Not sure it changed my opinion, but it is a huge, greedy exploitative business. My cousin refused to have one for his wife, and I don’t blame him. People talk about big pharma—big funeral is just as bad.
We went with a family-owned one. Their sales weren't too high-pressure, but they were there. I bought an urn off of Amazon and had it mailed to them instead of buying one through them, and they made no comment about it. They made very little money off of me, I think, but were still very respectful. I'm glad I didn't go with corporate owned.
This. I work at a small family owned business and it’s so frustrating when people call us vultures when really it’s the big companies you need to worry about. We’re just trying to keep the lights on, but these big companies make it really hard to keep the prices down.
Yeah, (Lack of) Dignity bought our local home. The person coordinating my dad’s funeral kept badgering us during the planning to give them good reviews on social media. wtf? They are used car salesmen in disguise.
Dignity is an absolute shit company, and I left reviews saying so. I could get my loved one cremated and their ashes put on a literal goddamn rocket and blasted into space for the low low price of 18k? I unfortunately have three experiences with this shit company.
First was my father in law. He was murdered in his home on the Thursday night before Labor Day. I went to plan his funeral (my wife was in no shape, so all of that was completely on me.) They told me Thursday was the earliest they could do it. A whole week. Why? Because of the holiday, and they were really busy (said in a manner that I should pity their workload.) That (and the following year) was by far the worst in my wife's life.
Second was my mother in law. Slightly better circumstances, but she laid dead in the bedroom for about 6 hours due to a botched dispatch from the funeral home. To top that off, the cemetery where they are both buried is also owned by that shit company. No flowers on the grave site except for special occasions (mother's day, etc.) and you have to buy the flowers from the cemetery AND they only leave them out for the one day.
Third was my mom. She died on July 3. Dad selected a local funeral home, and when I called them to pick her up, they asked when we wanted to come in to make the arrangements. I said the 5th assuming that were closed on the holiday, and they assured me that they were there for me and death took no holidays. when I stepped across that Dignity floor mat to help him plan the funeral, my heart literally sank. I told the funeral director what I thought about his company - how both of my wife's parents had burial policies that had been paid for 50+ years and each one still cost us ~15k out of pocket, how shitty the sales tactics were, etc. He told me that the company had recently bought their funeral home and they hated him too because he wasn't going to treat small town families the way their sales quotas wanted. He said they hated him even more because despite him non-conforming to their program, his profits were the highest in the area by far, and I believe him. He took the policy that dad had and told him no matter what he chose, that policy would cover every dime. Mom had a much nicer funeral than the two others I mentioned and it was a peaceful time for us all.
Fuck Dignity and everything about them.
Yes. My husband and I always agreed that we should spend money on living, so when he unexpectedly died without a will, that was the one thing I knew how to do right. Went online to look for “-my city-cheapest cremation” and was so proud of myself for finding the cheapest in the city. It was still $1,500 and when I arranged everything online, there were SO MANY add-ons popping up-urns, commemorative t shirts, photo pillows, services, etc.; every step had all this additional stuff you could pay more for.
When my dad almost died at my house, he disclosed that his and my mom’s cremations are already paid for. He paid around $1,200 each and if he were to die out of his home state, it’s a small fee to be cremated there. Amazing! I am doing this as soon as I recover financially from my husband dying so my child doesn’t have to deal with this.
We're off to the nearest medical training schools to be cadavers. It might sound morbid, but just about anyone in the medical device field will tell you how incredibly valuable they are. Please consider it.
John Oliver did a very interesting segment on body and organ donation. It was pretty eye-opening on how little control you have over where your body ends up being used.
I saw this! I remember someone being blown up, is that correct? I mean I don’t really care but I certainly don’t want my body being used for weapons development. I find that immensely distasteful.
Yeah! And someone else’s body was used for some stupid entertainment reason. Like, you think you’re helping future physicians and researchers, but instead you’re helping develop some godawful weapon?
I taught forensic science for 18 years. Have you ever heard of the Body Farm? It's located in my city and many people donate their body to it. They clearly have no idea what happens. In medical schools the bodies are fairly well treated respectfully. At a community College near me they kept 2 bodies for 5 years and students dissected them. But yes, bodies are blown up, hacked up, shot up, stabbed, and anything else you can think of. What bothers me the most is people donate their bodies thinking it's for a great cause. Then. Their body parts are sold. Bones and skin are 2 body parts they sell well. I just won't do it personally but I've seen a lot.
I have read that the schools only keep your body for a certain time period, then you are sent back & cremated, back to your family. Wonder how it’s all done because cremation sounds better than burial.
This is true. I worked at a med school. At the end of term, there was a memorial service for the donors. Students would read poems and play music. The donor’s cremains were then sent back to their families.
They kept my dad about 9 months. They sent me a letter detailing what procedures had been learned with him. They placed his ashes in a mausoleum in a nearby graveyard. They had a memorial service for everyone from that year with a dove release and 22 gun salute for the military donors. The shooting was done before the doves incase anyone else was worried how that would play out.
They also provided grief support services for a year and while I didn’t really use them, they reached out to me around holidays and his birthday to check in on me.
It was such a good option my godmother chose it too and my grandmother us signed up for it.
True. I took a cadaver lab in college and was immensely grateful to the individuals who donated their bodies to us. It does make a real difference in the world. I looked into donating to the body farm, but was perplexed by the paperwork. This might be the better option.
A professor the medical school near us has arranged to donate his body to the school. He has a lower- floor office and the cadaver lab is on a higher floor. He was interviewed by the local newspaper years ago and told the reporter he's one of the few who really knows where he'll go after he dies. (Points.... up!) True story.
Thank you so much. I ran across it the night he died actually. It’s been tremendously helpful, so thank goodness. I wish peace and comfort to you too; if you’re recommending the sub you must have been through a lot. And hugs!
I'm still struggling 20 months out. Some days are good, most are not. But I'm trying to figure out how to continue living, so that's something.
Today was a day when I really could have used his embrace. Our eldest turned 30 today, our second had a bad car accident with a downed tree across the highway (she's okay, but her car is totaled) and our youngest finally got a job that will enable him to live independently. My dogs rolled in roadkill and stink badly. Today was a lot of ups and downs that I would like to share with him. And if he were here he would bathe the dogs...
Oh sweetie I'm so sorry for your loss and the day you had.
I have to admit you had me laughing at the end.
I needed that. I feel you and everything you went through today.
My "day" actually began last October with a new crappy days each month.
October...our cousin visiting us had a massive stroke
November... he "came home" to live with us and became his caregiver.
December...I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer...in my uterus.
January...I had a radical hysterectomy.
February... I started chemotherapy. To be done every 3 weeks.1 week later my husband went to hospital with a serious infection but not before he saw my hair begin to fall out.
Thankfully I was able to spend the last weekend at the hospital in February with him because....
March 1st he passed away.Thankfully he passed in the VA hospital. They paid for the cremation he wanted and our daughters took care of everything else for me because my brain wasn't working due to the chemo... Thankfully he didn't have to see my buzzed head. (My hair had been down to my waist)
April...I got pneumonia which caused my platelets to drop to deadly low which ended up pushing my next infusion out for an extra 2 weeks.
May...I spent Mother's Day weekend in the hospital getting 2 platelet transfusions and 1 whole blood... pushing me out another 6 weeks.
June...today, the 26th I FINALLY had my last infusion!!!
I GOT TO RING THE BELL🧡🧡🧡
There were a lot of happy days in there too.
Everything I wished he could have been here to support and laugh with me.
All I can say is that saten tried to destroy me but all he did was make me stronger.
THANK YOU JESUS!!!!
My husband was with me through my entire cancer treatment regimen. We laughed when our daughter bought me a rainbow colored wig that came down to my waist. Aforementioned daughter insisted that I had to wear it in public for one whole day, so I chose a treatment day. The oncology nurses and other patients were cracking up at my "My little Pony" hair. I'm so grateful for the years I had with him. I'm hoping that some day these memories don't sting like they do now.
Oh wow, I can completely relate. I’m almost six months out, and every day is some new crisis, every crisis has ten new complications. I remember the night before our son was born almost five years ago. We went for a lovely walk along the levee near our house and on the way back to our car, my dog ran up to us smelling like a nightmare, covered in cat poop, smiling from ear to ear. I can still remember him saying “I can’t take this anymore!” While he bathed her in the backyard. He was always much quicker and more efficient at it.
Our kid is still so young; today he told me he never liked his dad. I just quit my job to take a new, harder one across the country. I cut off contact with my monstrous father, have been threatened legally by my late husbands ex wife, been told I can’t sell the truck and motorcycle that belonged to him, or put the vehicle we drive in my name, have to sell my house, and been left with nothing but debts I didn’t know about. His mother took his boat and sold it to remodel her bathroom. I keep telling people I’m not doing well, but they just point to what I’ve accomplished and say that I’ll be fine. I don’t feel like I’ll be fine, at all. I feel like I’m drowning and my best is just not good enough. I feel like I’m letting down my child.
Anyway. I didn’t mean for all that to come out; I just saw your stinky dog situation and related to it. I hope your good days are outnumbering your bad, your kids are thriving, and you’re able to enjoy some things even though you can’t with him anymore. Much love to you.
My grandma was hugely against cremation, then she looked into to the cost of burial, and she changed her mind quickly about it after my grandpa passed. she refused to do a burial too because she would rather the money for that go to her kids after she passed too.
I live in the "frozen tudra" and a lot of the old people around here STILL opt for "spring burial" so if they die in, say, October, they're stored somewhere until May and the relatives pay for that cold storage. It just boggles my mind. Just get cremation. When I go to these "spring burials" I'm always worried there will be defrosting leakage happening.
The last two "funerals" we did in our family... We just had a wake at our homes and called it good. One was buried in our local military cemetery, one donated his body to a medical teaching college, so no real burial costs and nobody manipulating us into doing anything in particular for ceremonies.
That's how I want to go, too - I don't want people wasting time, effort, and money trying to put me in the ground. Just hang out and enjoy time and memories with the people who are still here.
Old song, gotta update the lyrics now.
"I can't afford to live, but I guess I'll have to try
Undertakers' bought by corpos, APY calculated when you die"
When I was ten years old, my grandfather died in a house fire. The house and everything in it (including my grandfather) was incinerated. That didn’t stop the funeral home at our small town for charging full price for a cremation. 🙄
Other than being *shocked* at how much it all costs and never wanting to take part in that...
I mainly am concerned about the environmental impact of death. Embalming and burial is very wasteful! Cremation is better but still that's a ton of fossil fuels and carbon. I see there's a new water-based cremation idea (very like how movie bad guys dissolve bodies in a vat), but my real leaning is the green burial.
No embalming or casket, they just wrap up the body and put it in the ground, and plant a shrub or something over the spot. Maybe a plaque but literally no one will care I'm under that bush in 10 years, maybe just carve my initials in the trunk or something.
Not only the cost, but the absolutely vulturistic nature of the industry.
“You loved them didn’t you? You want to show them nothing but the best one last time don’t you? Why cheap out on the $1200 casket, when you should buy the $20,000 rare vintage smoked mahogany casket with ivory and gold detailing. I mean it is where they will be for the rest of eternity, and I know you know how important it is that they’re laid to rest with dignity 😌😌😌”
When I helped my best friend plan his father’s funeral, he had to have him cremated instead of buried. It was a hard decision and not what was in the will of the decedent. The funeral director kept pushing my friend to upsell him by saying really inappropriate things about his dead father. “It’s what he would have wanted,” etc.
I pulled him aside to talk about the heavy handed sales tactics and explain a decision had already been made about cremation, so there’s no point in “upsetting him further.” He heard me, so at the next meeting with all his colleagues and my friend and me, he started upselling the “cremains” boxes so “each family member could have one.”
I let him talk until he was done. My bestie sat there, numb and sick to his ass of all this. So I waited a beat and said “no one in the family knows he’s being cremated…since half of them died in that fire...”
