in the doctor’s office, before going to bed while watching TV, etc., and is quite a bit less stressful than struggling through the large holiday crowds.
  • Find support. Too many gifts to wrap? Don’t know how you’ll write out all of your holiday cards? Find a family member or friend who can help wrap presents. Reserve an afternoon to visit, sip hot chocolate, and write out all of your cards together with your older family member helping in whatever way they can.
  • Be discerning about “made from scratch.” Many people feel the need to go overboard on meals during the holiday season, but not everything on your table has to be homemade. Choose one or two selections for your holiday menu that you love to make from scratch, and incorporate some microwavable or ready-made dishes to round out the table and save you time.

As the leading provider of senior care in Provo and the surrounding areas, we are here to make each day during the holiday season – and beyond – brighter and happier for those we serve, while allowing family caregivers to take necessary time away from their care tasks.

Caring for older loved ones during the holidays can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to stress you out. With Harmony Home Health & Hospice, you are never alone in your role as a caregiver. Contact us online to request a free in-home consultation to learn more about the many ways we can help you and an older adult you love. From all of us at Harmony Home Health & Hospice, we wish you and your family the happiest of holidays and all the best in the coming year!

Learn How Family Therapy Can Help Family Caregivers

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Family therapy session.

Family therapy can help ease the process of caregiving for family caregivers.

Although everyone loves to reach significant milestones in their life, even if those milestones aren’t negative, they can cause stress. Losing a job. Starting a new job. Getting married. Having children. And one that we here at Harmony Home Health & Hospice care deeply about: the mental and physical impact on family caregivers of aging parents. 

Family caregivers can experience a variety of conflicting emotions, which can be magnified when attempting to share responsibilities with siblings or other family members. Past resentments and hurts can resurface, the decision-making process can bring on disagreements, and there’s often a level of enhanced stress in facing what feels like a role reversal with a parent who once cared for us.

For these and a number of other reasons, family therapy is an ideal addition to a family caregiver’s toolbox to ensure their own mental wellbeing along with the best possible care for aging parents. Here are a few of the many benefits of family therapy as parents grow older:

  1. Family therapy provides support through grief. Grief can arise in many forms, and quite often starts in the early stages of providing care, as family members work through today’s changes while facing those to come. When an elderly parent is identified as having dementia, the decline in cognitive ability results in an additional level of grief. A family counselor can help members of the family to manage their grief together.
  2. Family therapy offers care for caregivers. Becoming a family caregiver can be overwhelming on its own, but add in other common responsibilities, like managing a home, caring for children, and maintaining employment, and you’ve got a recipe for stress. Family therapy helps care providers sort through difficult emotions and find solutions.
  3. Family therapy helps the family as a whole. A family counselor’s goal is to achieve what is best for the whole family and its cohesiveness, through challenges surrounding issues like inheritance and other financial considerations, medical decisions, and family dynamics. 

If geographic restraints or other concerns make in-person therapy sessions for your family impossible, video chat sessions can be just as effective. However, participation needs to be a main priority for each family member involved, making therapy appointments a consistent, routine commitment.

If you could use the help of a trusted home care provider to offer in-home care and hospice care in Albuquerque, NM or the nearby areas that allows you to participate in family therapy, contact Harmony Home Health & Hospice online or at 1-877-I-NEED-CARE. With both a professional family counselor and our aging care experts on your side, your family can overcome any obstacles and get back to enjoying quality time together.