Online Grief Support

With our online grief support you're assured of our commitment to helping you through this difficult time. It doesn't matter what time of day, or what day of the week you need support, we're here for you. You can access online counseling services, join in group grief support, or watch our interactive videos, anytime: 24/7. No matter how you feel at this moment, you have our commitment - you're never alone.

See more here: http://www.bryanbraker.com/grief-and-healing/

Why Pre-Plan?

It’s All About Taking Control

Given time to consider it, you’ll quickly realize that pre-planning is all about ensuring that your wishes are known, so they can be acted upon when the time comes. Making the commitment to planning ahead:

• Is easy. There’s no health questionnaire or physical exam required. Absolutely everyone can make a pre-plan, and there is no waiting for return documents. The plan is completed, and put on file in our office.
• Lets your family clearly know your wishes.
• Relieves your family members of making very personal decisions on your behalf at the time of need.
• Can protect your family from the ravages of inflation. Your expenses can be covered when you need them to be, through a pre-payment plan.
• Reduces the stress on your family at the time of death.

Does Pre-planning Require Pre-payment?

The simple answer is just two letters: No. You can set plan to paper by simply recording your wishes, and leave it for your family to pay for your desired services at the time of your passing.

Or, you can protect you and your family from inflation, by pre-funding your plan. This ensures your expenses will be covered when you need them to be.

When you choose to pre-fund your final arrangements, your money is put in a state-approved trust account or top-rated insurance company until required. After your pre-plan is paid for in full, our price is guaranteed. You will never have to pay more for the services you have already paid for.

Another point we’d like to stress: When you pre-plan with Bryan Braker Funeral Home, your plan will go where you go. No matter where you reside at the time of your passing, no matter what funeral home you choose to work with, your plan will be transferable to any funeral home in the United States.

Why Pre-Plan with Bryan Braker Funeral Home?

By pre-planning with us, you’re assured that your final wishes are known. This relieves your family of the burden of making difficult decisions, under emotional duress. Through pre-funding your plan, expenses will be covered when you need them to be. That's guaranteed.

Our plans offer a variety of payment options to fit your needs. Choose the payment option that's right for you.

Ready to get started?

Request a personal appointment with a Bryan Braker Funeral Home pre-planning advisor. Please contact us by clicking on the link below.

Contact Us for an Appointment

Record your personal information to be kept on file at Bryan Braker Funeral Home. For assistance in completing this online planning process, please contact us by calling (707) 425-4697.

Begin Online Process

Beautiful Footprints Bracelet

This bangle bracelet offers a hopeful message on one side and a contemporary image of footprints on the other. You can send this gift as a message of support and encouragement to express sympathy or for any occasion.

Message:  "Follow the footprints of the Lord they will lead you through troubled times"

• Shipped as seen in an attractive gift box. 

• Your gift message will be created in the form of a gold embossed card attached to your gift

http://www.bryanbraker.com/store/bracelets/footprints-bracelet

Granite Monuments/Headstones

When many people think of a permanent remembrance for their loved one, their first image is often of a traditional granite monument or headstone. And there is good reason for this. Granite monuments have been a traditional choice to mark a life since colonial times. Granite is a time-defying material, it can last for hundreds of year, and it allows for remembrances in all different shapes and sizes, from two-dimensional headstones, to fully realized three-dimensional upright monuments that truly capture a life.

Because of the great many choices families have in size and shape in granite, they can most often find something that meets their needs for permanence, solace, celebration of memories, and private reflection.

And new technologies are giving families new ways to personalize their headstones or monuments. For example, even on the simplest headstone, you can place a color permanent picture or pictures of your loved one. You can write poems, or summaries of a person’s life, all of which can be captured in granite permanently. And with upright monuments you have an almost unlimited flexibility to design or choose a monument that truly reflects a unique life. A ballerina, an angel, an angler, a golfer, and much more, all can be captured with today’s new design capabilities. And for an especially elegant look, you can put a semi-precious bronze memorial on a granite base. The choices you have are often limited only by your personal vision and taste.

Because of these new creative choices, many families are finding that coming together to design or write the words for a highly personal monument becomes a fulfilling and important part of moving from grieving to remembrance.

And these more personal ways of remembering are increasingly appealing to all families, whether they choose burial or cremation. Families are realizing that having a permanent place to remember a loved one has tremendous value, not only for them and for today, but also for their children and grandchildren.

Choosing and personalizing a headstone or monument can be as simple or as involved as you wish. Your cemetery professional can help show you your choices, and can ensure that you are free to concentrate on writing the poems, stories or providing the images you want on the headstone or monument. They will also be able to give you professional guidance on any special requirements that they may have regarding the size and shape of monuments and memorials. (Please be aware that most cemeteries do have certain restrictions.  For example, some cemeteries only accept flat headstones; others have selected sections in which only certain types of monuments or headstones can be placed.)