Not true, of course. My bestie is not an actor, but he did put his face in his hand and pretend to cry in a performance I’m still proud of him for. It was the only way he could hide his laughter. I don’t think we ever saw that guy again. Must have been new.
Edit: This was at Forrest Lawn, by the way.
That was terrific. It tops mine.
When I was only 19, I had to handle my grandmother's arrangements. The cemetery required liners for the caskets (she owned a spot and wanted to be buried with her husband.) The funeral home tried to upsell me on the most expensive watertight liner. I asked him why we should get that and he replied that it was to preserve the body. I told him my grandmother would want to rot because she loved gardening. The look of horror on his face. It was a bright spot during a horrible time.
My grandpa fell victim to that exact BS. He bought grandma a "Cadillac" casket. Then when he died, my aunt simply wouldn't relent that he had to be buried in a matching one beside her.
That was a lot of potential inheritance spent on overpriced death boxes.
So often it’s not the well off that chose those. I had a friend barely scraping by that felt her mother needed Cadillac (probably the funeral director playing on emotions,) when something ordinary would have been just fine. She thought more expensive showed more love. What a waste of money.
I went with my grandmother to set up the funeral for my grandpa. He was adamant that we don’t spend very much money, because “I’m dead, I don’t care”.
I watched them pat the back of her hand while she was crying and say something to the extent of “I’m sure you loved him very much. Wouldn’t you want him to have the very best for his eternal rest?”
I wanted to jump across the desk and strangle him.
When I found out people buy expensive caskets and cremate their people in them I about fell over dead myself at the funeral home. I was like no rhe cardboard box is just fine.
The green/natural burial stuff I had found when I looked it up before looks like it usually wraps you in some fabric and uses a cardboard box, but I'm with you on it.
My burial wish is to strip me naked, wrap me in cotton, and give me back to the earth. I'll settle for as close as they can get to that.
A friend of mine did a green burial for her father. Wrapped in a sheet, put in a wicker “casket”. Quite frankly, it looked awesome. It’s what I want. Better than a cardboard box, looked awesome. As long as it was untreated materials, it gives the appearance that some effort was made while still going back to the earth.
"Human composting" is actually a thing, legal in Washington State and I think a few others now. But you're right it's not actually easy and requires quite a bit of time and involvement to get it right. Which actually goes to a core problem of this thread because goals like "cheap" or "simple" or "environmentally friendly" are all laudable but not the same thing at all and I encourage people to plan ahead regarding which of those goals they want and how to follow them.
Meat composts very well. Animals have been dying in nature since the beginning. We bury all our meat scraps and fat. The advice against meat compost is because it can smell strongly and attract wild animals. Not if you collect it with other scraps in a 5 gallon lidded bucket and bury in the garden when full.
The local deer processing facility saves all the scrap and buries it into their wheat fields with front loaders.
Apparently several states have legalized human composting. I'm leaning that way if it becomes more available. Unlike cremation the process involves being laid out on a well oxygenated tray on like a bed of straw.
Just sounds much more peaceful.
And then my compost can be scattered somewhere pretty.
I was pleasantly surprised at the handful of natural burial options in my state. Might opt for that, only issue is that it's way off the beaten path. Not that people would visit me anyway!
Cremation is convenient for scattering wherever, but I also hate the idea of becoming pollution. Embalming and entombment is right out, I'd like to avoid the chemicals.
Yeah it's a touching thing in movies where someone goes to the cemetery and talks to the gravestone but come on, how many people are going to do that, really.
I don't have kids and my family members aren't that close physically or emotionally, so it might still be worth a burial in a meadow someplace. Hopefully they'll slap my name and coordinates up on [FindAGrave.com](http://FindAGrave.com) in case somebody wants to find me! 👻
I cannot tell you how grateful my siblings and I were that our dad had pre-paid everything for both himself and our mom so it was a significant amount of stress we didn't have to worry about.
My parents were creamated but buried together in one plot, and my dad thought like you and didn't pay for a fancy urn because "they use your grief to get you to waste your money." Our mom went first and we didn't know if you don't pay for a nice urn they put the remains in what looks exactly like a plastic black Quick container. We scrambled at the last minute to find one of her silk scarves to try to hide that she was basically in tupperware.
When our dad died a few months later we spent the $750 on a lovely wooden box, and I swear we could all feel his irritation from beyond that we caved in.
I bought an urn on Amazon super-cheap and had it delivered to the funeral home. They would have upsold the absolute crap out of me if I had bought it through them. Not today, Satan.
In 2008 when I did my dad’s funeral money was tight (also he was the type of person who would have come back to haunt me if I bought the fancy urn) and he came in a vacuum seal type plastic bag in a cardboard box 😂.
Deliberate move on their part to shame us into giving them more money.
I'm the youngest so even though I totally agreed with getting a nice one for our father, I did silently tell my dad in my head that it was my brother that made the decision.
You know, just in case there is an afterlife and it contains petty irritations I was just trying to aim his annoyance at someone else!
Bingo. When my dad passed away, the funeral home director was telling us about how people did not account for the expense of burials and assumed that cremation would be significantly cheaper. It is not as cheap as people expect.
I think in the case of the funeral director we were working with, the surviving family member didn’t even have $2,000. It made me sad that the bodies had to be commuted between one funeral home to another because the families were trying to round up money for cremation.
This was me. I lost my mother’s body for a moment because they transferred her while i was waiting for my paycheck to hit.
I had to pawn my grandfather’s ring to get enough cash to do a basic cremation. Broke down in a parking lot on my lunch break trying to call places asking where they transferred her.
It worked out, but damn, totally unprepared for any of it.
I’m Jewish, and I like the Jewish way of doing this, but you could adjust to your personal preferences. You bury the person the next day, if possible, in a plain wood casket. The Rabbi can do a service centered on talking about the person graveside. Then you do Shiva, which is a period of mourning and eating.
Jewish people generally don’t cremate but can donate organs.
A year later, you go back and add the headstone.
You can do it in a very controlled and “correct” way. This gives the mourners something to do.
I’m in a branch of Judaism called Reform, which is kind of like taking the parts that work for you. After my father died, I had Shiva at my house—just lots of food and hanging out and talking about my dad.
Also, the price is minimal. (Include any dumb antisemitic comments here.)
I already bought our funeral plots near my husband’s parents. 2K each, and you can sell them back if you change your mind.
The casket is about the least expensive kind outsideof cardboard. You ask the Rabbi what they charge for funerals. Since I’m a member of a Synagogue, after our Rabbi did the service, I donated to the Synagogue. There’s no particular amount if they don't suggest one. We did $500. My mother probably did, too.
The Shiva was around 2K for food, drink, and flowers.
Jewish people generally don’t send flowers at a funeral. Instead, they might offer a charity you can donate to in memory of the person.
I had to Google vaults.
Jewish law doesn't prohibit the use of burial vaults, but some say they are antithetical to traditional Judaism. For example, some say that vaults deny the reality of death by inhibiting decomposition and are ostentatious. Others say that placing the casket directly in contact with the earth is an important part of Jewish burial to ensure the "dust to dust" cycle.
So nope!
I do funerals as a part of my work, on top of my own family's and personal history with death. Some things I have learned over the years.
For the practical end, a compromise might be a headstone in the cemetery and also a cremation. My own grandma was buried in a columbarium, where her ashes are in a small part of a larger memorial with others. Less space, less cost, and you still get the memorial aspect.
Now for the extra bits you didn't ask for but I will preach until the sun consumes us.
1. Plan the funeral or memorial. So many people will insist they don't want anything, because it would be a waste of time. Or worse, demand that everyone have a happy celebration that they are gone. For some this is a moment to celebrate their long lived life.
But for Pete's sake, I hope my loved ones are sad when I die. It means they actually like me and miss me. A service, a gathering, something to let people be here together and say we miss the person is an important part of the healing process.
2. Every family is complicated. Every single one. Some more than others, but every funeral I have ever held included a conversation around a complicated family dynamic. That is normal, and nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of. Just give the planners a heads up.
3. The importance of marking deaths is to remind us that life is precious. We can't turn back time, or bargain for more of it. We can only do the best we have with what we have today.
I’ve done live funeral music, and the part about not making it a celebration is really poignant. I’ve had very strange request for songs. Some have been the ok since they were the deceased’s favorite song. But I only did one, “ I want it to be a party” funeral. Never again. It’s akward, someone will find it offensive or inappropriate, and it makes people uncomfortable. Funerals are for the living, not the deceased. It’s a time to grieve and find comfort in family or community. Sad funerals are good funerals; it’s cathartic. Don’t be the person that ask for it, it’s a disservice to your loved ones.
Now if you do it after, similar to New Orleans Marches. That can be ok. But not during the service or visitation.
thanks for this post, i never thought of it like this. i've been that person saying some stupid shit about wanting my loved ones to just celebrate my life, but really it all came from a place of me not wanting them to be sad (as if that could ever be helped) and about me not being comfortable with grief in general.
can i ask what strange song requests you've had? nvm if that's private to you. i'm only curious.
I agree that the party funeral is not good. When I was in high school, a classmate died in a car crash. She was on the dance team associated with the marching band, so the family asked the marching band to play at the funeral. Our chuckleheaded band director took them at their word when they asked us to play what we were currently performing at the football games. So we played “Disco Inferno (burn baby burn)” at the funeral. We all later wished we hadn’t done that.
My in-laws were caterers, specifically BBQ. They said one of the worst jobs they ever had was catering a "celebration of life" where everyone was trying to act happy and enjoy their damn BBQ to cheerful music because it's what the dead person wanted. They said it was so much sadder and more morbid than a regular funeral.
It’s really important to have a funeral, a memorial, some kind of ceremony. Helps people grieve together. Personally I think that’s good to have as soon after the death as possible. Waiting months is tough.
Catholic or Lutheran services are very “scripted”, and that really comes in handy for those with Christian beliefs. The rituals are just the right mix of grief and hope, acknowledging the deceased wasn’t perfect, and at the same time, giving them the benefit of the doubt. I watched a Church of England service for the medieval king Richard III, whose remains were being interred in Westminster Abbey (?) after being discovered in a car park. Richard III was one of Shakespeare’s greatest villains. When the officiant referred to Richard as “our brother in Christ,” I thought that the service strikes the right note. Even though we all fear what lies beyond this world, everyone should hope for mercy.
We had a cremation and a memorial service with a burial of the remains at a family graveyard in 2022 to arrange. It didn’t change my opinion because I have long been appalled at most death customs for years and had researched for my own plans years ago as well as keeping up with options in general.
This is what we did and how much it cost. We called two local funeral homes with crematoriums and asked prices. We had the one with the lowest estimate, which we had initially got the information from via a billboard by a highway near the nursing home, pick up the body. We had the cremains placed in a wooden box with a cardboard bottom and picked them up ourselves.
We arranged a service with the church the person went to, which was the same church he had attended and his wife had been christened at in 1934.
My husband hand dug the hole in the family cemetery for the cremains.
We had a graveside service led by the minister right after the church memorial service.
An uncle and aunt who live next door to the cemetery offered their home for a reception. They borrowed tables and chairs from their church, just as they do every Thanksgiving. They had someone clean that morning, but it was their regular weekly person.
I ordered a floral arrangement for the church and one for the gravesite.
I wrote and placed an obituary in the local paper.
We planned a menu of four food items and three drinks and bought from Costco and a local grocery store. I bought paper tablecloths, and disposable plates, cups, and silverware from Costco and ordered simple clear large serving bowls and spoons off Amazon. We prepared most of the food ourselves, which was country ham rolls, tomato mozzarella salad with basil, a pasta salad with meat and cheese, and various Costco cookies. The two salads are ones I’ve done for years for large groups, so I can almost do them from memory. The ham rolls required just stuffing ham ordered sliced from the deli in store-bought rolls. Drinks were white wine and individual cans/bottles of lemonade, iced tea, and water. The wine was on a side table with cups and the other drinks were in iced tubs. It was summer so we were outside in a backyard. The house could have fit everyone spread out through the house and garage if needed, just like we do at Thanksgiving. Clean up was to give leftovers to whomever wanted them and trash the rest. My husband took the bags to the dump the following day. I think a scout troop ended up with the extra tub of drinks for camp.
