Recently I reconnected with a cousin in Tassie I hadn't seen or talked to since we were kids. The reason was our parents had disagreements and sadly that meant we grew up without having a connection to any of our cousins.
Well, a little while ago I saw that she had posted on FB to her younger brothers' friends in Melbourne saying that she has just found out that after 2 weeks of trying to get hold of him, that he had died. She was grief-stricken.
She has a lot of health problems and also financially she was not in a position to do alot. She was quoted $3K for an unattended cremation and all she wanted was for him to be cremated and for some Melbourne family to spread his ashes somewhere lovely in Melbourne as he had no love for Tassie.
When I saw that quote, I knew from my own experiences that was probably higher than it needed to be especially under the circumstances, and knew there were places that helped in difficult times, so I rang a friend who is in the industry for advice on this.
She immediately said their price for the same thing was just over half of what was quoted and she asked me the background of the situation. She asked if she could call me back after speaking to the boss (the owner of her work).
She called back pretty quickly saying her boss simply said that everyone should be cared for on their last journey. So he offered to do the cremation at cost only and all paperwork and transport would be pro bono. Wow, I truly never expected anything like that.
So things were arranged with my cousin in Tassie and after talking with her more she learned that my mum's ashes were to be scattered later this year where our mutual grandparent's ashes were scattered and she knew her brother adored our grandparents and did have a loving connection with my mum in his younger years so asked if I would please scatter them all together. Of course!
So a week or 2 ago I went to Hallam to pick my cousins' ashes up and meet the owner of this Funeral business and we got on very well with a similar sense of humour - which is so necessary for people who work in this industry.
I couldn't thank him enough and through our conversation saw that he truly is an incredible human being in that he has worked in the industry for other companies and started his own a number of years back knowing what he didn't like about the industry. He has a strong spiritual belief that everyone deserves to be sent on their final journey with dignity & respect, no matter what the financial situation is for a family or loved ones. He will ALWAYS do what he can for people in this situation but has an even bigger passion for looking after babies to ensure they are looked after beautifully with such love by him and his people.
So who is this man you ask? and what is the business?? Well, it's Brember Family Funerals and they are based in Hallam but I think the location does not matter.
You can find them on FB and their website is https://bremberfamilyfunerals.com/
This is Chris Bremer and I am so thankful to him for helping my cousin out.
