Funeral announcements Because of the trauma involved when someone near and dear to you dies, it is important that everything in the preparations for the funeral goes as smoothly as possible. You don't want to have to squabble with the funeral home about arrangements, or to have to worry about feeding your guests, or about family conflicts. Every detail, from the plot to the funeral announcements should be made easy and painless for the bereaved. I can tell you how much more difficult it can make everything if it isn't. We actually had our funeral announcements misprinted when my brother Sam died. We double checked them – I know we did – and made sure that everything was neatly in order, but despite all of that, the company used the wrong everything. I think the design they used for the funeral announcements was actually meant for a wedding card, or perhaps a thank you note. It showed pretty little bluebirds carrying little bits of string up to prepare their nest, and said, in bubbly nauseating script, “Wishing you the Best” on the front cover. My mother cried when she saw the funeral announcements. On the inside of the funeral announcement, it had what we had planned for it to say in it. It was a poem Sam wrote when he was twelve about his life's goals. He had wished, from a very early age, to devote his existence to the study of music. An early prodigy, the piano had been his life from a very young age and the poem was very sophisticated, talking about “the music dancing through his fingers”, and giving us a glimpse of that music through its intricate and subtle phrasing. But the content of that page was so out of sync with the rest of the funeral announcements, that the effect was almost comical. The bluebirds, the smiley sun – did I forget to tell you about the smiley sun? It was chipper and cartoonish and done with gold foil of all things, on the front cover, beaming out in irritating cheesy reflections at the baffled eyes of the bereaved. And the worse thing about it was that the company that made the funeral announcements refused to take responsibility. They claimed, against all reason, that we must have requested that very card. It took half an hour of arguing back and forth, before we were able to talk to a manager who offered us a curt apology and, of all things, a 5 percent discount on our next order!