Funerals as Unique as Your Life

Life is full of opportunities to show someone we love them. One such opportunity is the funeral or memorial service. Such a loving event celebrates the choices they made, the relationship you shared, and honors the memory of your loved one.

http://www.bryanbraker.com/what-we-do/

When A Death Occurs While Under Supervised Care

When a death occurs in a care facility, such as a hospital or nursing home, the professional staff will notify you and the necessary authorities. If the name of the funeral home has been left with them, the institution will notify the funeral home at the time of the death. The funeral director will contact you immediately following their notification to help you proceed. (However, we suggest you contact the funeral home immediately, so you've got the reassurance you need that all is taken care of properly.)

If a loved one was in the care of a hospice program, a hospice representative will give family members instructions and procedures to follow. The coroner/medical examiner will be notified by hospice. Following their release the hospice will contact the funeral home. It is always a good idea for the family to contact us immediately so that we will be aware of the pending call from hospice.

What To Expect When You Arrive At The Funeral Home

One of the first things the funeral arranger will do is to provide you with our general price list. He or she will then guide you through the entire arrangement process, explaining how you can create a memorable personal celebration of your loved one's life. This is not a one-way conversation; we want to hear your ideas and desires, and use them as the foundation for the arrangement process.

This process may include:

• Preparing and filing the official death certificate
• Scheduling the location, date and time of services or events
• Selecting a casket, urn or other items
• Preparing an obituary notice
• Scheduling vehicles
• Selecting pallbearers

You may also sign necessary authorizations or make arrangements to have them signed by the appropriate family members.

We’d like you to bring any photos, a favorite song, or memorabilia so that you and your funeral arranger can better discuss how you would like your loved one to be remembered. Having these things, and knowing their favorite song or favorite gathering place – even their favorite activity – will help us create a truly fitting memorial service.

Our funeral arrangers will assist you in planning a loving tribute that captures the spirit of the person whose life you wish to honor. To learn more about personalizing the service, please read the Honoring Life section of this Web site. The funeral arranger will discuss personalization with you during your arrangement conference.

The following checklist will help you remember what information about the decedent and items will be needed when meeting with a funeral arranger.

• Full legal name
• Home address
• Social Security number
• Date of birth
• Place of birth
• Father's name
• Mother's maiden name
• Veteran's discharge papers (DD-214)
• Recent Photograph
• Highest education
• Occupation
• Place of burial (if applicable)
• Clothing
• Clergy name and phone number
• Survivors (name and relationship)
• Insurance policies (if applicable)

Dear Annie: We Recently Buried My Mother....

Dear Annie: We recently buried my mother and held a service in celebration of her life. There was a visitation one hour prior to the service. I cannot count the number of people who came through the line and said, “I bet you don’t know who I am” or “I know you remember me” and then stood there grinning while they waited to see whether I could guess their name. Annie, my sister and I live out of state and hadn't seen these people in more than 20 years. When I couldn't recall their names, they acted hurt.

Please, folks, at a memorial service, just put out your hand, introduce yourself and say how you knew the deceased. You are precious to come and pay tribute to anyone who has passed away, but do make it easy on a family that is grieving. This is a stressful time, and those who tried to make us play guessing games only made it harder.

Also, if you have a story you want to share, please remember that the time for the visitation is limited. Instead, consider calling a week or so after the service. I’m lonely now and would love to hear your remembrance. — R.

Dear R.: Thank you for reminding people that a forthright and simple approach is best. People often become awkward and uncomfortable when confronted with those in mourning and sometimes blurt out insensitive things.

Link:  http://www.dailyrepublic.com/features/state-national-lifestylecolumnists/fluffy-gets-more-attention-from-my-husband-than-i-do/

Fairmont Memorial Park

Mausoleum crypts and niches are available for families choosing a burial or cremation with inturnment. Mausoleum entombment is considered to be the finest type of burial known to man. A mausoleum’s solid construction signifies durability, devotion and honor.

The Riderless Horse In American Presidents Funerals

While having roots in antiquity, the custom of a riderless horse participating in a funeral procession has changed dramatically since the time of an ancient legend of mourners leading a horse to a burial site, where it was slaughtered and eaten as part of a ritual. Horses were occasionally sacrificed so that their souls could accompany their masters into an afterlife, were buried in tombs from time to time for the same purpose, and were dispatched on similar journeys to another world well into the 14th century.

