Fairfield, Connecticut · since 1909
Call us first. Everything after that can be taken slowly, and in order.
A licensed funeral director answers this number at any hour of the night, weekends and holidays included. You do not need to have decided anything before you ring, and you do not need to have any paperwork in front of you.
1209 Post Road
Fairfield, Connecticut 06824
That first call is the only one you have to make tonight.
You will speak to a licensed funeral director, not to an answering service that takes a message. From that first phone call onwards the same director stays with your family for the whole time we are serving you.
If your loved one has not yet been released by a hospital or a medical examiner, tell us and we will wait with you and make the calls. If you have no idea what happens next, that is the ordinary situation and not the unusual one.
What we need from you on the phone
- Where your loved one is right now.
- Whether they were under hospice care.
- Your name, and the best number to reach you on.
Nothing else. Not the paperwork, not the wishes, not a decision between burial and cremation.
Call (203) 256-8988The first twenty four hours
So here is what happens next, written out, before you have to live it.
When you are in a heightened emotional state, even the most basic decisions can seem staggering. This is the sequence, including the one branch that changes who you call first. Read the two lines that apply to you and ignore the rest.
01
At home, and not under hospice care
The police have to be notified first. They are dispatched to the house and they place the call to the medical examiner, who decides whether anything further is needed. The medical examiner has to release your loved one before any funeral home can do anything at all. This is normal, it is not a sign that something is wrong, and there is nothing you can do to speed it up.
02
At home, and under hospice care
Call the hospice representative if they are not already with you. They will tell you exactly which calls to make and in what order. You do not need to call the police.
03
At a hospital, nursing home or hospice facility
The staff notify you and the authorities themselves. If they already have our name, they call us at the same time. If you are there when our director arrives, he will ask a few questions about what your loved one wanted and agree a time to meet. If you are not there, he will telephone you instead.
04
Then call us, at whatever hour it is
Once the authorities have cleared everything, the next call is to a licensed funeral director. We answer (203) 256-8988 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We bring your loved one into our care, help you obtain the death certificate, and notify their employer and insurance company so you do not have to.
05
We meet within about a day
Arrangements are usually made within 24 hours. Bring somebody with you if you can. Nothing has to be decided in that meeting that cannot be changed afterwards.
And this is the list our director will ask you for
These are the facts the State of Connecticut needs for the death certificate. If you want something to do tonight that will genuinely help, this is it. Approximate answers are fine, we will check them together.
- Full name and address
- Marital status
- Race or ethnicity
- Date and city of birth
- Highest level of education
- Father's name, and mother's name including her maiden name
- Name of spouse, if married or widowed
- Occupation and employer
Once that is under way, the service becomes yours to shape.
Arrangements and ceremonies tend to be as individual as the people for whom and by whom they are made. Nothing below is a package, and none of it has to be chosen in one sitting.
Burial
A visitation, then a service at a church or other place of worship, with the casket present at both and open or closed as you decide. Interred in the ground, or entombed above ground in a crypt. We will talk you through monumental, lawn and natural cemeteries, and through columbarium niches, before you choose anything.
Cremation
Cremation is an alternative to burial, not an alternative to a funeral. You can have exactly the same service either before or after it. Our cremations are not performed on site: Mountain Grove Crematory and Lakeview Crematory carry them out for us, to our standards, and we do not hand that to anybody else.
The service itself
Photo and memorabilia displays, bagpipes or other music that mattered to them, dove and butterfly releases, candlelight ceremonies, registry books, specialised veteran services, keepsakes and memorial jewellery. We will also make the remembrance video, and there is no charge for it.
The building is arranged so that nobody has to wait outside.
- Eleven thousand square feet of stately colonial, built for this, and fully accessible throughout.
- Chapels that flex from an intimate family gathering to a service with hundreds of guests, and onsite parking for hundreds of cars.
- A furnished family retreat and a children's playroom, because finding a babysitter that week is one thing too many.
- A bluestone patio and garden with outdoor seating, for the part of the day when people need air.
- Off Interstate 95, the Merritt Parkway and Metro North, with hotels and restaurants within a few minutes for family travelling in.
Established 1909
Five generations of one family have done this work.
John S. Lesko came from Hungary and settled in the old West End of Bridgeport in 1895. He ran several businesses, among them a livery supplying horses, hearses and hacks to the city's funeral directors. In 1909, with his two sons Stephen and John, he opened the funeral home in a storefront in the Hungarian quarter of the city. Until then funerals had been held in the house of the person who had died.
In 1935 his grandson, John T. Lesko, Sr., moved the business into the restored home of a sea captain, and John T. Lesko, Jr. of the fourth generation enlarged it. Kevin M. Lesko, a great-great grandson of the founder, bought the firm from his father in 1991 and moved it to Fairfield Center in 1992.
Kevin has been licensed in mortuary science since 1987 and is also a pre-need counsellor. Erika G. Cueto, who holds a degree in mortuary science from Briarwood College, joined the firm in the years after the move.
And if nothing has happened yet, you can take all of this off your family.
Pre-planning is the one part of this that is easier to do on an ordinary Tuesday than on the worst night of someone's life. It costs nothing to sit down with Kevin and find out what it would involve, and you are not committing to anything by asking.
Questions families ask us in the first ten minutes.
- Do I have to decide between burial and cremation tonight?
- No. The only decision that has to be made in the first hours is who to call, and you have already made it if you are reading this. Everything else is decided at the arrangement meeting, and most of it can be changed after that meeting too.
- Is embalming required before a cremation?
- No, and it is against the law for a funeral home to tell you otherwise. Most crematories also allow immediate family to view their loved one briefly beforehand, without embalming, if the viewing happens within a few hours.
- Can we still have a service if we choose cremation?
- Yes. Choosing cremation neither requires nor prevents a funeral service. A service followed by cremation can be identical to a service followed by burial, and nearly all Protestant churches and most Catholic churches allow the urn to be present.
- What if the death happened somewhere else?
- Call us anyway, before you arrange anything locally. Bringing someone home from another state or another country is something we handle regularly, and the order in which those calls are made changes what it costs.
Anything else, at any hour: (203) 256-8988. Lesko Funeral Home, 1209 Post Road, Fairfield.