A New Addition to Our Team

Park Memorial recently added Aftercare Specialist Sarah Kucharski to our team of funeral professionals. Her role is to make the aftercare process of completing forms and applications, and closing a loved one’s estate a little easier; she walks beside each of our families to assist with these tasks after the funeral. She comes to us with almost 20 years of experience as a Licensed Preneed and Aftercare Specialist. Park Memorial is a full-service funeral home, therefore Sarah’s care is included in our professional services to each family that we care for.



"I lost my mom when I was 20 and she was only in her early 40s. Unfortunately, our experience in another province with the funeral home selected was not great. This experience inspired me to serve better and do better for the families that I care for; I don't want anyone to go through the same things I did."

We took some time to interview Sarah about her role: 

Q: Sarah can you tell me a little bit about yourself as far as your background - specifically with aftercare? 

A: I've been in the death care profession for nearly 20 years looking after families for both their pre-arrangement needs as well as their post-bereavement needs. I walk them through all the important information in the comfort of their own home to get them started on the necessary paperwork after the death of a loved one: the CPP death benefit application, Survivor’s Benefit application, and many of the steps necessary to close out their loved one’s estate over the next year. 

Q: Can you tell me why you're passionate about this work?
A: I am a product of my own experience; I lost my mom when I was 20 and she was only in her early 40s. Unfortunately, our experience in another province with the funeral home selected was not great. This experience inspired me to serve better and do better for the families that I care for; I don't want anyone to go through the same things I did. 

Q: How do you follow up with the family in their home after the funeral service is over, knowing they must deal with so many tasks that arise from the loss of a loved one? 

A: This is all about ensuring that they have the details or answers to the questions that are on their minds. Often, I will ask questions that generate conversation around things that maybe they hadn't even thought about. For example, canceling insurance: some insurance companies won't pay out funds immediately, depending on the cause and manner of the death. Families don't always necessarily realize that if an insurance company is asking for a death certificate, they are required to apply for a registered death certificate instead of providing the funeral director's statement of death that the funeral home creates. This is because the insurance company is looking for cause and manner of death information. Not understanding details like this can cause multiple applications to be needed and likely delay the funding from the insurance settlement. When dealing with someone's livelihood in terms of their financial well-being, we want to help ensure that all components of aftercare that impact the financial outcomes are expedited quite quickly. And although I don’t always have all the answers to their questions, I will help to guide the family in the right direction to get those answers. 

Q: What should a family have ready for your appointment when you're coming to meet with them for aftercare? 

A: Ideally things such as their loved one’s marriage license if that's applicable, passport, driver’s license, and anything else that falls under the category of primary legal identification. Everything else that they will need, we will identify together as I ask them very specific questions about their loved one. 

Q: One of the additional supports and benefits that Park Memorial includes in our services to all bereaved families is the use of an online platform called Cadence that we acquired recently to help families with the aftercare process. How would you describe Cadence?

"There are so many things that must be dealt with in the first year after a loved one dies; for someone to just go out-on-a-limb and try to remember and track down and look after things can take 350-plus hours. Cadence helps pare that down to an average of about 75 hours worth of work, which is a huge time savings."

A. I honestly have never seen anything quite like it - it is amazing! It is so user-friendly and is very in-depth with questions to help segment out tasks and simplify things for families so that they can dial into the appropriate things that they need to look after and the timeline that they need to do those things within. 

To start, it takes 10 – 15 minutes to answer a few short “yes” or “no” (or “unsure”) questions specific to the person who has died: ie if they have social media accounts, rewards cards/memberships, business /personal memberships and subscriptions. These will all need to be cancelled to not only mitigate unnecessary ongoing charges, but also to mitigate identity theft. And they need to ask certain questions before cancelling. 

There are a lot of things that we don't think about as survivors: we go right to the bank account or life insurance, but we don't always think about canceling tenant insurance on a rental property, or returning a handicap placard if there was one in use. From the answers to those preliminary questions, Cadence creates a ‘road map’ of sorts with the items/tasks to be dealt with, along with suggested timing that the family must attend to over the next year. It gives them the breakdown of what's to be done in months one, two and three, and towards the calendar year-end which is typically used the following year when trying to wrap up the estate and complete final taxes. 

Q. What would you say to families who might think that Cadence is just one more job on their burdening list of things to deal with after the loss of their loved one? 

A. There are so many things that must be dealt with in the first year after a loved one dies; for someone to just randomly try to track down information, remember all the relevant details, and look after all the related tasks can take 350-plus hours. Cadence helps pare that down to an average of about 75-hours worth of work, which is a huge time savings. I've worked with families that didn't have an opportunity to use a program like Cadence that have taken numerous days, weeks, and months to adapt and collect the same information that Cadence will prompt you to do within the first week of using it. And if you are employed when your loved one dies, many companies don't offer an extended period of bereavement time, so having that time efficiency is crucial in today's world.

If your family has been served by Park Memorial recently prior to Sarah’s arrival, and you would like to book an appointment with her or you are interested in learning more about Cadence, please contact her at 780-426-0050. She will meet with you in the comfort of your own home with both evening and weekend appointments available. 

Read more about the importance of wills here.

Read more about choosing an executor here.