Cremation and box was $1800, minister and organist several hundred donation (maybe $500 and $200?), flowers were a couple of hundred, food and drinks were about $500, obit about $150. Gravestone was $400, although that would have been covered due to military service if we had thought about that before we ordered it.
Obviously, we were fortunate in the sense of having ancestors who had a farm with a graveyard that is still owned by the family. Each family unit sends $100 a year for mowing now that the close-by relatives are getting older. Prior to that, they mowed it. One uncle must still pay the taxes and insurance.
And not everyone has a family member with homes large enough to hold everyone and willing to do that, much less next door to the cemetery, so that’s obviously not a usual thing.
But much of the rest some people can do. Another advantage we had was that I’m the DIL, not the bereaved child, and the death was for an elderly person with dementia. So not entirely unexpected and not the kind of sudden, tragic situation that would have rendered me unable to plan and execute what needed to be done.
I took care of my mother's funeral and cremation. Her ashes were buried next to those of my father, who had died some 30 years earlier.
In retrospect, I wish that their remains had been handled the same way as my grandparents. My aunt handled both of her parent's funerals and had them cremated and then scattered in a large rose garden near the crematorium. There was a small brass plaque with their names on it put on a nearby wall but that was optional. What I liked about this option was the following:
- I tend to believe that the mortal remains of someone should be treated with respect but are not actually the person as they were known in life. Taking up large areas in graveyards seems wasteful just to warehouse dead people.
- It ties the person's memory to a particular place. My aunt said that every time she saw a rose garden she could think of her parents and even if she had moved to the other side of the country she would not feel that she had left the grave untended or neglected.
We interred my mom just Thursday. She died in December, but we live a long way away.
We had a very simple ceremony at the cemetery with some family members. Afterward, we rented a private dining room at a restaurant and took everyone out for lunch, where we shared our memories.
The bill from the funeral home was $1000, lunch at the restaurant was under $500. We still have to get 2023 added to my mom's niche. (She and my dad arranged everything beforehand, so most of the engraving was done)
My mom was very active in her church until her dementia made it impossible. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of ministers. My mom was 86. Realistically, most of her friends are dead, and a lot of her family is gone, which is why we kept it simple.
My dad used to say, "throw my body to the wolves, I don't care." Which is actually the least helpful thing you could say. If you are prepping for your death, at least give people some basic instructions.
My little brother died recently and like everyone is saying, it's expensive and the people who operate the establishments are kinda gross. Like car salesman gross.
My mom and I have talked about what she wants. My state allows for human composting, she's picked flowers that she would like to have planted in her remains. It's a little weird, but I think a nice way to remember her.
Not weird at all imo, very much in line with the natural order of things. I guess it is outside social norms, which i find kind of sad and I’m hopeful that what your mom wants will become the norm or at least close to it. She may be a pioneer of sorts.
Yeah I guess I meant weird like, not as common. Ive done a good amount of research on the green burial stuff and I'm completely onboard. I hope it rolls out to the whole country. Burial, and even cremation is so wasteful.
Do green burials ever get disturbed? Like back in the wagon train days, they had to pile rocks over a shallow burial when someone died on the trail, to keep animals from digging up the body.
Both my mother and my stepfather's funereal were completely planned out.
I didn't really do much of anything.
Mom was in hospice care when my stepfather passed and I got a call from the funeral home about 3 hours after he passed.
They'd planned out everything years in advance and things just started happening when he passed.
Mom went about 6 months later and the funeral folks were right there as soon as they heard.
I have no idea how much it all cost for either of them. Literally the only expense I had to pay was for the preacher's time and that was not much.
Do your family a favor and do all that work well beforehand. You also know that you'll get the funeral that you want to have.
Dad's assured me that he's already planned everything and he had me come into town a few years ago so he could show me where all the documents are and I met with his banker and his lawyer. So now I know both of them.
I agree; it’s a huge gift of love and foresight to deal with this yourself before you die. I’m about to do it after I move so my young child will never have to think about the logistics while grieving.
I felt like it was a racket very similar to the wedding racket. Taking someone in an emotional state and using guilt and obligation-based arguments to get them to overspend.
My dad’s was over $25k. He was worth every penny, he had the money, and it was the funeral he would have wanted. We gave him a great and meaningful send off. $2k just to open (and close) the plot he already owned and had the deed to. It IS a racket.
I’m going to be cremated and scattered somewhere. 😉
Both my parents died last year, 3 weeks apart, no it wasn't broken heart as they'd been divorced for almost 30yrs. My mom in California and my Dad in Idaho. Both wanted to be cremated and we did a celebration of life after. Cremation in California was $5200, Idaho was $900. I learned that even in death where you die can cost more money. The entire industry is a joke. $400 for a basic urn from the funeral parlor vs $59 for one on Amazon. It's a cash grab at someone's lowest point and unless you know different you just go along with what they tell you
It's a huge waste of money. Mom and I planned dad's funeral. The final price tag was astonishing. She decided then and there that she wanted no funeral, just simple cremation and burial of her ashes beside dad.
I followed her wishes and got a lot of flack from her family for not going all out for a funeral. I don't care. I did exactly what she requested.
After dealing with the expense and headache of funerals for both my parents, I plan to be cremated and scattered on a hilltop on my farm. I even admire a fellow I grew up with who was a few years older that died recently and his final wishes were to donate his body to a teaching hospital and have no funeral service or burial.
That said, the wife and I are buying cemetery plots and a headstone. I learned from a cousin who really got into genealogy research that cemetery headstones are quite handy to verify other records of some long ago ancestors existence.
When my husband died, I went with cremation. We'd talked of it often in relation to other family members, so even though he never told me his wishes, I figured he'd be okay with it. He hasn't come back to haunt me, so I suppose I got it right.
I arranged the memorial myself. I rented an ecumenical chapel and their reception area which, including the services of a minister, cost me less than $1K. I decorated the reception room with the Southwestern pottery that we'd collected over the years, rather than splurging on flowers, which would've been far less meaningful. The catering was my biggest expense, but I just wasn't up for doing all of that myself. We had no children and no relatives were offering to help, so I went with what was easy. I even designed the program myself and had it printed for under $100.
It was exhausting. I didn't really want to do it. But my husband had a lot of friends and I know that if I hadn't done all of that, I would've felt terrible for not giving him a good send-off. I was awfully damn glad when it was all over though, and judging from how I got mobbed at the reception, I'd say his friends were glad I gave them the opportunity to pay their respects.
One thing that really helped was that when my husband went into home hospice, I started making the plans. I also wrote the obit and my own eulogy while he was still technically alive. There's a lot of paperwork involved with death, and I knew I wouldn't up for all that would be required after he was gone, so I did as much as I could in advance. It saved my ass.
TL;DR: You can pull of a very nice commemoration for far less than if you work through the funeral industry, but plan ahead of time. Once someone is gone, you don't want to deal with much of anything, so it's better to be able to just execute the plan already in place.
It gave me a greater respect for cultural rituals. I am not a particularly religious person, but it's was nice to have the religious and social customs so we could just be on auto pilot during our grief and not have to try to figure out what we should do.
I know a lot of people know how to honor their loved ones with personal and deeply meaningful memorials or services, but no one in my family would be even remotely capable of that so for us it was nice to have a pre-determined process flow.
My wife passed away recently, and I had to deal with this for the first time.
I was left with a lack of hard wishes, a fragmented family (diff areas of the country), a lot of “advice”, and not much else.
I decided a traditional funeral / service was impractical for family reasons. And I was glad; once I found out the prices of such things, it made me realize how important it will be for me to make this simple for my own kids someday.
I chose cremation. I had the ashes separated into two containers. One got brought on a plane to her mom, who is going to bury them in an existing family plot somewhere in Alberta. The other we are burying in our backyard, planting a tree, and dedicating it as a space myself and my daughters can visit her.
Nobody in the family thought expensive “services” were desired here. We wanted to do things ourselves, kind of a “keep it family business” vibe. I had a few comments from outsiders with a bit of disapproval (“no headstone?”) but ignored them.
We used a local family owned funeral home for my dad in February. The man who runs it was so helpful, so compassionate and we were actually surprised that the total amount was less than we expected. They went above and beyond and we will 100% use them again when needed. He helped us get my dad a plot at Veterans cemetery to bury his ashes, helped my brother write a letter for the request and even made phone calls to the right people on our behalf. My dad’s service was like a museum of his life with all his Army stuff displayed so respectfully. Truly the best experience we could have had.
Best one I went to was a cremation then a gathering at a banquet hall type place. Some photos and momentos. No church or funeral industry in the latter. Not sure of cremation cost but banquet hall couldn’t have been more than $700 for 2 hours on a Wednesday evening. No food or drinks involved either.
Both my parents died 5 months apart in 2022. For me: I would like to be made into a tree or mushrooms 🍄 anything to put me back in the earth. No chemicals, no box, no fire, no music, no crying, no flowers. Funerals are for the living and it seems like people save up all the nice things to say about you the day after you can no longer hear it
Oh yeah the death industry is a total racket. The Neptune Society is both the cheapest and the easiest way I've found to get through it. Burial where you want, or cremation and you decide where the ashes go, done in less than a week, minimal cost and boom done. We did a big celebration a few times for the more popular family members, but that's expensive and exhausting.
For me, I'm going to get one of those Green Burial plots when they're available. Stick me in the ground and plant a tree on me. Done. Since the plots aren't marked, those burial yards make really lovely forever-parks.
I recently arranged the funeral for my mother. I knew she insisted on a regular funeral and burial, so I followed her wishes, even know the cost was much higher. My father-in-law passed about 10 years ago, and he was cremated, with a total cost being probably around $2000, including paying for using the church for a memorial service. I went ahead and pre-arranged my mothers funeral and services about a year prior to her death, as I was concerned she may outlast her money, and at some point we may of had to have her go to a Medicaid paid nursing home. The total cost in 2021 was estimated at $13,000, and this was arranged by a funeral director friend of mine who I trusted completely, so there was no fluff or padding of the expenses. Mom already had a plot next to dad, with the tombstone available and she had also prepaid the 'opening' fee, which by itself was $1000 at the cemetery. Since those costs were already paid, it probably 'saved' another $2,000 to 3,000 more for her burial. Even using a friend, I do think some of the funeral costs are a 'racket', when my father passed many years prior to my mom, we used a different funeral home, I just remember arranging those services and it seemed like the funeral director was always pushing us to get something more expensive, using the phrase, 'this is what your beloved would have wanted' - real sales job. Very much like /u/techo-soft-girl mentions in their post.
Nice part is if you plan ahead and plan to prepay you can look around and check out prices and compare, and you or your loved ones won't be stressed by the sales pitch. I honestly believe if you prepay, the funeral home won't affect your emotions, but sure in some ways it will happen.
The cost estimating sheet provided to me and my brother for my mother's expenses was nice to see all the items listed out. We signed up for somethings, avoided other fees. I understand some funeral homes attempt to 'bundle' the packages so you don't know all those items, just a set price for this casket, hearst, service, etc., which you should try to avoid. At mom's death, we actually got a few dollars back, less than $100, since items didn't cost as much. One fee really terrible is the cost to put an obituary in the newspaper, there is a fee for a picture and so much per word and I'm sure there are some obit's you'll see that are easily over $2,000! Most funeral homes now days put in a minimal notice, with a few personal items and perhaps giving times of service, with them posting a full obituary on their website as part of their services for a minimal fee (I don't think any cost?).
Finally I add the prepaid money goes into an insurance policy, setup as a prepaid Trust, shielding those funds from the government in the event mom needed care under Medicaid for a nursing home. For those wondering, her memory care facility was over $7000 a month, and while my siblings and I could have carried those expenses for a few months, it just didn't seem possible long term. When she was alive she was getting about $4000 per month Social Security and Pension, so the cost rate to her was only about $3500.
Sorry for your loss.
