16/03/2026
🩵🩷 Good evening to you all.
After making the difficult decision last year to close down Tyler’s Friends, I couldn’t switch off from wanting to help families who had lost their precious little one too soon. It’s been hard having to tell families who contacted us that we were no longer and couldn’t help, but if I could I would point them in the right direction.
At the end of January I left the company who I was working for and took the leap to work with my Husband, still a funeral director and with the same passion to look after families.
My brain started to work in overdrive to find a way of helping families of babies born too soon, which is when a Gentle Goodbye came to me.
Losing a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy, is difficult enough without the added stress of costs, because there’s no government help. Working in the family business means I have more leeway to do more.
The company I used to work for were fantastic when a family wanted a personal / individual funeral for their baby, and there were no charges, unless it was out of their control and this is the same with the majority of funeral directors, but sadly, not all!!
A family recently got in touch to say they’d lost their little one at just over 16 weeks and wanted a funeral, the hospital told them there would be no charge from the funeral directors. Unfortunately they were very wrong! Put aside the fees that were out of their control, the costs from this funeral director were climbing by the minute!! Costs, that they have no reason or need to charge! I spoke with this lovely lady over 2 days, I made calls for her, gave her options, helped her in anyway I could, something the funeral directors should have done! It shouldn’t be about making money, it should be about showing compassion and doing all you can to help this family at such a heartbreaking time.
I urge anyone who sadly finds themselves in this situation, to check costs before you make any decisions.
Here at Jonathan Rust Family Funeral Directors, will offer all our services for free, (as will many others) we can’t control outside fees but we’ll do all we can to help.
I’ll always be on the end of the phone to help, advise and make phone calls to make this heartbreaking time as easy and stress free as possible 🩷🩵