In North America, early Native Americans had great reverence for horses, and while the founders of the United States of America may not have shared that reverence initially, they nonetheless respected the animal's significant roles in transportation, agriculture, sport and the military. At the end of the 18th century in the United States, with the death of America's first president, a new role emerged: the riderless horse representing the mount of a fallen leader.

A former officer in the American Revolutionary War, Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee eulogized George Washington in December 1799 as being "...first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen..." Twelve days after Washington's death at Mt. Vernon, a riderless horse took part in an elaborate, simulated funeral ceremony conducted in Philadelphia, the then-capital of the United States, with an empty casket symbolizing the late president. The event was described in The Pennsylvania Gazette:

Immediately preceding the clergy in the funeral procession, two marines wearing black scarves escorted the horse, who carried the general's "saddle, holsters, and pistols" and boots reversed in the stirrups. The riderless horse was "trimmed with black - the head festooned with elegant black and white feathers - the American Eagle displayed in a rose upon the breast, and in a feather upon the head."

The empty boots facing backward in the stirrups had two levels of meaning. First, their being empty indicated the individual would ride no more. Secondly, they suggested the deceased was taking one last look back at his family and the troops he commanded. Both of these meanings carry forward to today's tradition of boots reversed in the stirrups.

In 1850 the funeral of President Zachary Taylor, a former Army general celebrated as "Old Rough and Ready," took a more personal turn, so to speak. Taylor's own Army horse, Old Whitey, was walked in the funeral procession while bearing the military saddle worn in combat during the Mexican-American War, when Old Rough and Ready sat astride him as "shots buzzed around his head." As in the Philadelphia ceremony commemorating George Washington, the general's boots were turned backward in the stirrups.

A light gray horse, Old Whitey was familiar to many who witnessed the funeral cortege that day in 1850. He had become a popular tourist attraction while grazing on the front lawn of the White House during his master's sixteen-month presidency, which ended abruptly when Taylor was struck down by an alleged gastrointestinal complication that reportedly stemmed from ingesting cold milk and cherries on an extremely hot day.

Perhaps because the 1865 assassination of Abraham Lincoln was immediately recognized as a profound tragedy in American history, Lincoln's funeral was orchestrated on a grand scale befitting the people's adulation. A funeral train carrying his casket traveled nearly 1,700 miles through 180 cities and towns in seven states, stopping occasionally for public viewings and tributes, as it progressed toward its final destination, Springfield, Illinois, where a young Abe had grown to manhood.

This marks the first time we have photographs of the riderless horse participating in the funeral of an American president. Of the many photos of Lincoln's horse Old Bob, one of the most memorable shows him draped in a black mourning blanket bordered in white, trimmed with alternating black and white tassels, and a black hood topped by an elaborate head-dressing as he stands in front of a building with windows draped and adorned in a similar manner.

Ridden by Lincoln from town to town while the self-educated lawyer campaigned for office, Old Bob was brought out of retirement in a pasture for his master's final rites. He was led in the funeral procession by the Reverend Henry Brown, an African-American minister who performed occasional handyman tasks for the Lincolns, as they followed the hearse to Lincoln's resting place.

Curiously, the tradition of the riderless horse in funerals of American presidents was not observed for the next eighty years. It was not until 1945, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died unexpectedly while in his fourth term as president, that the horse appears once more. As it turned out, the horse seems to have been almost an afterthought in the plans for FDR's funeral.

Roosevelt's death stunned Americans to the core, and inasmuch as U.S. government officials were focused on the transition to their new leader in a world at war, it is understandable that the participation of a riderless horse in FDR's funeral procession may not have received the attention it had in earlier days. This is how the New York Herald Tribune described the matter:

"Directly in back of the caisson (bearing FDR's flag-draped casket), a Negro soldier led a riderless horse." The horse was "draped in black, its head covered in a dark cowl, and a saber bouncing gently off the horse's belly." The funeral procession was in Hyde Park, New York, where the late president was buried in a garden on the Roosevelt estate. We will assume the saber was attached to a saddle and bounced gently off the horse's side.

The year 1963 marked another traumatic time for Americans, particularly the family of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 23rd. The riderless horse who took part in JFK's funeral procession would become the most renowned of them all: Black Jack, who would represent the mount of a fallen leader in the processions for Kennedy, Presidents Herbert Hoover (1964) and Lyndon B. Johnson (1973), as well as General Douglas MacArthur (1964), among other prominent Americans.

The protocol for Black Jack in Kennedy's funeral procession would set the standard for riderless horses from 1963 to the present day. He was tacked with a black modified English riding saddle and black bridle. Black, spurred cavalry boots faced backward in the stirrups, and a scabbard with sword hung from the rear of the saddle's right side. Positioned beneath the saddle, a heavy saddle cloth, or saddle blanket, was ornamental in design.

