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We are very sorry. Here is what happens next, in order. It is shorter than you expect, and most of it is not yours to do.
In a hospital or a care home this is done for you. At home, call hospice if they are involved, and otherwise call 911 so paramedics or police can attend. Nothing else can proceed until this has happened.
At any hour. We will arrange the shomer and the taharah, and start on everything else. You do not need to have decided anything, chosen anybody, or know what you want — that is the point of the call.
Ask one person — a sibling, a cousin, a friend — to tell everybody else. You should not spend the next four hours repeating the worst sentence of your life to thirty people.
Say clearly, to whoever is present: no embalming, no cosmetic preparation, no viewing, no autopsy without asking us first. This one sentence is the most important thing you will say today, and it is much easier to say now than to undo later.
Before the funeral, a mourner is exempt from almost every religious obligation precisely so that they can deal with this. Accepting food, lifts and childcare is not weakness; in Jewish law it is more or less the expectation.
The taharah and the shomer. The mortuary and the transport. The cemetery, the plot, and whether one already exists in the family. The rabbi and the timing of the funeral. The death certificate and the paperwork behind it. The minyan at the shiva house, morning and evening, so that Kaddish can be said. And the questions you have not thought of yet, which is most of them.
No. Call now. This line is answered at any hour and there are things — the shomer, the timing of the burial — that are easier to arrange at three in the morning than at nine.
A death has to be legally pronounced. If hospice is involved, call hospice. If not, call 911 so that paramedics or police can attend. A death in a hospital or care facility is pronounced there and you do not need to do anything about it.
Almost all of it. Embalming, cosmetic preparation, a viewing, an expensive casket and a burial vault are all things you can decline, and none of them belong in a Jewish burial. If you are not sure what you are agreeing to, say you will call back, and then call us.
Yes. We arrange the taharah for your loved one even where another funeral provider is handling everything else. Tell us who you are working with and we will speak to them directly.
Soon, yes — Jewish law treats burial as a debt to the person who has died and does not want it left outstanding. But delay is permitted where it serves their honour: waiting for a child to fly in, obtaining the right grave, or because Shabbat or a festival falls in between. Say what you need and it will be worked out.