It’s a personal decision that binds your loved ones to follow your wishes. This is peculiar to me because the living are the ones dealing with it.
Sometimes I feel the dead lost their voice and practicality must take over. The living should do what they feel is right according to what they can afford as far as time goes.
All that said, I’m a fan of cremation. Cost wise, a little cheaper.
When my teen died, I chose creation because I knew my ex would make a stink about the remains. I knew my mother would make a stink about all of it.
Son got cremated. My friend is an undertaker and he divided the ashes in two for each parent.
I kept a small jar in case I changed my mind because I bought a headstone at the family plot and buried half his ashes there.
Our family is not a grace visiting fam, only when the next family member dies do we visit graves.
Since we raised my son in another state, I felt having a burial place would be nice for any friends to have a place to reflect on the life and death of my son.
But honestly, when I go to the cemetery, my son is not there.
He’s with me everywhere I go.
The final costs were around $12,000. Honestly, the whole thing is a chaotic memory. I’m glad I did it the way I had to.
Edit: the State Farm auto policy I have has a death benefit. The $10,000 paid for the funeral, I paid for the plot/headstone. Ex paid for nothing and demanded son’s golf clubs from the trunk. That I bought for my son.
Yes, I gave ex the golf clubs. I told him to shove all of them up his disgusting ass.
I never wanted a funeral myself and organizing my dad’s funeral made me realize that is an excellent decision on my part.
My wish is to donate my body to medicine but there’s a bit of work involved, so I’m going to get that sorted before I die (hopefully).
Both of my parents opted for cremation. The funeral home made it simple with no upsell. We had a small family gathering and no memorial services. Those who wished to bought small urns for themselves. Very simple and the cost was very low.
It encouraged me to review my own life insurance. And decide that I'd plan my own funeral myself ahead of time.
I'll do an all in one deal. Funeral processions have gotten too dangerous. When my last grandparent died in 2005, people were cutting in and out of the funeral procession. And it was only 3 miles from the funeral home to the cemetery.
When planning my mother's funeral, it was all I could do to semi-hold myself together in the funeral director's office.
By the end of this year, I want to have my own burial plans organized. I don't want to leave it to my (presumably) grieving husband. I'll pick out everything, then the life insurance policies can pay for it and whatever is left on our mortgage, although I very much hope I live longer than our currently planned mortgage payoff time-line.
My parents chose cremation, but they still had a headstone and their ashes are buried in that plot. I've visited once in the 10 years since they've passed away. It's just not my thing. I've chosen not to have a plot or headstone. I told the kids if they need something they can visit, they can donate something to the zoo and hopefully get a plaque with my name on it.
Had always been to what seemed to be stuffy and/or sad funerals. (And I'm sure they were expensive) It *really* is a sad time when you say goodbye for the last time but it's also the 1st start to healing. Since being an adult and arranging or being part of arrangements, we've learned to celebrate their lives. Brother had beach boys playing throughout visitation, cremated and sent to the beach. Husband had a 1-day visitation and service, mainly for his mom. Cremated and been to multiple countries since that he probably didn't even know he wanted to go to. Bestie had Korn playing. Cremated and some ashes spread with her infant son. Parents both were cremated with no service per their wishes. I've told the kids to either cremate me or donate me but not to spend extra unless they need to do it for them. Cemetaries are beautiful but they're pretty full.
After paying for my parents' and in-laws' funerals, my husband and I made our own funeral arrangements. We have room in the family plot, funeral home paid, cremations paid, and headstones paid. Please, don't leave those decisions and costs to your family if you can avoid it
I'm a pastor so I do a lot of funerals. Here's my best advice:
1. Preplan your service. You can file it with a funeral home and/or your house of worship. If you're a minority religion in your area and have specific rules for how bodies are handled, you'll want to be sure you find the appropriate place or make it very clear in your file how things are to be handled.
2. Funeral homes will sell you a ton of services you don't need. You really don't need most of the things they offer, or can get them so much cheaper elsewhere. This is why pre-planning your own funeral is a great gift to your family - if you pick these things out then they're less likely to spend a bunch of $$ while they're in the fog of grief.
3. If you're religious, the minister/Rabbi/imam/leader will have most of the service already outlined for you. They just need to talk you through it to make sure it's what you're expecting and wanting. You might want to look over it and make sure you're comfortable with everything. Most evangelical churches, for example, will have some version of an altar call. If you don't want that, tell them.
4. Please pay your musicians and treat them well.
After all the services I've done, I've decided I want to be cremated and inurned. It's cost effective, especially since I'm donating much of my body. And I like the idea of there being a place for loved ones to visit. My church has a columbarium and it's so special. People will pop in to visit their loved one before going into worship.
It’s only a racket if you let it be. I’ve had the experience of burying my parents—one was cremated, and their ashes were scattered at sea as per their wishes. I used a funeral home and a Costco casket for a memorial service, and I personally wrote the programs for both ceremonies.
I buried one body and put the other's in the sea, at their request. I had both names inscribed on a headstone. Having a place to visit and see the names has been essential for our family and others, especially over the past 20 years. I’ve realized that having a physical location to go to is an anchor point; it’s so much better than what I’ve seen with others who have no place or marker and tend to forget and don’t reflect yearly.
If you have the chance, check out a Ukrainian cemetery. They have specific days, like St. Andrew’s Day, where people visit, set up picnics with drinks by the headstones, plant beautiful flowers, and have social gatherings. It’s a happy day and seems like a healthy ritual. You can see how they differ from some other empty and unmaintained places. Going even in the dead of winter, you can see people have been there tending. Also, in older cemeterys, you can walk around and see the history progress from the older graves to the newer ones, to your point.
Funeral directors often try to sell pre-packaged services with many upgrades, and for some people, that’s all they can manage. The people I worked with offered options but also welcomed my “program managing” approach. Just like car dealers, there are good and bad funeral directors.
Consider writing your and any parents (assuming they didn't) obituary and any speeches beforehand, or at least jot down some ideas. When someone passes, you have 3-5 days to plan everything, and you might regret missing something you wanted to say or do. One of the best gifts you can give your survivors is an explicit list of your wishes, kept with your will. It will help them focus and give them the relief of knowing they fulfilled your wishes.
Also tell your heirs where the will is, no time to hunt it down. I park mine with a lawyer. I also gave a copy to the named executor, so that they know, and if they read it and need clarification, they can ask.
One of my parents described where they wanted to be buried but didn’t specify the exact place. I had to scramble to find the right location with fast research, but at least they had given me most of the details.
As per cost, I helped with something similar. In the NJ area, outsourced cremation was $500, a modest stone and plot was 2000$. My costs for the above scenarios (20 years ago) were intentionally not low budget, but I did shop around for the casket and cremation. You can look online for casket and stone costs, you can actually get them online.
I plan to set aside a budget range and not have to have my heirs wonder if they spent too much or too little.
Hope this helps, its more about process, but it does reflect on my thoughts on your post.
My late husband had cancer. He refused to have anything to do with planning for himself after death. I did know he wanted to be cremated, so I did that and picked out an urn at the funeral home. The people were very kind and not high pressure at all.
For myself, I've already prepaid through Neptune Society to cremate me and deliver the ashes to my kids. They won't have to do anything. They have thanked me for taking care of it in advance.
My husband and I also prepaid for a cremation with Neptune Society. We bought a plot years back we will share at a nearby monastery. The Neptune Society had urns that came with the plan, but we purchased two plain wooden urns the monks make for our ashes instead. I like knowing that this is what will happen and knowing exactly where our “ final resting place” will be.
My mom died this year. It was necessarily unexpected, but much sooner than anticipated so we didn't get a chance to hammer out these details. She's upstairs, ashes in a vase we found in her house that I have no idea what to do with. I won't be interring her in a cemetery I know. Paying for a permit to scatter them somewhere seems excessive, as does travelling somewhere to do that since there really isn't any place local or not that screams "this is the sentimental place to scatter". I thought about burying it in the backyard but idk if I want that hanging over me the rest of my life in this house either, and she lived in a condo so it's not like she had a backyard to put her in. Outside of this, between the cremation, visitation at the funeral home, and a small family only get together at my aunt's house afterwards, we spent about 3k. Far too much in my taste, but so much cheaper than an actual funeral.
I also have at best a minority view of death. I'm not religious and don't believe in an afterlife or souls. Once the neurons stop firing, the person is gone and exists only in memories. I don't visit gravesites because they mean nothing. It's just a place where the remains are decomposing. I don't need to visit that place to remember the person. I don't feel I'm dishonoring that person (because they're dead) or their memories by not visiting.
I know it holds a lot of meaning for others that a person has the "correct" burial and funeral for whatever they believe to be "correct" about the afterlife. I believe that efforts should be made to respect that person's desires for their funeral and remains, regardless of what the family desires to a point. The point being: I believe the loved ones left behind should be allowed the opportunity to properly grieve and say goodbye and I believe no one else should have to go into debt to pay for what others (the deceased or otherwise) want. If you want it, you have to pay for it.
For me, dump my ass in the woods and have a good party with laughter and reminiscing then move on with life.
I have explicit funeral plans in my will and money from the estate pays for it.
I have $10,000 set aside.
My body goes to science. Use me for research, education, training, whatever.
That remaining $10,000 is to rent out my favorite bar for the day. Cater breakfast, lunch, dinner. What's left goes to the bar tab. Everyone drinks free until the money runs out. Open door policy, turn no one away.
If there's any left at closing time, it gets raffled off to one lucky attendee.
I don't want no fancy casket, no embalming, no viewing. I don't even want a grave. Fuck those vampires. Eat, drink, be merry. Remember my life by enjoying yours.
I’ve buried quite a few people with all the pomp and circumstance. I realized I will be cremated and ashes buried in my backyard under a beautiful
Tree. No services. If my kids want to have a memorial for me at our home fine, but nothing organized through a funeral home.
We had a horrible time with the cemetery my parents’plot is in. They ignored our calls and kept putting off my mom’s (prepaid by her) interment and funeral in 2021. She died in JAN and finally in the ground AUG. The crematory was good to work with though and pretty inexpensive for a $1000. Either way it’s such a racket.
You will understand why some people choose cremation.
It seems so pomp and circumstance and very exploitative of people at their most worst moment of time. It is like if you can’t afford the luxury casket, funeral sprays, and multi limo services, you are not honoring your loved one and will not be seen as a good husband/wife/daughter/son/mom/dad/etc.
It is painful and once you come out of mourning, you may feel used and still feel like you did not do enough.
Yeah.. cremation, if you don’t have a proper religion that has strict rules which help you against the ones that are grifters.
Also, like everything, I’m sure the costs are now 4x to 10x what they were 2 years ago.
So Viking style (by sea, pyre, or combo), pine box, or cremation seems they only way to go to not strap your loved ones with debt and sadness they did not do enough.
I was appalled and shocked at the predatory nature of the salesman when picking out everything for the funeral. I went with my uncle who had just lost his wife of over 50 years.
They tried to up sale him on everything and actually changed items from the ones selected in the show room to higher priced ones and added unwanted options to the contract they gave him to sign.
I took the contact from him and went over the several page document making changes and crossing things out. Having them put the correct casket, etc etc. Ended up saving him about $10,000.
He was in shock at the whole ordeal. He would have signed anything they handed him by the end just to get out of there. His wife had been dead less than 48 hours and he was dazed.
Later he hugged and thanked me for being there and not letting them take advantage of the weakest moment of his life. He is a very savvy retired business man.
It was a nice funeral and everything for my Aunt was handled beautifully but I could have gone back and kicked the salesman in the shin or other painful area. I was so angry!!
My dad was cremated and his ashes spread out over water. It was all decided prior and there was no additional stress re: caskets, flowers, music, pressure by salesmen etc.,.it was simple and beautiful and back into nature. He would never have wanted us to spend thousands on a funeral or sit by his gravestone...but I understand this may not be the way for others.
