How Bliley's is reshaping the role of the funeral home

Families often spend a loved one's final days showing care in small, intimate ways.

Carey Bliley, president of Bliley's Funeral Homes, believes that care shouldn't end when funeral planning begins.

Why it's important: After a loss, families need ways to begin adjusting to life without them, and ritual can give that process structure.

For Bliley, this instinct has always been part of how people respond to loss.

• "When someone dies, we know we need to do something with and for them," Bliley said in a recent RVA Today interview.

The idea: Bliley believes families should remain active participants in that experience.

His perspective comes partly from losing his own mother. During her illness, Bliley recalled how he and other family members cared for his mother directly, handling intimate, everyday acts of caregiving until she died.

• When she passed away, their role changed immediately.

"When she died, it's like she's taken away and the funeral home does that kind of work," Bliley said.

The impact: Bliley's aims to keep families actively involved after a death.

Rather than automatically taking every responsibility from a family, the funeral home looks for way to help people continue caring for someone through tangible acts of remembrance.

• "The more involved they are, the more opportunities for healing they have," Bliley said.

But family participation can take many forms, and Bliley's aims to give grieving people meaningful choices about how they want to show care.

Here's how: The Richmond funeral home begins by learning who the person was and what mattered to the people remembering them.

A meaningful service might reflect a favorite activity, a family tradition or a part of someone's personality that friends immediately recognize, helping to give the gathering a character that feels true to the person being honored.

• Bliley points to interests such as running or golf as simple examples, but families can decide which traditions matter.

• The broader goal is authenticity, giving families room to choose the traditions, roles and details that reflect their relationship with the person they lost.

The strategy: People may enter the funeral-planning process without knowing what choices exist or what they are expected to do, making an already difficult period feel more complicated.

Bliley's sees education as part of its responsibility.

• Its team explains options, helps families think through what feels meaningful and provides professional support while allowing families to shape the experience themselves.

The takeaway: Bliley's has watched those traditions evolve for more than 150 years — four generations of the Bliley family have served Richmond families, giving the business a long view of which parts of funeral service change and which human needs remain consistent.

Preferences around burial, ceremonies and personalization continue to evolve, but Bliley believes the impulse beneath those traditions remains intact: People still want to honor the person they lost through meaningful acts of remembrance.

Learn more about Bliley's approach.