prices, charges for opening and closing graves, and burial vault requirements have increased disproportionately compared to other rate-of-inflation spikes. When a single grave space costs a family $1,500, opening and closing it costs $900, and a required vault costs $800, then the family has to come up with $3,200 before even speaking with a funeral director. Opting for cremation eliminates that charge.
There are three categories of cremation-related services. First is immediate cremation or direct cremation —the body is cremated shortly after death, with no accompanying ceremonies or rites. The body is removed; placed in a minimum (cardboard) container; and after an arrangement conference with the decedent’s family and acquisition of proper signatures, the decedent is cremated. The ashes are delivered in either a basic plastic temporary container or in an urn of the family’s selection. Loved ones then decide on the final disposition of the ashes—burial, scattering, or even retaining them for the next family death or perhaps a dual scattering.
I have scattered ashes on behalf of family members many times, sometimes with unanticipated snafus. An avid fisherman passed away recently, and his children wanted his ashes scattered in the nearby river, where he had spent many a pleasant evening. When I handed over the urn, the family asked if I would be willing to accompany them and actually pour the contents into the water. I agreed. But on the riverbank in December, perhaps I should have held the open container just above the water instead of at waist level. The howling wind blew a large quantity of the ashes right back into our chilled faces.
The deceased man’s children received that ominous affront with good-natured laughter. Their dad, they said, would have gotten quite a kick out of the calamity. The incident reminded me of the day that Ted Kennedy and his family attempted to scatter the ashes of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife, Carolyn, off the end of a naval vessel in the open sea. With high winds and cameras rolling, it appeared that the ashes blew right back toward the ship.
An active elderly lady of substantial means contracted with me for the direct cremation of her late husband of forty-eight years. The day I presented her with her beloved spouse’s ashes, she asked whether I would call the office of their favorite golf course to request a scattering into one of the sand traps. This sweet couple had played there in a mixed golf league every Thursday for several years. She even specified the sand trap on the sixth hole, since her husband had been stuck there on several occasions.
I had heard such a request before and in each case had been denied—so I offered her a sneaky alternative. Why not go out to the course as usual on Thursday with her husband’s ashes quietly stashed in her golf bag? Upon reaching the designated trap, she could open the container, pour the ashes into the sand, and use the provided rake to mix them. She called me on Friday morning to report that the deed was done, even though she felt like a criminal the whole time.
With direct cremation, the customer can save hundreds of dollars merely by price shopping on the phone or in person. In my area, direct cremation charges range from a low (at my own funeral home) of $895, including the crematory fee, to a high of $2,495, not including the crematory fee. Crematory operators charge from $180 to $350 to actually cremate the body, and I include that fee as part of my service charge, although most funeral homes do not. Among other states, Florida and California are popular cremation states and are known for conducting price wars for services. Billboard and telephone book advertisements tout the best prices that funeral homes and even direct-disposal operators offer. It is not uncommon to see a billboard in California offering immediate cremation for $395.
Cremation with a memorial is the second category. This is basically the same service as in direct cremation, but an actual funeral ceremony is conducted without the body present. There are extra charges for use of the funeral home or church chapel, an obituary, a register book, clergy, and perhaps flowers. Funeral directors are much happier when a family decides to have a memorial service as opposed to mere direct cremation, as they can make a little more money and an obituary usually appears in the newspaper, which is great advertising. Charges for cremation with a memorial service, like any funeral home service offerings, vary tremendously, so customers should shop around.
The third category is a complete funeral service followed by cremation, which is a growing phenomenon in the funeral industry. The body is embalmed, dressed, placed in a rental casket (or even a purchased wood casket), and a visitation and funeral service are conducted traditionally—the same scenario that precedes a ground burial. The obvious difference is in the final disposition of the deceased. Instead of loading the casket into a hearse for a procession to the cemetery, the family and friends leave the funeral home and the body is cremated in private. This trend is a result of ever-increasing prices that cemeteries charge for grave spaces and for opening and closing the grave. Families have told me that they are happy to have a complete traditional funeral ceremony, cremate the deceased loved one, and not pay between $2,000 and $3,000 to a cemetery for ground burial.
Cemeteries are also feeling the effects of the cremation trend and fewer ground burials. To offset the decrease in cash flow, for years operators have sold burial vaults, monuments and markers, and now even caskets. In the early 1970s, funeral directors and cemetery operators began what is now an ongoing adversarial relationship. Directors took offense at cemetery operators’ sales of and profits from items that were once their exclusive domain.
When cemeteries first began to sell burial vaults, funeral homes dismissed it as a passing fad. Soon consumers would realize the error of their ways and stop buying products from vendors who had no business selling them. One early problem with cemetery vault sales was that cemetery personnel did not know the difference between a concrete box and an actual sealing vault. And since consumers had even less knowledge, many times a cheaply made fragile box was placed in a grave with the assumption that it was a sealed vault. Funeral directors banded together to try to stop cemetery operators from selling traditional funeral merchandise without a director’s license. That attempt went nowhere, and cemetery operators still actively promote burial vaults.
The fact that the cemetery usually stores the complete burial vault outdoors until needed is a thorn in my side. Concrete burial vaults stored in heat, cold, rain, and snow lose significant strength over time and become very fragile indeed. I have seen several cracked, cemetery-provided burial vaults being installed in graves, even though structural integrity was clearly lacking.
Forest Lawn Memorial Parks, in Los Angeles, probably initiated the idea of combining burial and a funeral home in the same location. Memorial parks are cemeteries with either very few or no upright monuments. Forest Lawn takes pride in the fact that there are no upright monuments to clutter the park-like setting, and the beautiful rolling hills attest to that. Flat bronze, ground-level grave markers are barely visible from a distance. You have to walk right up to a grave site to find out who is buried there. For them, it makes sense to have “everything in one place,” to quote a 1940s Forest Lawn newspaper ad. “Everything” means cemetery property, crematory, mortuary, and flowers and grave markers available for purchase.
Forest Lawn’s founder met tremendous resistance from area funeral homes when he first introduced the concept. However, Forest Lawn prevailed and is the largest such operation in the United States today, and it’s still owned and operated by the same family. The combination idea is another one whose time has not yet arrived in my neck of the woods, where the funeral industry evolves at a snail’s pace.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed reviewing the old funeral records at my former places of employment. Dusty binders from the 1950s and 1960s were a favorite research item for me, especially to review funeral costs back in the day. Besides the obvious itemized entries of the time, such as the funeral home service charge and merchandise charges, I noticed that the preprinted records of the funeral often listed a fee for a door badge and wreath. I asked my elderly employer at that time what those things were. He informed me that, many years ago, following the Victorian tradition, people would affix an intricate black badge or a black wreath on the front door of a home that had experienced a death in the family. Sometimes they attached black bunting to the outside entranceway of the residence to further inform the community that death had visited the home and that proper respect and sympathy was in order. Even today, we Americans still somewhat cling to the Victorian ritual of wearing black as a symbol of mourning. In England in Queen Victoria’s time, a mourning widow was expected to wear black clothing for the entire year following her husband’s demise. The mourning period for other members of the family depended on their relationship to the deceased and included wearing a black armband. We follow that tradition to a degree today, as when a police officer or firefighter dies in the line of duty and his or her colleagues wear black armbands or a swatch of black tape over their badges. Also, in the sporting world, mourning is