After the first of my parents died, I was involved in the arrangements. It's like a wedding but at the other end of life. Some people want a big, theatrical show, others just want simple. And for the more complex arrangements, there are companies that will provide whatever experience the people paying would like to have. This includes what is done with the body. Influences like the social traditions of the deceased or their loved ones heavily come into play. Is it traditional to have a place to visit, or is it traditional to have a final good-by and then visit them only in memories? Both (and so many others) seem equally valid for different (sub)cultures or families.
My wife died at Christmas last year. She did not want to be cremated, she preferred a burial, and while it was expensive, it was literally the last thing I could do for her so I didn’t worry about the price. I knew it would be ridiculously overpriced, and knowing that we had bought a life insurance policy for $25,000 earmarked for funeral expenses
Hers ended up being about 18,000. Part of the high cost was the fact that she was overweight and had to have an oversized coffin & vault, which were double the price of a regular coffin & vault; part of the cost was we were visiting family out of state when she died so we had to pay to have her transported back home Before she could be buried.
Definitely a racket, but what do you do? Her family needed the funeral and such for closure and I wasn’t going to let her down.
Having a solid plan in place is errr…life saving? For the living atleast. Grief already knocks you off kilter, knowing the wishes of the deceased makes it a lot easier to plan while in the midst of grievance. I’m talking colors, locations, songs/hymns, speakers, etc. Hard to think straight at that time, with lots of high emotions and a lot of planning/logistics. Having some kind of outline before needing it, really helps.
After my sister in law (who was his last remaining immediate family member) died in 2005 at age 39, he let her bestie set up all the funeral services. It cost us $43k in the final bill.
Thankfully, my BIL (my sisters hubby) popped up with his credit card and paid it until her life insurance came in to pay him back. Talk about being forever grateful.
It made us realize how ridiculous the pomp & circumstance it all is and we just want to be cremated with no service. Go cheap, we don't care.
Generationally poor and found that you don't need to use an expensive-ass funeral home. Organized it myself in her home. I didn't have the emotional energy or support system to organize anything very nice or big, but it was way better and more personal doing it in her home than a weird funeral home where everyone/everything is so formal, which was very unlike my mom or the life she lived.
Cremation was the easiest/cheapest option at the time and in the area. Found that you can order urns online for like $40, so got a couple of those to split her ashes. The funeral home did offer printing services for those little card things since they handled the cremation.
Though almost every funeral I've ever seen in person or on TV is handled through a funeral home, I think there are more ways than we realize to handle death. I think there's something to be said for death doulas and grief services, but paying for a service at a funeral home is super weird to me now. And I used to be interested in pursuing mortuary services.
Why pay thousands for a fancy box that gets buried? Don't pay for viewings. Personally, I don't like that idea, and I'm positive I'm not alone in that. Don't have a get-together at the funeral home. Find a no frills low cost cremation.
The idea that the amount of money you spend and the number of mourners is any indication of the love you had for this person is outdated and needs to end. I've been to funerals were so called mourners barely knew the deceased.
It has nothing to do with the family or bereavement. It is 100 per cent abput how much money thry can make selling over priced services and even more costly "add ons". It is disgusting how they are money grubbers esp when you tell them you have insurance. It made me sick to my stomach that this service is based on how much money they can make based on the death of a family member. Absolutely disgusting.
We had our son cremated after he died and held a memorial at the funeral home. We had to dig out the spot for his urn [basic plastic box they use is you don't buy a fancy urn] at the graveyard, but thankfully my father in law and pre-paid family plots. The funeral home refused to charge us because our son was a minor. Otherwise, everything would have cost about $5600 dollars. Since we can put 3 urns in one plot, we had a headstone with his name, my husband's and my name for the same plot for $800. We plan on using just one urn for the both of us, to be buried with our son after we have both died, and the third spot is saved for our daughter, where she can pre-pay for a footstone of she wants to be buried with us, or if she ever gets married, she can be buried with them.
Thank star dust my father (deceased), wanted to be cremated and dumped into the ocean at his number one beach. My mother feels the same way when her time comes. I have some of my father’s ashes still and will do the same for my mother. We don’t need a showcase. All we need is the honor of our loved ones.
Buried both my parents. The trip to the funeral home is horrible. You're at your most vulnerable and you're picking out a casket and making decisions that you don't want to make. Prices are crazy and you feel pressured and helpless. Eventhough sales people are generally compassionate, it's a horrible ordeal. Don't be afraid to say no to the fancy caskets and such. It doesn't matter once they are gone.
Went with our local, family-owned funeral home. They were wonderful. They worked closely with our family. My mom was beside herself, showed up at their front door on a Sunday - when they were closed. They live above the business and the owner came to the door in his robe and invited my mother in. Served her coffee and a muffin and talked her through things.
He called me when my mom didn’t want to pick up my dad’s urn. I went and brought him home with me. They handled all the arrangements with the memorial park my parents have plots at.
The cost was very reasonable.
100% worth it.
If I had to do it over again I would have just had my Mother cremated. As a young girl grieving I was taken advantage of and paid 20k for her entire funeral. I had no direction.
From an anthropological perspective, funerary rights & rituals are one of the things that make us distinctly & uniquely human. There’s really only a small handful of species on earth that acknowledge their dead: elephants, primates, dolphins, and crows. There’s evidence that Neanderthals & other early hominids had similar funeral rituals as well. But largely, funerals are a very human behavior, which I think is very interesting.
As for my personal experience… my grandpa died during COVID. He’d had dementia for over a decade; we all knew it was coming but it still felt like a gut punch tbh. I’d never considered the importance of a funeral until we *couldn’t* have one. There really is something to be said about gathering your loved ones and collectively acknowledging that the world is fundamentally different now. Regardless of whether they were a good, kind person or not… 🤷♀️ the world is different, whether it was a bright soul that left this world or a broken human being. The world, even if it’s just *your* world, will never be the same. For better or worse. And it’s really important to acknowledge that fact.
I don’t think it ever gets easier to lose the people you love. Grief is a complicated and incredibly personal experience. But coming together and sharing that grief is such an important part of the process. Without that, it felt like my family was stuck in limbo. It left us as little islands of our own personal grief, which is a heavy burden to bear on your own. Together, that grief isn’t any less painful but it is a little easier to bear. ❤️🩹
Sorry for your loss. I had two relatives that passed during the early onset of Covid but they passed from different ailments. Neither one were able to have a church service which was disappointing to the families but what could we do. Small graveside services for both
When I die, I don’t want my body to take up a whole plot in a cemetery. I don’t want my loved ones going into debt picking out fancy caskets and the cost of burial and all that. I’ve instructed them to cremate me. They can do whatever they want with the ashes. They can decide if they want to hold a funeral/memorial, which I’m sure they will. I don’t want my death to burden the living.
I planted a tree in the “dog graveyard” (we are rescuers and many, many of our dog children are buried there.) The tree has grown huge and provides lovely shade over the area. I’ll be composted or cremated and scattered beneath that tree, with my beloved pets. I don’t care about the feelings or the expenses or who thinks what. Just put me with my dogs.
My stepdaughter recently lost her mother. She had the remains cremated and she has a lovely blue urn in her [home] office. She said it gives her comfort to have it there, that she always thought people who did that were a little weird, but she likes it. We had a nice little send-off for her, with the urn in the center of a lovely arrangement of white flowers.
P.S., We have Neptune Society. They will come get you, cremate you, and take you out to sea where they “bury” your ashes. Efficient and affordable. Your kin can go on the boat if they want.
Our family doesn't indulge in expensive funeral arrangements. We did cremation for our parents and dad was interred in a columbarium at the VA and mom was added when she passed. Cremation was $1,500 each and the VA is free. Dad had a funeral service at my parent's church. Mom we had a dinner with friends at our house. We also had my brother cremated and we spread his ashes at our ranch.
My father died about five years ago. The cost of the funeral was mind-boggling. My cousin was also married to a local funeral home owner and it was sad to watch him slowly get pushed out by bigger companies and corporations. He did wonderful funerals for my family, but now it is impersonal and more pricey.
I want to be cremated. As a Catholic, I am not supposed to, but hopefully they will come around by the time my day comes. If not, it’s still what I want. The cost is part of it, although I have heard it isn’t actually that much cheaper, especially if you still do the whole funeral home and service thing.
But I also can’t stand the idea of being in a box forever. Which is weird, because part of the reason I am good with cremation is that I don’t really believe I will still be with my body. I don’t find comfort in going to the cemetery to visit graves and rarely do so, so I don’t see myself putting that obligation on anyone else.
I also want to be an organ donor and donate everything possible, so cremation afterward makes the most sense to me.
I am undecided if I want my ashes spread somewhere or if I just want my family to decide what to do with them. But I am glad they won’t have to worry about staying close to where I am buried. My family is originally from Detroit and most of my family is buried at a cemetery in a dangerous part of town. My mom and my late grandmother talked about moving them, but it is so expensive and they didn’t know how to decide where to draw the line of who gets moved and who gets left there. But those graves are rarely visited anymore.
My paternal grandfather was a veteran and was buried at the closest military cemetery at the time, about 3 hours away. After he died, a new one opened an hour away. When my grandmother died, we had her buried there and had him moved. Again, so expensive, but because military burial is paid for by the government, it was worth the cost.
My mom had specific instructions for cremation facility and scattering of ashes. It was a huge relief knowing her wishes beforehand. I actually said my last goodbyes at the crematorium, and asked the worker if I could watch the process. He was super nice allowed me to observe…..I’m in the medical field (lab) and it was reassuring to see what happens.
I was by my mom's side when my dad passed. The funeral director was very good and kind. The service went extremely well. I'd recommend them any time!
However, they definitely pushed their best goods. It is a business after all. My mom just wanted to get it done, so she wasn't thinking straight and was agreeing to just about everything.
So, I pulled her aside and explained that if Dad was choosing the vault and casket himself, he definitely wouldn't care if his dead body got wet. He's rolling over in his grave before he's even in it. We laughed a little and she changed to some more reasonably priced choices. I'm sure that Director wasn't too happy with me in that moment. 🤭 Oh well!
No change, but boy is it a LOT. A ton of things to do, and a HUGE amount of emotional labor. If at all possible, lean on people who are very close, but not ***immediate*** family. The closest of the close will be hardcore grieving, so try not to count on any of them to be useful. Of course, since everyone grieves in their own way, some of them may actually WANT to be involved, but you shouldn't expect it. Make sure to leave space for your own grief as well. They comedown when it's all over is also real... it's a relief but you may also experience profound depression when the activities are complete.
I’ve been lucky in the sense that my parents funerals were done by one of the few still family run funeral homes left in the home town where they passed and they had also handled our grandmother and I went to school with their son. So I didn’t feel like I was being taken for a ride on cost. My parents also had prepaid burial plots with my mother’s family so that was also taken care of. But for me and my husband it will just be an unfussy cremation with no services.
My parents are dead and I’m so grateful they prepaid their cremations and headstone.
After my dad’s funeral I had a reception with music and food because I wanted people to gather and rejoice and share memories. When my stepfather died we had a somber funeral followed by a party with music and food and drinks because we believe in celebrating the memory of those we love who are no longer here. Death is sad and the people we love are worth sending off fondly in the way we see appropriate to who they were when we had them.
For years my mother told me that when her time came she wanted to be cremated. No viewing, no funeral. I would always say we have time to talk about that and I think I’d rather give you a funeral so we can say goodbye. And maybe lots of times we had that conversation. I was horrified that that’s what she wanted and why should it be so unceremonious for her, when our family had had other dignified services??? She was the most important of them all. At least in my eyes. Skip ahead many years and some unexpected tragedy later, my sister died, then 4 months later, my mother died. And just before she died, we drove out to my mother’s home (as she was in the ICU) to check on our grandmother and we discovered her dead, eyes open, in a chair in her bedroom. I did exactly what my mother asked me to do. And I was so grateful that it was what SHE wanted. I could never have handled it otherwise.
We had my grandma cremated out of concern about COVID and the aftereffects. It cost a few thousand dollars. I sing. I conducted her funeral. It was during the lockdown era. It was an unusual experience but it was oddly satisfying to know I had managed to do it and to give her a decent one in the middle of all that. I'm proud. It shot my confidence into space.
