By Michelle O’Hara It’s hard to think about your own death and even harder to talk about it. In my experience, though, once the conversation begins it brings great satisfaction and sometimes even great joy. As a funeral planning educator at the Sullivan Funeral Home in Utica I advise people in all elements of pre-planning. […]

The Detroit Free Press recently ran two stories with useful information about how to plan and manage costs connected to your funeral. This article reports that 59 percent of families now choose cremation over burial, a trend we see here at Sullivan & Son. The articles quotes our co-owner, Michael Lope, reporting that, even when […]

Our blog editor visited Italy recently and shared these photos with us. The hearse is a Mercedes Benz and, while we admire its style, we’re going to stick with our American-made Cadillacs! She also visited an Etruscan museum with extensive funerary artifacts, like this crematory urn. These were elaborately decorated, with an often-lifelike portrait of […]

When a loved one dies we want to keep their memory with us. Mourning jewelry, containing ashes from cremation, lets us keep them physically close. The cremains jewelry available through William Sullivan & Son Funeral Directors is a contemporary version of a centuries-old practice. People began incorporating clippings of their loved ones’ hair as early […]

Perhaps you’re a sailor or you like to fish. Maybe you feel most at home watching waves lap on the shore. In any case, you definitely may have your ashes scattered over water — burial at sea– with certain limitations. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets the terms for burial in the ocean. They say […]