Geen geld voor de begrafenis en dan?

It is terrible, sometimes heartbreaking, when you lose a loved one. Even if the person has reached a very high age and died ‘naturally’, it hurts. But even when someone dies after a long illness, the inevitable end to life often comes hard. Not to mention the sudden death, cardiac arrest, stroke or accident. Well, death is usually unexpected for the relatives and is in all cases an unwanted visitor. 

A loved one has died

After someone dear to you has died, there are a number of things you can do for him or her. I mention a few:

• Ensure that all current affairs of the deceased are handled properly;
• Be respectful and don’t argue about the legacy;
• Respect the wishes of the deceased with regard to the funeral;
• Arrange a neat funeral;
• Thank you afterwards to the visitors to the funeral;
• Occasionally think back to him or her with a smile.

The finance and funeral costs

It sometimes turns out that there is no money for the funeral to go according to the wishes of the deceased. In addition to the sadness that the relatives already have, they also get a lot of worries. A funeral is expensive. That runs into the thousands of euros, which not everyone just has left. What now?

Calling at the municipality

If there are no funds available to pay for the funeral, you can go to the municipality where the deceased lived. The municipality then arranges for the person in question to be buried. Nobody is waiting for that. Your loved one will then be buried in the most austere way in a  general grave . If the deceased has a spouse, children or children, the municipality will recoup the costs incurred later on in their claim.

Crowdfunding for the funeral

If you come, or if you cannot solve it yourself, you can always ask your fellow Dutch people for help. With the help of a crowdfunding platform such as  Whydonate.nl  you can easily start a funeral campaign. Not the nicest job, but for a very good thing.

Donate for a funeral?

Anyone who has ever had to deal with a situation where there really was no money for a funeral knows what it feels like. You are powerless. You want the best for the deceased, but that just doesn’t work. They will certainly have something for the fellow man who is going through this now.

For all other people who regularly check whether they see actions that are worth making a donation, it is good to take a look at funeral campaigns.

You may think there are more important things to donate to. Things that, for example, relate to the extension of life, or perhaps financially interesting projects. So matters, with potential and future.

That is of course possible. But try to put yourself in the position of the person, or people who are so upset that they start a crowdfunding campaign. Not for themselves, but for someone who can no longer do that himself.