Relatives dug the hole and we put the ashes in. I had the attendees put a handful of dirt in then I gave them the opportunity to talk about memories of her. We sang a hymn, too.
I did a burial in 22 and cremation in 23. I am weird, I don’t visit my daughter in the cemetery, she is in my heart and memories, it is her body in the casket in the grave. Dad’s ashes are in a box next to his favorite chair. We will take care of them this summer when my brother visits
Both were devastating. I am probably in the least favored way to look at it
Sorry for your loss.
Both my parents donated their bodies to science. 1 year later we got their ashes in an urn, both of which are installed side by side under a single small stone in a cemetery near their friends' plots under a young tree (in a different state, so we don't visit often). We had Memorial gatherings for each of them several months later, which was perfect. Kinda thinking I'll do something like that, too.
But my husband's grandmother (who lived to 102, mostly healthy and active except for the last couple of years; she once moved to a different assisted living facility because the first one had old folks in it who went to bed by 8:00 and she wanted to have fun!) had a very standard big ol' funeral with tons of people (I think she was friends with everyone in several states. Her hundredth birthday party was a blast!) and an enormous, fancy, layered casket (which she had chosen herself) to protect her remains from everything up to a nuclear blast. Great funeral, but really expensive. That's not for me.
And then there was my husband's stepfather's funeral (his mom survives, she'll probably make 100, too), who was a Viet Nam veteran. He was cremated and his ashes scattered after a brief chapel funeral. The scattering was amazing. My MIL chartered a fishing boat to take us all out to the middle of Monterey Bay (right after the funeral). Since he was an ex-marine (I know, there's actually no such thing as an EX-Marine. Semper Fi), a team of marines came with us to do the traditional military ceremony on the boat. Also along for the ride was a native American friend of my FIL; my FIL had basically semi-adopted/rescued him when he was a scared, angry teenager. He had grown up to be a shaman of his tribe.
All the family members were there, kids, grandkids, cousins, everyone. It was rather a cloudy, chilly day, but traveling out into the bay was amazing. The shaman pointed out all the ocean creatures to the kids. We saw otters and seals and a number of seabirds (no whales; wrong season). When we got out there, the shaman did his ceremony, which was awesome (chanting and smudging in full costume), then the adults helped all the kids scatter Grandpa's ashes off the back of the boat. After that, the marines did their ceremony, including taps played by a single cornet from the crow's nest in the rigging (spine-tingling and tear-making), while they folded the flag in their special way and gave it to my MIL. It was an absolutely amazing afternoon. A perfect tribute to Grandpa Jim. Won't do for me, but it was amazing. (Pretty sure they won't let you scatter ashes on Broadway, so mine will probably stay in the urn.)
We did our own thing recently. We signed up to receive a $300 discount through a cremation society in our state and had my MIL cremated. We bought a beautiful urn online and held the Memorial Service in a beautiful historic hotel's family suite. I catered finger foods and non alcoholic drinks. Everyone loved it and said it was much more personal and a better vibe.
Follow Caitlin Doughty if you aren't already. She does deep dives into the funerary industry.
My dad died with no money and no final wishes. I had to take out a loan for about $3600 for cremation, copies of his death certificate, a rep to contact Social Security on our behalf, writing and publishing an obituary, an appointment so his immediate family could see him one last time before cremation, the cardboard box he was cremated in, and a 2 hour get together for family and friends.
On first meeting with the funeral people I straight told them we were all poor AF and didn't want any extras. Bare basics, and if we needed anything we'd do it ourselves. I got a sign in book at work and made a photo board myself. They were understanding; the place we went to was excellent.
Our one splurge was his urn. Most urns are boring. This was a ceramic cookie jar thing in the shape of a John Deere tractor and we couldn't resist. My great aunt and uncle paid for that.
As for myself... recycle any bits you can, and chuck the rest over the back fence of a body farm. Donate me to a school. Go full Weekend at Bernie's. ONLY IF THERE'S MONEY TO DO IT wrap me in a sheet and bury me natural in a green cemetery. Then go out to a good bar and play my jams and eat all the chips and queso you can stand.
My mom worked for the Catholic Church for years. The clergy are mostly older folks so she ended up being responsible for helping arrange funerals for a lot of them. She has nothing but contempt for the death care industry. She saw every trick, scam, and upsell in the book over the years. She's made it clear that she wants her body donated to science followed by a fully green burial, because donating your body is the absolute only way to completely circumvent the death care industrial complex. In her later years she began to serve as an unofficial death doula/consultant for family and friends, going with them to the funeral homes to make sure they aren't taken advantage of. I wish more people had access to that kind of resource.
The industry is rotten to the core. I could go on and on, but in case you're not aware, the vast majority of funeral homes are owned by huge multinational companies that are concerned about nothing but making as much money as possible by fleecing people when they are at the lowest points in their lives and at their most vulnerable.
I highly recommend Caitlin Doughty. The is an author/funeral home owner/ YouTube personality who has made a career about speaking openly about the industry and everything that's wrong with it.
i was SHOCKED that stuff would cost so much for something that’s in the ground. Like, wtf is a casket for then? it’ll be put into a concrete box and covered with dirt? what are all these fancy things for?
I’ve always thought i’d donate my body to science, because you might as well dissect my weird ass brain and try to learn something from my troubles. but my relatives won’t hear of it.
i grew up thinking cremation was horrible, “how could you do that to your loved one?” but i’ve changed my views since. i actually love the idea now that i could nourish a tree and other nature somewhere, and “live on” in that sense or “give back” somehow.
but then i also understand why people don’t want to destroy the body and want to provide a nice final resting place because it hurts so much that they’re gone.
Edit to add: funeral in the early 00s in New England cost about 14000 for: funeral services and organizing by the funeral home, church service, singer at the service, funeral home’s car driving us from the church to the cemetery, 2-person plot in a cemetery, flowers for church and gravesite, the most basic casket, cement sarcophagus, opening/closing the grave, tombstone with carving and placement, guest book at the service, thank you cards to send out afterwards, small semi-catered reception with food in the church hall.
man it’s a lot of little things sometimes that add up, and you don’t really find out that most of it is totally up to you - they just pull you in and say “this is what’s usually done” and because “this is what you’re used to seeing” for others and because you don’t know what parts you can pick and choose (for either financial or social reasons), and because you’re just trying to organize it so it’s settled because you’re grieving at the same time, you just say yes to almost everything that falls under “what most people do.” Now I know better, but unless i have some financial tragedy, i’ll be doing the same thing for the other parent if they go before i do, because that’s what they also want. oh well.
I'll tell you.
Funeral directors are ghouls who take advantage of people at their lowest. If they don't think you have the money for an extravagant burial they don't wanna hear from you. It's their job to convince you to waste money at a time when you're emotionally vulnerable.
I'd call them vultures but I respect vultures far more.
My family (including extended) has always opted for cremation. After reading *The American Way of Death,* I’m wholly against the entire funeral home industry. The book is enlightening.
Cremation is the way to go, and even it is ridiculously expensive. I’ve learned I have no desire for anything special, just throw me in a jar if need be.
When my father passed suddenly last year, my siblings and I all thought he had cemetery plots for him and my mother already arranged. To our surprise, she told us no, that they wanted to be buried near where they now lived, but they hadn't actually taken any steps. We are talking people in their late 80's, but no serious illnesses. My mother was in the hospital at the time, so we contacted that funeral home/cemetery and made all the arrangements. Their wills only stated that the surviving spouse or executor should make whatever arrangements they deemed fit, but didn't have any specific requests. Plus we made the future arrangements for our mother, so now we don't have to worry about it. The prices were crazy, but at the same time, the funeral home wasn't pushy about upselling, and even dissuaded us from some more expensive options. The biggest cost were the plots. They also had no interest financing, so the future arrangements get paid off over five years. Altogether, it was the equivalent of buying a new car. We could have gone with options that were more like buying a used car of we wanted. My big lesson from that experience is to put some instruction or suggestions in the will for guidance, even if it isn't a hard demand. It makes it easier on the surviving family to at least have a little insight. Personally, I don't want to be buried. But I also don't know what I would want done with my ashes yet.
We didn't want/weren't expecting a big funeral, mostly out of concern for our mother's health and our general shock at the situation. I've been to some massive funerals, but except for my grandparents passing when I was young, I haven't been in the position of being the person who lost someone at those funerals. Now in that position, the thought of having people being in my face giving me condolences in that moment was too much to stomach. It was too raw. Maybe if he had been suffering from an extended illness and we had already come to terms with his passing, it might have been different. All of the immediate family wanted to just band together without a bunch of other people around. Far more people showed up than I expected, but it was difficult to interact with them. I know they say the funeral is for the survivors/family, but I really think it is more for the other people. In that moment, it wasn't comforting for me in any way. So it has definitely changed my views some what.
I don’t care what happens to my body after I’m dead. I like the idea of the Zoroastrian sky burial, leaving my body on a tower to be eaten by birds. It would be great if my body could be dumped on a mountain for all the creatures to eat.
Now they have the system where your body is turned into mulch, which I think is the next best thing.
In the past 7 years I’ve buried two fathers and two sisters. I feel pretty knowledgeable when it comes to planing a funeral- service and/or burial.
While I agree cemeteries are generally peaceful and beautiful, I seldom visit my loved ones that are buried there. If I’m thinking of my dad, or missing him, I will look through photos or go for a walk. I’ll sort of talk to him in my head. I in no way feel I MUST be at the cemetery to feel close to him. Therefore I don’t think I will be buried or memorialized at one.
Ask a mortician is a great series on YouTube that delves into this in great detail.
Short answer: a lot of it is a racket. Embalming is unnecessary and incredibly wasteful. Unfortunately ‘natural’ burials are tough to do and it’s hard to find places that permit them.
I guess I’ll will myself to a body farm. 🤷♀️
Not a direct answer to your question, but you might look into a youtuber called Ask a Mortician. She does a lot of deep dives into the funeral industry and is very pro "have a death plan that brings you peace of mind."
Here's one of her videos.
https://youtu.be/wM6HeLp2ywg?si=ya4p4ztYqHxmOM00
It is largely focused on death rituals in the US, though. Don't know where you are in the world. But she does historical dives (her series "the middle ages were magic!" was a surprisingly funny bit of dark humor) and sometimes brings up topics from other parts of the world.
On the whole, mortuary practices are quite varied and fascinating around the globe, reflecting the values of the people who practice them. So basically there's no one answer to your question because someone in Japan will have had a different experience than someone in Louisiana, who would also have had a different experience from someone in Michigan or Germany or Peru.
Not sure it changed my opinion, but it is a huge, greedy exploitative business. My cousin refused to have one for his wife, and I don’t blame him. People talk about big pharma—big funeral is just as bad.
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We went with a family-owned one. Their sales weren't too high-pressure, but they were there. I bought an urn off of Amazon and had it mailed to them instead of buying one through them, and they made no comment about it. They made very little money off of me, I think, but were still very respectful. I'm glad I didn't go with corporate owned.
Same. They showed us the caskets and urns and said we were welcome to bring something else to store the ashes.
"There's gotta be a Ralph's nearby. "
I told my sister that a paper bag for my ashes is fine-
A favorite relative of mine says his plan is "baggie and a twist-tie."!
That's how we're doing it - put me in a Folgers can
"Does this coffee taste...." (smacks lips) "...I don't know.... 'ashy' to you?"
Are you a good bowler too?
Not as good as Donny.
Haha 😂 good one
This. I work at a small family owned business and it’s so frustrating when people call us vultures when really it’s the big companies you need to worry about. We’re just trying to keep the lights on, but these big companies make it really hard to keep the prices down.
Yeah, (Lack of) Dignity bought our local home. The person coordinating my dad’s funeral kept badgering us during the planning to give them good reviews on social media. wtf? They are used car salesmen in disguise.
They absolutely should not have been asking for reviews, I’m so sorry. That’s inappropriate :(
Thank you, and thank you for the service you provide.
I hope you *did* give them reviews; but of the kind they deserve, not the ones they were asking for.
