Home Funeral Guides

Caring for our own after their death can be a much desired but daunting task. Given our culturally relative inexperience with home care of the dead after nearly a hundred years of outsourcing to professionals, families may find it comforting to have someone to walk the fine points through with them.

Home funeral guides are well versed in ways to assist families seeking to conduct funeral care in their own homes. Home funeral guides are:

• responsible for knowing the applicable policies and laws, procedures and protocols for the time from death to disposition
• trained to guide families and others through logistics, ritual opportunities, community resources, local products and services, appropriate and safe body care, ceremony design, home preparation, and much more

What home funeral guides do not do is charge for any service a funeral director is required to have a license to do. The next-of-kin is legally in charge of care and may ask others for assistance, including home funeral guides, who may be paid or who may volunteer the time. Any payments to home funeral guides are for educational and consultative services.

There is no certifying body regulating home funeral guides. Many learn their trade by taking trainings and some have learned by doing. To learn more about the standards that home funeral guides aspire to, read the National Home Funeral Alliance's Code of Ethics, Conduct and Practice.

End-of-Life Doulas

More people wish to die at home than actually do, in a reverse equation of 20% to 80%. End-of-life doulas are poised to change those statistics by making the act of living out final days in familiar, loving surroundings more feasible for the dying and their caregivers, whether or not they engage hospice services.

End-of-life doulas:

• provide non-medical, non-judgmental support and guidance to individuals and families through education and guidance, sometimes including physical, emotional, and spiritual care
• nurture, inform, support, guide, empower and comfort
• ​actively seek to complement medical services, including hospice, by being available during peak need hours for extended periods as needed

Families hiring EOLDs do so privately. There is no certifying body regulating end-of-life doulas. Many learn their trade by taking trainings and some have learned through service in their communities. End-of-life doulas' paid responsibilities end when the patient dies unless he or she is prepared to follow the guidelines for home funeral guides, as after-death care is regulated by the funeral profession. EOLDs often work closely with hospice personnel to support the hospice plan of care. 

To find an end-of-life doula near you, go to the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance Directory page for Doulas. You will find local EOLDS listed with contact information on the directory.

New Hampshire Home Funeral Guides

Deana Darby
(603) 654-1119 home
(603) 809-3396 cell
ddarby108@gmail.com
thresholdcare.org
Serving Southern NH and beyond

Janet Ellis 
(603) 617-6974
Grievinggreen@gmail.com
Grievinggreen.com
Serving the NH Seacoast, Lakes Region East, and Southern Maine

Sandy Lafleur
(603) 654-1245
strumma@aol.com
Serving Wilton and surrounds Southwest NH

Lee Webster
​(603) 236-9495
NHFREA@gmail.com
nhfuneral.org
Serving the Lakes Region and the Upper Valley; phone support for the state of NH

New Hampshire End-of-Life Doulas

Jody Gaynor
(757) 705-0026
​jgaynor13@gmail.com
​handinhanddoulanh.com
Serving Concord NH and the capital region

Pamela Stohrer
(603) 464-3688
​skillians@tds.net
thistlewooddoula.com
Serving the Hillsborough region