Return To Sender

Sarah-Marie Sherbon Sioux Center, Iowa

A funeral home director discusses the perfect funeral.

Harley Davidsons and Four Horse Carriages: Why not arrive at your funeral in fashion?

In his twelve years of work, Robert Feauto, of Sioux Center, Iowa’s Memorial Funeral Home has seen it all. He definitely has the dig on funeral arrangements.

Feauto has a guarded demeanor that is impossible to separate from his faultlessly neutral business clothes. This man is postured and dressed to be unobtrusive. His crisp appearance is softened by a thick white mustache and the many Kleenex boxes that are the strongest signal of place.

Feauto answers the age old question— burial or cremation? Feauto’s first last wish is to be cremated. He’s claustrophobic. 

He shrugs, acknowledging the oddity of his reasoning. He would like to have his ashes mixed with his wife’s. Their ashes will be buried so family members will have a physical place to mourn. 

Destination weddings are having a moment, but then so are destination funerals. Feauto says that if he could be scattered anywhere it would be in the mountains, very likely Estes Park.

He emphasizes that his Christian faith would be key in funeral arrangements. He would like praise songs to be played, but when pressed for specifics he will only say that he would like to have Elvis music. 

Feauto confides he sometimes cries at funerals he has organized, “The younger they are the harder.” He especially feels for young parents that lose babies, “You have empathy for where they are and what I would be going through if that were me.” He contributes monthly to an organization called, Sing Me to Heaven, that offsets the cost of funerals for Iowa parents that have lost a child. In lieu of flowers he hopes that funds would go to benefit this organization 

If Feauto could leave his loved ones with final words, he would say, “This life is very temporal and eternity is just that— eternity. This life is just a vapor. So take your faith seriously.”