Dignity is an absolute shit company, and I left reviews saying so. I could get my loved one cremated and their ashes put on a literal goddamn rocket and blasted into space for the low low price of 18k? I unfortunately have three experiences with this shit company. First was my father in law. He was murdered in his home on the Thursday night before Labor Day. I went to plan his funeral (my wife was in no shape, so all of that was completely on me.) They told me Thursday was the earliest they could do it. A whole week. Why? Because of the holiday, and they were really busy (said in a manner that I should pity their workload.) That (and the following year) was by far the worst in my wife's life. Second was my mother in law. Slightly better circumstances, but she laid dead in the bedroom for about 6 hours due to a botched dispatch from the funeral home. To top that off, the cemetery where they are both buried is also owned by that shit company. No flowers on the grave site except for special occasions (mother's day, etc.) and you have to buy the flowers from the cemetery AND they only leave them out for the one day. Third was my mom. She died on July 3. Dad selected a local funeral home, and when I called them to pick her up, they asked when we wanted to come in to make the arrangements. I said the 5th assuming that were closed on the holiday, and they assured me that they were there for me and death took no holidays. when I stepped across that Dignity floor mat to help him plan the funeral, my heart literally sank. I told the funeral director what I thought about his company - how both of my wife's parents had burial policies that had been paid for 50+ years and each one still cost us ~15k out of pocket, how shitty the sales tactics were, etc. He told me that the company had recently bought their funeral home and they hated him too because he wasn't going to treat small town families the way their sales quotas wanted. He said they hated him even more because despite him non-conforming to their program, his profits were the highest in the area by far, and I believe him. He took the policy that dad had and told him no matter what he chose, that policy would cover every dime. Mom had a much nicer funeral than the two others I mentioned and it was a peaceful time for us all. Fuck Dignity and everything about them.
Locally-owned funeral homes are not rare. The big three conglomerates own about 20% of funeral homes in the US. The other 80% are locally owned.
SCI. Service Corporation International.
Yes. My husband and I always agreed that we should spend money on living, so when he unexpectedly died without a will, that was the one thing I knew how to do right. Went online to look for “-my city-cheapest cremation” and was so proud of myself for finding the cheapest in the city. It was still $1,500 and when I arranged everything online, there were SO MANY add-ons popping up-urns, commemorative t shirts, photo pillows, services, etc.; every step had all this additional stuff you could pay more for. When my dad almost died at my house, he disclosed that his and my mom’s cremations are already paid for. He paid around $1,200 each and if he were to die out of his home state, it’s a small fee to be cremated there. Amazing! I am doing this as soon as I recover financially from my husband dying so my child doesn’t have to deal with this.
We're off to the nearest medical training schools to be cadavers. It might sound morbid, but just about anyone in the medical device field will tell you how incredibly valuable they are. Please consider it.
John Oliver did a very interesting segment on body and organ donation. It was pretty eye-opening on how little control you have over where your body ends up being used.
I saw this! I remember someone being blown up, is that correct? I mean I don’t really care but I certainly don’t want my body being used for weapons development. I find that immensely distasteful.
Yeah! And someone else’s body was used for some stupid entertainment reason. Like, you think you’re helping future physicians and researchers, but instead you’re helping develop some godawful weapon?
I taught forensic science for 18 years. Have you ever heard of the Body Farm? It's located in my city and many people donate their body to it. They clearly have no idea what happens. In medical schools the bodies are fairly well treated respectfully. At a community College near me they kept 2 bodies for 5 years and students dissected them. But yes, bodies are blown up, hacked up, shot up, stabbed, and anything else you can think of. What bothers me the most is people donate their bodies thinking it's for a great cause. Then. Their body parts are sold. Bones and skin are 2 body parts they sell well. I just won't do it personally but I've seen a lot.
I have read that the schools only keep your body for a certain time period, then you are sent back & cremated, back to your family. Wonder how it’s all done because cremation sounds better than burial.
This is true. I worked at a med school. At the end of term, there was a memorial service for the donors. Students would read poems and play music. The donor’s cremains were then sent back to their families.
The time period is typically a term and used for an anatomy class.
We are fully aware of that. I'm doubtful you are getting your loved one's ashes.
They kept my dad about 9 months. They sent me a letter detailing what procedures had been learned with him. They placed his ashes in a mausoleum in a nearby graveyard. They had a memorial service for everyone from that year with a dove release and 22 gun salute for the military donors. The shooting was done before the doves incase anyone else was worried how that would play out. They also provided grief support services for a year and while I didn’t really use them, they reached out to me around holidays and his birthday to check in on me. It was such a good option my godmother chose it too and my grandmother us signed up for it.
True. I took a cadaver lab in college and was immensely grateful to the individuals who donated their bodies to us. It does make a real difference in the world. I looked into donating to the body farm, but was perplexed by the paperwork. This might be the better option.
I hope you already have it arranged. It's a misery for your family if you don't.
A professor the medical school near us has arranged to donate his body to the school. He has a lower- floor office and the cadaver lab is on a higher floor. He was interviewed by the local newspaper years ago and told the reporter he's one of the few who really knows where he'll go after he dies. (Points.... up!) True story.
They don’t accept everybody, fyi. Gotta be relatively healthy during life, normal weight.
You are welcome to join us at r/widowers if or when you need emotional support. Hugs, and wishing you peace and comfort.
Thank you so much. I ran across it the night he died actually. It’s been tremendously helpful, so thank goodness. I wish peace and comfort to you too; if you’re recommending the sub you must have been through a lot. And hugs!
I'm still struggling 20 months out. Some days are good, most are not. But I'm trying to figure out how to continue living, so that's something. Today was a day when I really could have used his embrace. Our eldest turned 30 today, our second had a bad car accident with a downed tree across the highway (she's okay, but her car is totaled) and our youngest finally got a job that will enable him to live independently. My dogs rolled in roadkill and stink badly. Today was a lot of ups and downs that I would like to share with him. And if he were here he would bathe the dogs...
Oh sweetie I'm so sorry for your loss and the day you had. I have to admit you had me laughing at the end. I needed that. I feel you and everything you went through today. My "day" actually began last October with a new crappy days each month. October...our cousin visiting us had a massive stroke November... he "came home" to live with us and became his caregiver. December...I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer...in my uterus. January...I had a radical hysterectomy. February... I started chemotherapy. To be done every 3 weeks.1 week later my husband went to hospital with a serious infection but not before he saw my hair begin to fall out. Thankfully I was able to spend the last weekend at the hospital in February with him because.... March 1st he passed away.Thankfully he passed in the VA hospital. They paid for the cremation he wanted and our daughters took care of everything else for me because my brain wasn't working due to the chemo... Thankfully he didn't have to see my buzzed head. (My hair had been down to my waist) April...I got pneumonia which caused my platelets to drop to deadly low which ended up pushing my next infusion out for an extra 2 weeks. May...I spent Mother's Day weekend in the hospital getting 2 platelet transfusions and 1 whole blood... pushing me out another 6 weeks. June...today, the 26th I FINALLY had my last infusion!!! I GOT TO RING THE BELL🧡🧡🧡 There were a lot of happy days in there too. Everything I wished he could have been here to support and laugh with me. All I can say is that saten tried to destroy me but all he did was make me stronger. THANK YOU JESUS!!!!
My husband was with me through my entire cancer treatment regimen. We laughed when our daughter bought me a rainbow colored wig that came down to my waist. Aforementioned daughter insisted that I had to wear it in public for one whole day, so I chose a treatment day. The oncology nurses and other patients were cracking up at my "My little Pony" hair. I'm so grateful for the years I had with him. I'm hoping that some day these memories don't sting like they do now.
It sounds like he sure is rooting for you from heaven! I’m so sorry for your loss, sending hugs!! And congrats on ringing that bell!!!! ❤️
Oh wow, I can completely relate. I’m almost six months out, and every day is some new crisis, every crisis has ten new complications. I remember the night before our son was born almost five years ago. We went for a lovely walk along the levee near our house and on the way back to our car, my dog ran up to us smelling like a nightmare, covered in cat poop, smiling from ear to ear. I can still remember him saying “I can’t take this anymore!” While he bathed her in the backyard. He was always much quicker and more efficient at it. Our kid is still so young; today he told me he never liked his dad. I just quit my job to take a new, harder one across the country. I cut off contact with my monstrous father, have been threatened legally by my late husbands ex wife, been told I can’t sell the truck and motorcycle that belonged to him, or put the vehicle we drive in my name, have to sell my house, and been left with nothing but debts I didn’t know about. His mother took his boat and sold it to remodel her bathroom. I keep telling people I’m not doing well, but they just point to what I’ve accomplished and say that I’ll be fine. I don’t feel like I’ll be fine, at all. I feel like I’m drowning and my best is just not good enough. I feel like I’m letting down my child. Anyway. I didn’t mean for all that to come out; I just saw your stinky dog situation and related to it. I hope your good days are outnumbering your bad, your kids are thriving, and you’re able to enjoy some things even though you can’t with him anymore. Much love to you.
My grandma was hugely against cremation, then she looked into to the cost of burial, and she changed her mind quickly about it after my grandpa passed. she refused to do a burial too because she would rather the money for that go to her kids after she passed too.
I live in the "frozen tudra" and a lot of the old people around here STILL opt for "spring burial" so if they die in, say, October, they're stored somewhere until May and the relatives pay for that cold storage. It just boggles my mind. Just get cremation. When I go to these "spring burials" I'm always worried there will be defrosting leakage happening.
The last two "funerals" we did in our family... We just had a wake at our homes and called it good. One was buried in our local military cemetery, one donated his body to a medical teaching college, so no real burial costs and nobody manipulating us into doing anything in particular for ceremonies. That's how I want to go, too - I don't want people wasting time, effort, and money trying to put me in the ground. Just hang out and enjoy time and memories with the people who are still here.
"I can't afford to live, but I guess I'll have to try Undertakers got a union, and it costs too much to die"
Old song, gotta update the lyrics now. "I can't afford to live, but I guess I'll have to try Undertakers' bought by corpos, APY calculated when you die"
When I was ten years old, my grandfather died in a house fire. The house and everything in it (including my grandfather) was incinerated. That didn’t stop the funeral home at our small town for charging full price for a cremation. 🙄
Other than being *shocked* at how much it all costs and never wanting to take part in that... I mainly am concerned about the environmental impact of death. Embalming and burial is very wasteful! Cremation is better but still that's a ton of fossil fuels and carbon. I see there's a new water-based cremation idea (very like how movie bad guys dissolve bodies in a vat), but my real leaning is the green burial. No embalming or casket, they just wrap up the body and put it in the ground, and plant a shrub or something over the spot. Maybe a plaque but literally no one will care I'm under that bush in 10 years, maybe just carve my initials in the trunk or something.
Not only the cost, but the absolutely vulturistic nature of the industry. “You loved them didn’t you? You want to show them nothing but the best one last time don’t you? Why cheap out on the $1200 casket, when you should buy the $20,000 rare vintage smoked mahogany casket with ivory and gold detailing. I mean it is where they will be for the rest of eternity, and I know you know how important it is that they’re laid to rest with dignity 😌😌😌”
When I helped my best friend plan his father’s funeral, he had to have him cremated instead of buried. It was a hard decision and not what was in the will of the decedent. The funeral director kept pushing my friend to upsell him by saying really inappropriate things about his dead father. “It’s what he would have wanted,” etc. I pulled him aside to talk about the heavy handed sales tactics and explain a decision had already been made about cremation, so there’s no point in “upsetting him further.” He heard me, so at the next meeting with all his colleagues and my friend and me, he started upselling the “cremains” boxes so “each family member could have one.” I let him talk until he was done. My bestie sat there, numb and sick to his ass of all this. So I waited a beat and said “no one in the family knows he’s being cremated…since half of them died in that fire...” Not true, of course. My bestie is not an actor, but he did put his face in his hand and pretend to cry in a performance I’m still proud of him for. It was the only way he could hide his laughter. I don’t think we ever saw that guy again. Must have been new. Edit: This was at Forrest Lawn, by the way.
