Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague ranks among the family silver

Death is a natural part of human life. Nevertheless, passing of a close person is always grievous. The last thing we can do for the deceased is to express our thanks for the time he spent with us by dignified farewell.

The bereaved want to arrange a funeral according to their ideas and wishes of the deceased. A funeral notice, a coffin, an urn, final farewell in a ceremonial hall of a crematorium with funeral flower gifts, music, a speaker, or farewell to an urn as a variant, are basics of funeral services.

Funeral business is respected service with all-society ethical, cultural but also urbanistic impact. In Prague these attributes are amply fulfilled by Pohrebni ustav hlavniho mesta Prahy (Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague). If something can be called the family silver in the capital, it is the Funeral Home. It is the institution where rich tradition with modern technology, high professionalism with deep ethics are wedded.

Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague provides its services to citizens more than 100 years

Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague, the organization founded by the City council in 1911, provides comprehensive services at high professional level. The bereaved can arrange besides farewell in the crematorium also burials, flower gifts, funeral notices, VIP funerals and also transports of the departed throughout the republic and foreign transports in ten order offices. There is also a wide choice of coffins, from ordinary to luxury ones. All information is provided nonstop at free information line 800 10 10 50, which also continuous service for transport of the deceased works at. Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague administers both Prague crematoriums and adjacent urn groves. In the Strasnice crematorium, the bereaved may choose between the small ceremonial hall, named Baxova after the Mayor which was significantly instrumental in construction of the crematorium, and the Large ceremonial hall, one of the largest in Central Europe, and the ceremonial hall in the Olsany cemetery. Motol crematorium is located in a beautiful forest area and capacity of its ceremonial hall can be enlarged by lowering of the glazed entrance wall. Although funeral business is a traditional branch, Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague offers many new and extended services, such as the farewell to a funeral urn or economic funeral "Requiem".

Cremation funerals make up about 80% of the total number of funerals in the Czech Republic

In the Czech Republic, cremation funerals are widespread. They make up about 80% of the total number of funerals in the Czech Republic. It is not for me to judge why this is so, even that is not the subject of this contribution. However, it is one of cornerstones of current, somewhat different, approach of the bereaved to last farewell to the deceased. The second such cornerstone is economic situation of society, which has enabled to use financial means for more interesting activities since 1989. This is then followed by long-time driving out death and everything connecting with a funeral ritual.

Funerals without a ceremony

How unpreparedness for decease of someone close and lack of knowledge of everything associated with death are shown in reality? This is most noticeable at deaths at home. It happens that the bereaved are calling a funeral service and ask for immediate transport of the dead, sometimes even before a doctor examined the deceased. Simply, at the moment of death, a loved one turns into 'something' what is necessary to get rid of quickly. Then the more heartless thing follows and this is omission of last farewell, i.e. a funeral ceremony. These are just the funerals without a ceremony which have been used a lot lately. Yes, they are the cheapest funerals which can be ordered, but at a much higher price and this is moral and emotional detriment of bereaved person themselves, which may end up with psychosomatic problems, as experts psychologists say. If we look back a few decades, so we do not find that kind of funeral there. A ritual of a funeral ceremony was always observed in our culture. Attendance at a funeral, expression of condolences as participation in mourning of the dead's closest and giving them time to cope with loss of a loved one, were taken for granted. However, leaving out funeral ceremony is more a problem of city agglomeration. In the country or in a small town, it is still customary to arrange a funeral with saying goodbye and in many places also with different regional customs.

I searched whether similar burials occur also in other European countries. Such a way of burial is carried out nowhere. Therefore, what are we different than other nations of European culture in? How is it possible that elsewhere they say goodbye to their deceased and a burial without saying goodbye is out of the question and in our country, for example in Prague, approximately 50% of funerals are without saying goodbye? Is this economic situation of the society? What make us not be willing to invest money in a funeral and quite often we also "forget" an urn with remains in a crematorium. Why do we close our sadness in ourself and do not allow our nearest to help us to cope with our grief? Is this an impact of displacement of death from our consciousness? After all, the Funeral Home offers the simplest last farewell ceremony at a price that is only a few hundred crowns higher than the price of a funeral without a ceremony. We also provide storing of cremated remains, both in an urn into a leased urn site and loose storing of cremated remains by scattering or by pouring in on meadows in the urn groves Strasnice and Motol. There is probably no simple answer to these questions. One thing is certain, it is necessary to begin to talk more about this issue. To give more space in media to experts in psychology and begin to talk about death and everything that goes with it. If we understand death as an integral part of an individual's life, we will be ready to grasp the far more complicated process and this is dying. There are even more ignorance and incomprehension in this sphere, than in matters of the last farewell.

Detailed information about Funeral Home of the Capital City of Prague, crematoriums in Strasnice and in Motol and wide range of services can be found at the website: www.pohrustav.cz.