National Funeral Home | National Memorial Park — Local services in West Falls Church

I never write reviews for anything, but after receiving an incredible service from a funeral director at this facility, I couldn’t bear not recognizing her for her stellar work.

When my father suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, my family and I were looking for a funeral home that could work with us to arrange a small service and burial in a timely manner. I did some research by calling couple of funeral homes in my area, but never received a follow-up call/email with the basic information we requested nor the level of care and professionalism we were hoping for. When we made an initial inquiry to National Funeral Home, we met with Funeral Director Natalie Kindle, to get some general information and costs. My family and I liked her right off the bat - she was concise but compassionate, and she expressed that she believes in being economical when helping out families. Despite the fact that she had other engagements at the time of our meeting, she didn’t rush us. She listened to us and answered our questions with great care. Though our meeting was brief, I knew that she would take good care of us - and she did. She was already managing several funerals that same week, but she was able to help us as arrange my father’s funeral with a quick turnaround time.

Some of my relatives are already laid to rest at the cemetery of this facility, but my family and I were clueless as to the processes, procedures, and logistics involved. Natalie took the time to explain what to expect, every step of the way, to ensure that we were not in the dark. Most of my communication with Natalie to make the necessary arrangements were done over the phone (she was happy to meet and explain in person, but we opted to communicate with her via phone call/email/text to save time and energy). When she sent over documents/agreements for us to sign, she called me to explain what each of the documents were for and answered all my questions on the spot. She worked with a sense of urgency, but didn’t slack on precision. She was extremely organized and was a clear communicator throughout the entire process. It was clear to me that she truly cared about her clients and making this as easy as possible for them. I am so glad that we were able to work with Natalie in arranging the services at National Funeral Home. Working with Natalie was an extremely pleasant experience, as she was both professional and personable. Doing both the funeral and burial at the same facility also saved us a headache in an already stressful situation. It proved to be a streamline process where we didn’t have to worry much...

If you have other options, please look elsewhere first.

Our family worked directly with Jerry, whom we appreciated very much. He was very prompt, responsive, and put in effort to meet our needs.

However, we had horrible experiences with the General Manger, Carrie Hare. We had an incident where soil was not provided for the funeral services. While Jerry admitted and apologized for the mistake, Carrie later told us that we needed to put in a request first, but we were not made aware prior to the funeral. In the same way we don’t expect to to request for the burial grounds to be dug, we didn’t think we needed to ask for soil.

On top of the soil incident, we also had issues with several inches of excess natural water that was not pumped 15 minutes prior to our scheduled arrival leaving an extremely disrespectful and negligent burial site as my sister’s body was descending into the ground. This is extremely disrespectful in our culture. Three people from the family had tried to contact her on numerous occasions to address these issues for over an entire week with absolutely no response from her. We had to reach out to Jerry to even hear back from her after all those direct calls. When we finally did hear from her, the conversation took a very disappointing turn. She was not willing to take responsibility for ANY wrong doings nor did she have the decency to apologize for such negligence. She couldn’t even apologize for not being available to speak with us for an entire week. Instead, she thought it best to pass blame and disregard the occurrences. We are extremely disappointed and truly hurt that this was the way the service and preceding checkups have passed.

We were looking forward to working with the staff here as we came through a positive review from a family friend, but are saddened that this was the way it ended. We truly felt like our sister did not matter through these proceedings. We hope they don’t put any other families through such...

The last thing most of us want to do is bury a loved one. Just minutes after my father‘s passing, the hospice nurse contacted National Funeral Home per our family’s directive. They allowed us to keep our father with us until the last daughter arrived in order to say her final farewell. Natalie called the home to check on us and to start the process so that some of our issues could be alleviated during this wait time. Once everybody was in place and we had said our goodbyes, the care team went into action. I don’t know the names of the two people who came to the house to move my father to the funeral home… But they were the most magnificent humans imaginable in that horrific time. Their calm demeanor and care for my father‘s body was evident and appreciated. Once we got to the funeral home to discuss the arrangements for the service and all of the necessities, Natalie and Walter took over and ran with everything as if they were handling their own family member’s service. They were beautiful souls and we could not have done this without them. They treated us with the upmost respect, provided insight that we hadn’t thought of, cleaned off another family member’s gravesite marker before the ceremony, stressed about details as if they were for their own family. The moment I will remember forever is after the closing of the casket, I stepped back and probably looked a mess. I don’t recall Natalie turning around and noticing this and then hugging me. But being able to watch the video service online afterwards, gave me a perspective outside of that moment that I will carry with me forever. You can’t fake that kind of attention and care. They will be called upon for any services that we need in the future. Nothing personal, I hope we don’t need to see them anytime soon but I wish them happiness and peace in their...