How to Actually Handle Obituaries When You're Dealing with Olson Funeral Home And Cremation Obituaries Honoring Legacies And Navigating Endoflife Choices
Most people don't realize that writing an obituary for a funeral home that handles both burial and cremation services requires a completely different checklist than a traditional funeral home. I've been through this more times than I'd like to count, and the biggest problem isn't the writing itself. It's the decisions around disposition, legacy content, and platform distribution that most families gloss over until it's too late. The core issue with working through a combined funeral and cremation service is that you're navigating two different sets of expectations in one document. A standard obituary template from Olson won't account for the nuances of cremation-specific arrangements. You need to decide upfront whether you're highlighting the memorial service, the committal service, or both, because the obituary needs to reflect that choice accurately. Here's how I handle it. First, gather the deceased's full legal name, date of birth, date of death, and the city and state where they passed. That's the baseline. Then, and this is where people usually mess up, pull together the disposition details early. If it's cremation with no immediate service, the obituary structure shifts entirely. If it's cremation followed by a memorial gathering, you need to make that sequence crystal clear so people aren't showing up at a cemetery at the wrong time. I keep a running document on my phone called "service logistics" and fill it out the same day the funeral home is contacted. This usually takes about ten minutes and saves hours of back-and-forth later.
For the legacy portion, I recommend asking the family to provide three specific things before drafting begins: a short biography paragraph, a list of surviving family members in standard obituary order, and any organizational or military affiliations. The organization part is critical because Olson and similar funeral homes syndicate obituaries to multiple platforms, and those platforms have character limits. A biography that runs 200 words gets cut down to 80 automatically by the syndication system. I learned that the hard way last year. My workaround was writing the full version first, then creating a trimmed 75-word version specifically for the online syndication feed. The printed newspaper version got the longer bio. Total time saved: about forty-five minutes of revision work. There's a specific edge case that catches everyone off guard. When a death involves organ donation or anatomical gift, the obituary can reference it, but the wording matters significantly. Funeral homes are very careful about this because it touches on legal documentation. I always ask the family if they want organ donation mentioned, and if yes, I use neutral phrasing like "donated organs and tissue to aid others" rather than anything clinical or graphic. The funeral home will review it, but having it pre-approved in plain language prevents delays. Another thing nobody tells you about cremation obituaries is that the cremation process itself doesn't affect the obituary content at all. The obituary is about the person, not the disposition method. However, families often feel pressured to include details about the cremation process, and that's unnecessary. What does matter is making sure the final resting place or scattering location is included if the family plans to share it. Some families prefer to keep that private until after the ashes are interred, and that's completely fine. Just note on your internal document that the location will be updated later.
When it comes to photographs, Olson typically requires one high-resolution image for online publication. The file should be at least 1000 pixels wide and in JPEG or PNG format. I've seen families submit blurry phone photos that get rejected by the syndication platform. Take a photo of the photo on your phone and send that instead of the original, or better yet, have the funeral home take a proper headshot at the visitation. It makes a noticeable difference in how the obituary appears across all platforms. Here's the counter-intuitive part that beginners miss: the obituary submission timeline at most funeral homes including Olson is not the same as the publication timeline. You might submit the obituary on Tuesday, but the earliest print publication slot could be Thursday or Friday. For cremation services that happen earlier in the week, this creates a gap where the service occurs before the obituary is public. The workaround is to request same-day online posting through the funeral home's website. Most combined funeral and cremation operators, Olson included, offer this, and it's free. Use it. The printed newspaper version is secondary now anyway. Most people find out about services through Facebook shares and Google searches, not the local paper. The bigger limitation with this whole setup is that no funeral home obituary is permanent. Once the newspaper run ends, the online version may sit behind a paywall or get buried on the funeral home's site. I always recommend families take a PDF copy of the final published obituary and save it themselves. I've had people come back months later trying to find the original, and the funeral home's website had restructured or the link had broken. It's a small thing but it causes real frustration.
Get the Full Details
If you're comfortable handling it yourself, an alternative to using the funeral home's obituary service is submitting directly to major platforms like Legacy.com or the newspaper's own submission portal. This bypasses the funeral home markup, which can range from seventy-five dollars to two hundred dollars depending on the package. The content is the same. The only difference is that you lose the convenience of having the funeral home handle the submission and corrections. For a straightforward obituary, doing it yourself saves money and gives you more control over the timing. For a complex situation with multiple services and special circumstances, letting Olson manage it is worth the fee because they know the formatting quirks of each platform. The bottom line is that obituary writing during a difficult time is mostly a logistical exercise. Get the facts straight, decide on the tone early, clarify the disposition details, and make sure you have a copy of everything before the funeral home moves on to the next family. The emotional weight of the moment shouldn't be compounded by confusion over where the service is or when it's being published.