Although he was a military horse named in honor of General of the Armies John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, Black Jack was not born into the service. A dark bay Morgan-Quarterhorse cross with a small star on his forehead, he was foaled on a Kansas farm in 1947 and later purchased by the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps for remount service, the remount referring to a soldier's need to replace a mount that had been injured or killed in the days of the U.S. Cavalry. The Army then shipped Black Jack to the Fort Reno, Oklahoma, Remount Depot, where he was raised and trained.

He was not a tall horse - 15 hands, weighing 1,050 pounds - but he had a big personality and was spirited. In fact, his rambunctious spirit was a problem for his handlers when he was transferred in 1952 to Fort Myer, the Army post adjacent to the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. In his first outing as a riderless horse in a funeral procession to Arlington, he pranced and danced a great deal. Mourners liked his spirited nature, however, and so his unmilitary antics were tolerated. Those antics continued until he was retired in 1973 after participating in several thousand funerals.

When Black Jack passed away in 1976, his remains were cremated and his ashes buried with full military honors. A monument on the parade ground at Fort Myer's Summerall Field attests to the degree he had been revered. Raven, another dark horse, succeeded Black Jack in his duties as a riderless horse.

Raven made no appearance in the funeral procession of an American president, although he likely participated in more than a thousand funerals of military leaders who were eligible for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. The stately funeral service provided for presidents, who are military commanders-in-chief, is also available to Army and USMC officers having a rank of colonel or higher, and there are many such officers among Arlington's honored dead.

At this point a mention should be made of President Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower, who passed away in March 1969 and was buried in Abilene, Kansas. No horse of record participated in the Kansas funeral ceremonies, but earlier, in Washington, a riderless horse did follow the horse-drawn caisson bearing Eisenhower's casket from the Washington National Cathedral to the Capitol, where the late president lay in state for public viewing in the Capitol Rotunda.

A video of the procession from the Cathedral to the Capitol shows a riderless horse who is nearly liver chestnut in color with a small star on his forehead, a horse whose prancing and dancing in the procession, and pawing impatiently while standing "at rest," bear a suspicious resemblance to Black Jack's behavior. If the fidelity of the color in the video is flawed, and the horse's coat is indeed nearly black, it could be that BJ, as Black Jack's grooms and walkers called him, had a connection with the man who was the most popular military commander of World War II and, later, the 34th president of the U.S.

The most recent riderless horse to represent the mount of a deceased American president, and the last on record, followed the caisson bearing the body of Ronald Reagan in 2004. Reagan was later buried in Simi Valley, California, so here again we have something of an Eisenhower situation. The late president's tan, spurred riding boots were reversed in the stirrups, replacing the black cavalry boots traditionally used. The procession in Washington ended at the Capitol, where a closed casket lay in state for viewing.

The riderless horse in the procession paying tribute to Ronald Reagan was Sergeant York, a dark bay gelding named for the decorated American soldier of World War I, Alvin C. York. Before Sergeant York the horse entered military service, however, he had plied a trade in harness racing for several years under the name Allaboard Jules. A standardbred foaled in 1991, Allaboard Jules became an Army horse with a famous name in 1997.

The military has been referred to many times in this article, which will draw to a close with an explanation for those many references.

In 1948, the Army's 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment was assigned the responsibility of organizing and conducting the funeral processions of American presidents laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery, as well as other Americans eligible for burial with military honors in Arlington. The Old Guard, as the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment is known, was formed in 1784, is the oldest active unit in the U.S. Army, and is based at Fort Myer, Virginia, adjacent to the nation's most hallowed cemetery.

The Old Guard's Caisson Platoon provided the muscle and polish for the formal and elegant funeral procession honoring JFK in 1963, as well as the processions that followed that point of time in this article. The soldiers in the Caisson Platoon are dedicated to tradition, are respectful of the honored dead, respectful of the forty or more horses they provide care for, respectful in their maintenance of the 1918 caissons that bear the caskets to their final resting places with full military tribute.

The riderless horse is also known as the caparisoned horse, the caparison referring to the ornamental design on the horse's saddle cloth, or saddle blanket. The solider who leads the riderless horse is called the cap walker, and in the case of the spirited Black Jack, the young cap walker handling him in a procession likely had quite a story to tell his comrades in the Caisson Platoon at the end of day.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Don_N_Walters

Don Walters is the author of the Amazon.com eBooks The Woman Who Loved Horses, and Zoe, among other works. He grew up with horses in Kentucky, where he makes his home today.
You can visit his website with a click here.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6455403