OUR VISION IN THE WORLD OF FUNERAL SERVICE 2025
THIS INFORMATION IS OFFERED TO THE PUBLIC THROUGH: Rutherford Cremation and Funeral Services / 804 Ontario St., Stratford, Ontario N5A 3K1 / [email protected] / www.jarfh.com / 519-271-5062
Now more than ever… heading into the uncertain financial and emotional climate of 2025, I feel there are three essential things in my field of work that must be focused on in the offering of compassionate and respectful service to the public.
1. Making services affordable.
2. Making service personal to the one receiving it whether a funeral is being carried out at the funeral home or not, and
3. Actively educating on dozens of topics of which people are unaware so that they are the ones in control of their decision-making and not being led.
My name is Stuart Lender and since I became manager of Rutherford Cremation & Funeral Services in 2018, I have strived to turn the funeral home into something more. Already, we don’t look like your average funeral home, nor do we want to be. The change was deliberate. A tasteful, intimate space for 60-65 people with larger venue options if needed and costs lower. It has always been my belief that a funeral home should be a source of information on most everything related to preparations, funerals, end-of-life care and estate matters. And while questions are welcome and certainly encouraged, I have found that most folks don’t know what the questions should be: from pre-planning to wills to grief counselling, green options, burial options, scattering of remains, what is needed and what is not needed – a funeral home should give you the answers to these things whether it is asked of them or not.
That said, Rutherford Cremation & Funeral Services has consistently pointed out that the cost of any service carried out, no matter what service is provided, has nothing to do with the depth of honour you hold for the one you love. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that the more money you spend – the greater the honouring. Untrue. I have seen graveside services as emotional and meaningful as any traditional service at church and I have been at private celebrations carried out by family that are as beautiful as any organized in any funeral home. In my humble opinion, it is the wishes of the deceased that should be carried out first and foremost – and if there were no wishes specified, then the family has carte blanche to honour the way they see fit. After all, who knows the deceased better than a spouse, life-long friend, child or family member? Over decades of service, honouring has taken the form of traditional services, prayer groups, celebrations in the spaces of private residences or restaurants and informal “living-room” style setups in the Rutherford funeral home space.
Each one of these events had its own flavour, its own emotional vibration and at the end of the shared stories, the laughter and the tears, people went home with a soul more deeply felt, a personality better known. That is the great privilege of funeral service – aiding in the bringing together of a time and a space for honouring, for healing and for reflection – with or without the funeral home being involved beyond the compassionate care it offers for the one you love.
It’s precisely that focus on service in any way we can be of service, that causes us to take what it is that we do and what it is that we know, out into the public forum as a “teaching” funeral home – to create opportunities for conversation and learning, and to be a source of information for anyone who is unafraid to know more and become better prepared and informed about the many things of which they were never aware.
At the beginning of 2025 I would say that there are still many who feel anxiety concerning just how much control they have when they walk into a funeral home, because understandably, they don't often feel in control. It is important to me as manager of Rutherford Cremation & Funeral Services that the face of the industry change and I would like to think, year by year, I am helping that along – that the substance of what the funeral home does, becomes deeper, in taking on more of an educational role and providing empowerment for people. When something new is available to the public such as the environmental benefits of Aquamation as a means of disposition, you can bet that we are going to offer the option. When there’s something you should know about your TFSA (tax free savings account) that affects your estate, we are going to talk about it.
In a world that is increasingly playing upon people’s fears, displacing them from themselves and community, making them feel helpless or lost in uncertainty – when real and personal tragedy strikes, expected or not – what they need to feel is a safe space opening up for their sadness, their love – and a sense of assurance and understanding, not anxiety, at a time when they need to be grounded.
BE GOOD TO YOURSELVES IN 2025 AND LIVE WELL.
