Sid replied on Monday, November 10, 2008 06:36 AM
Dear Faisal,
Sorry to hear about your brother. My mom died in NY two years ago and I know the whole procedure, so I write in here so you have background.
There are four things that you need to deal with
1: Decision to bring or not bring the body to PK (There are serious issues to consider here so do not downplay this,
2: How to get the body and get it shipped or how to get it burried
3: Insurance and stuff collection
4: Wages etc collection, 401K (retirement) etc. and dealing with the company of deceased.
4: Let me start with dealing with company of deceased: They are not authorized to give any information etc to any one but legal heir of the deceased. HR laws will also have prohibition in this regard. You should give them the address and ask them to send the documents through fedex or DHL. The mail should be in PK in maximum 48 hours. And Fedex is not really expensive (relatively speaking). keep in mind that you just need them to get your brother to US otherwise whatever money they owe, or insurance etc, you will get that eventually, so don't bother much. Try to have some one there ASAP.
3: Insurance is where you will get some money. And disposing off what he has will just have some urgency since if your brother was on rent, the land lord can confiscate things in lieu of rent and charge the estate (remaining money of your brother) for removal etc. So getting ther quick is good but not that big of a deal. Just one additional note, There is usually a one month or two months advance that you will also be able to collect from the land lord if he was on rent, if he owned the property then you will have some other work to do.
2: Only authorized heirs can collect the body. So you will need to send an authorization to a person to collect the body. Edhi centres are very active. You need to contact Bilquis Edhi's centre in Houstan area and see if they can help you out. In NY they have a complete network and funeral homes that can help you out.
1: To bring remains of a person to PK, you will need to have a procedure called embombing done on the body of the deceased. Embombing involves taking out all the stuff from the stomach and filling it with some kind of liquid so that the body does not deteriate, etc. After embombing, the coffin will be sealed and people can view the deceased only through a mirror in the coofin (you woudl have seen that secene in American movies/funerals). Now, I have spoken to few musilim fate scholors and they agree that the deceased should be burried asap and near the place of death.
For your reference a hadees is stated below (I have narrated below to best of my recollection, check with a scholor to get accurate haddees) After a ghazwa, Hazoor started to give lectures to few deads. Some asked why and he(PBUH) said that they (the deceased) can hear better than you.
It means that dead will be penalized with Embombing process and some consider this un islamic. So Many leave their loved ones burried in USA/Canada because of this. Please consult with your faith scholor and get info.
the only way out of embombing will be to have the dead body burried for around six months as amanat and then close coffined body is brought to PK. This will be expensive but doable option since after six months all the stomach body parts would not exist. I have not done this but this is what my understanding is. You need to also check if they have not performed embombing already to preserve the body till some one can take control.
Good Luck, please post here if you have any question.
Regards,
Sid
- Edhi is very active in NY area and they have a Land allocated in Washington Park Cemitry in Long Island, NY.
- |
