I have contemplated writing this review since I buried my mother on December 10, 2022. However, I feel obligated to warn other families about Eternal Rest Funeral Home in order to prevent them from going through the same painful experience. Our family entrusted Eternal Rest with arranging our mother's burial, but we were treated without compassion, empathy, and respect. Instead of honoring our mother's life and legacy, Eternal Rest Funeral home treated our family like ATM machines and put our mother to shame.
The worst of them all was Ms. Sheri-King Franklin, the manager. Throughout the entire process, Ms. Franklin showed little to no compassion or care for our loss. She rushed our mother's burial, had sub-par communication, and never took responsibility for any mistakes she made throughout the process. She spoke poorly to her staff who attempted to correct her shortcomings to help our family. If she felt that we were not making decisions fast enough on our mother's burial, she belittled us. Ms. Franklin even went as far to say that my father was acting "mentally slow," and that I was acting broke after I paid her in full for her services. She belittled me for not looking presentable after losing my mother and treated me like I was broke.
I paid for my mother's wake and funeral in full on December 7, 2022. My mother's wake was scheduled for December 9th, and her funeral December 10th. The week leading up to my mother's funeral, I was in constant contact with the funeral staff and made several visits to Eternal Rest to make sure everything was prepared and paid for. I also attempted to contact Ms. Franklin, but communication was close to non-existent. Because of Franklin's lack of communication, I asked my friend to write my mother's obituary.
The day of my mother's wake was the worst day of my life. Ms. Franklin contacted me an hour before my mother's wake on December 9th to tell me that I had to fix the format of my mother's obituary or she wouldn't have obituaries for her funeral. My friend who had flown out of town to support me during my mother's funeral and who wrote the obituary, spent the entirety of the wake working with Ms. Franklin to fix the format. Because of Eternal Rest's faulty equipment, and lack of knowledge on how to work the equipment on Ms. Franklin's part, the obituaries printed with two blank pages in the middle of each booklet. Instead of taking responsibility for the duplicate pages, Ms. Franklin attempted to charge my family extra money for the extra pages. Eternal Rest was contracted to print 150 obituaries for my mother's funeral. When I attempted to negotiate with Ms. Franklin, and asked her how many obituaries she could print for me with the extra blank pages, she spat out, "You shouldn't get any." After viewing my mother's body for the first time since she passed, Ms. Franklin approached me to tell me that she forgot to charge me $850.00 for my mother's concrete burial box. She then proceeded to add an additional $550.00 for the programs. It didn't matter that I was visibly emotionally distraught. Any balances or arrangements that needed to be taken care of should have been addressed prior to the wake when I was contacting the funeral staff and Ms. Franklin the week before the funeral. Additionally, Eternal Rest was contracted to provide a memorial video presentation, to which we never received. Ms. Franklin never took responsibility for her unprofessionalism or actions. Ms. Franklin's lack of professionalism, compassion, and ethics has no place in the funeral industry.
My complaints don't extend to the rest of the funeral staff at Eternal Rest. If Ms. Franklin had half of the morals and empathy as the rest of the staff, our experience could have been much less painful. If Eternal Rest Funeral Home considers getting rid of the evil person who is Sheri-King Franklin, the funeral home would be a much better place to do business with. read more