That was terrific. It tops mine. When I was only 19, I had to handle my grandmother's arrangements. The cemetery required liners for the caskets (she owned a spot and wanted to be buried with her husband.) The funeral home tried to upsell me on the most expensive watertight liner. I asked him why we should get that and he replied that it was to preserve the body. I told him my grandmother would want to rot because she loved gardening. The look of horror on his face. It was a bright spot during a horrible time.
Awww, I love that story. I hope people remember me with such fondness.
Damm near choked on my cookie. That was funny 😁
My grandpa fell victim to that exact BS. He bought grandma a "Cadillac" casket. Then when he died, my aunt simply wouldn't relent that he had to be buried in a matching one beside her. That was a lot of potential inheritance spent on overpriced death boxes.
So often it’s not the well off that chose those. I had a friend barely scraping by that felt her mother needed Cadillac (probably the funeral director playing on emotions,) when something ordinary would have been just fine. She thought more expensive showed more love. What a waste of money.
I went with my grandmother to set up the funeral for my grandpa. He was adamant that we don’t spend very much money, because “I’m dead, I don’t care”. I watched them pat the back of her hand while she was crying and say something to the extent of “I’m sure you loved him very much. Wouldn’t you want him to have the very best for his eternal rest?” I wanted to jump across the desk and strangle him.
When I found out people buy expensive caskets and cremate their people in them I about fell over dead myself at the funeral home. I was like no rhe cardboard box is just fine.
The green/natural burial stuff I had found when I looked it up before looks like it usually wraps you in some fabric and uses a cardboard box, but I'm with you on it. My burial wish is to strip me naked, wrap me in cotton, and give me back to the earth. I'll settle for as close as they can get to that.
A friend of mine did a green burial for her father. Wrapped in a sheet, put in a wicker “casket”. Quite frankly, it looked awesome. It’s what I want. Better than a cardboard box, looked awesome. As long as it was untreated materials, it gives the appearance that some effort was made while still going back to the earth.
Yeah, just toss my carcass on the compost pile and let nature do its thing
Meat doesn't compost well, but I agree with the sentiment.
"Human composting" is actually a thing, legal in Washington State and I think a few others now. But you're right it's not actually easy and requires quite a bit of time and involvement to get it right. Which actually goes to a core problem of this thread because goals like "cheap" or "simple" or "environmentally friendly" are all laudable but not the same thing at all and I encourage people to plan ahead regarding which of those goals they want and how to follow them.
Meat composts very well. Animals have been dying in nature since the beginning. We bury all our meat scraps and fat. The advice against meat compost is because it can smell strongly and attract wild animals. Not if you collect it with other scraps in a 5 gallon lidded bucket and bury in the garden when full. The local deer processing facility saves all the scrap and buries it into their wheat fields with front loaders.
I would not mind being a candidate for the Body Farm.
Thats who my wife signed up with
Apparently several states have legalized human composting. I'm leaning that way if it becomes more available. Unlike cremation the process involves being laid out on a well oxygenated tray on like a bed of straw. Just sounds much more peaceful. And then my compost can be scattered somewhere pretty.
I was pleasantly surprised at the handful of natural burial options in my state. Might opt for that, only issue is that it's way off the beaten path. Not that people would visit me anyway! Cremation is convenient for scattering wherever, but I also hate the idea of becoming pollution. Embalming and entombment is right out, I'd like to avoid the chemicals.
Yeah it's a touching thing in movies where someone goes to the cemetery and talks to the gravestone but come on, how many people are going to do that, really.
I don't have kids and my family members aren't that close physically or emotionally, so it might still be worth a burial in a meadow someplace. Hopefully they'll slap my name and coordinates up on [FindAGrave.com](http://FindAGrave.com) in case somebody wants to find me! 👻
Hmmm, roast me with a solar oven?
Ongoing now.
Plan ahead and pay for it so your kids don’t have to. It’s expensive and you don’t need the fancy urn.
I cannot tell you how grateful my siblings and I were that our dad had pre-paid everything for both himself and our mom so it was a significant amount of stress we didn't have to worry about. My parents were creamated but buried together in one plot, and my dad thought like you and didn't pay for a fancy urn because "they use your grief to get you to waste your money." Our mom went first and we didn't know if you don't pay for a nice urn they put the remains in what looks exactly like a plastic black Quick container. We scrambled at the last minute to find one of her silk scarves to try to hide that she was basically in tupperware. When our dad died a few months later we spent the $750 on a lovely wooden box, and I swear we could all feel his irritation from beyond that we caved in.
I bought an urn on Amazon super-cheap and had it delivered to the funeral home. They would have upsold the absolute crap out of me if I had bought it through them. Not today, Satan.
Great idea here. Thanks.
I’m a potter and handmade my dad’s urn…….
In 2008 when I did my dad’s funeral money was tight (also he was the type of person who would have come back to haunt me if I bought the fancy urn) and he came in a vacuum seal type plastic bag in a cardboard box 😂.
Deliberate move on their part to shame us into giving them more money. I'm the youngest so even though I totally agreed with getting a nice one for our father, I did silently tell my dad in my head that it was my brother that made the decision. You know, just in case there is an afterlife and it contains petty irritations I was just trying to aim his annoyance at someone else!
Bingo. When my dad passed away, the funeral home director was telling us about how people did not account for the expense of burials and assumed that cremation would be significantly cheaper. It is not as cheap as people expect.
Just went through this. Cremation was $2000. I thought it was reasonable.
I think in the case of the funeral director we were working with, the surviving family member didn’t even have $2,000. It made me sad that the bodies had to be commuted between one funeral home to another because the families were trying to round up money for cremation.
This was me. I lost my mother’s body for a moment because they transferred her while i was waiting for my paycheck to hit. I had to pawn my grandfather’s ring to get enough cash to do a basic cremation. Broke down in a parking lot on my lunch break trying to call places asking where they transferred her. It worked out, but damn, totally unprepared for any of it.
I’m Jewish, and I like the Jewish way of doing this, but you could adjust to your personal preferences. You bury the person the next day, if possible, in a plain wood casket. The Rabbi can do a service centered on talking about the person graveside. Then you do Shiva, which is a period of mourning and eating. Jewish people generally don’t cremate but can donate organs. A year later, you go back and add the headstone. You can do it in a very controlled and “correct” way. This gives the mourners something to do. I’m in a branch of Judaism called Reform, which is kind of like taking the parts that work for you. After my father died, I had Shiva at my house—just lots of food and hanging out and talking about my dad. Also, the price is minimal. (Include any dumb antisemitic comments here.) I already bought our funeral plots near my husband’s parents. 2K each, and you can sell them back if you change your mind. The casket is about the least expensive kind outsideof cardboard. You ask the Rabbi what they charge for funerals. Since I’m a member of a Synagogue, after our Rabbi did the service, I donated to the Synagogue. There’s no particular amount if they don't suggest one. We did $500. My mother probably did, too. The Shiva was around 2K for food, drink, and flowers. Jewish people generally don’t send flowers at a funeral. Instead, they might offer a charity you can donate to in memory of the person.
So plain wood casket…is there a vault? I really don’t want the vault.
I had to Google vaults. Jewish law doesn't prohibit the use of burial vaults, but some say they are antithetical to traditional Judaism. For example, some say that vaults deny the reality of death by inhibiting decomposition and are ostentatious. Others say that placing the casket directly in contact with the earth is an important part of Jewish burial to ensure the "dust to dust" cycle. So nope!
I do funerals as a part of my work, on top of my own family's and personal history with death. Some things I have learned over the years. For the practical end, a compromise might be a headstone in the cemetery and also a cremation. My own grandma was buried in a columbarium, where her ashes are in a small part of a larger memorial with others. Less space, less cost, and you still get the memorial aspect. Now for the extra bits you didn't ask for but I will preach until the sun consumes us. 1. Plan the funeral or memorial. So many people will insist they don't want anything, because it would be a waste of time. Or worse, demand that everyone have a happy celebration that they are gone. For some this is a moment to celebrate their long lived life. But for Pete's sake, I hope my loved ones are sad when I die. It means they actually like me and miss me. A service, a gathering, something to let people be here together and say we miss the person is an important part of the healing process. 2. Every family is complicated. Every single one. Some more than others, but every funeral I have ever held included a conversation around a complicated family dynamic. That is normal, and nothing to be embarrassed or ashamed of. Just give the planners a heads up. 3. The importance of marking deaths is to remind us that life is precious. We can't turn back time, or bargain for more of it. We can only do the best we have with what we have today.
I’ve done live funeral music, and the part about not making it a celebration is really poignant. I’ve had very strange request for songs. Some have been the ok since they were the deceased’s favorite song. But I only did one, “ I want it to be a party” funeral. Never again. It’s akward, someone will find it offensive or inappropriate, and it makes people uncomfortable. Funerals are for the living, not the deceased. It’s a time to grieve and find comfort in family or community. Sad funerals are good funerals; it’s cathartic. Don’t be the person that ask for it, it’s a disservice to your loved ones. Now if you do it after, similar to New Orleans Marches. That can be ok. But not during the service or visitation.
thanks for this post, i never thought of it like this. i've been that person saying some stupid shit about wanting my loved ones to just celebrate my life, but really it all came from a place of me not wanting them to be sad (as if that could ever be helped) and about me not being comfortable with grief in general. can i ask what strange song requests you've had? nvm if that's private to you. i'm only curious.
I agree that the party funeral is not good. When I was in high school, a classmate died in a car crash. She was on the dance team associated with the marching band, so the family asked the marching band to play at the funeral. Our chuckleheaded band director took them at their word when they asked us to play what we were currently performing at the football games. So we played “Disco Inferno (burn baby burn)” at the funeral. We all later wished we hadn’t done that.
My in-laws were caterers, specifically BBQ. They said one of the worst jobs they ever had was catering a "celebration of life" where everyone was trying to act happy and enjoy their damn BBQ to cheerful music because it's what the dead person wanted. They said it was so much sadder and more morbid than a regular funeral.
It’s really important to have a funeral, a memorial, some kind of ceremony. Helps people grieve together. Personally I think that’s good to have as soon after the death as possible. Waiting months is tough.
Catholic or Lutheran services are very “scripted”, and that really comes in handy for those with Christian beliefs. The rituals are just the right mix of grief and hope, acknowledging the deceased wasn’t perfect, and at the same time, giving them the benefit of the doubt. I watched a Church of England service for the medieval king Richard III, whose remains were being interred in Westminster Abbey (?) after being discovered in a car park. Richard III was one of Shakespeare’s greatest villains. When the officiant referred to Richard as “our brother in Christ,” I thought that the service strikes the right note. Even though we all fear what lies beyond this world, everyone should hope for mercy.
Definitely agree
We had a cremation and a memorial service with a burial of the remains at a family graveyard in 2022 to arrange. It didn’t change my opinion because I have long been appalled at most death customs for years and had researched for my own plans years ago as well as keeping up with options in general. This is what we did and how much it cost. We called two local funeral homes with crematoriums and asked prices. We had the one with the lowest estimate, which we had initially got the information from via a billboard by a highway near the nursing home, pick up the body. We had the cremains placed in a wooden box with a cardboard bottom and picked them up ourselves. We arranged a service with the church the person went to, which was the same church he had attended and his wife had been christened at in 1934. My husband hand dug the hole in the family cemetery for the cremains. We had a graveside service led by the minister right after the church memorial service. An uncle and aunt who live next door to the cemetery offered their home for a reception. They borrowed tables and chairs from their church, just as they do every Thanksgiving. They had someone clean that morning, but it was their regular weekly person. I ordered a floral arrangement for the church and one for the gravesite. I wrote and placed an obituary in the local paper. We planned a menu of four food items and three drinks and bought from Costco and a local grocery store. I bought paper tablecloths, and disposable plates, cups, and silverware from Costco and ordered simple clear large serving bowls and spoons off Amazon. We prepared most of the food ourselves, which was country ham rolls, tomato mozzarella salad with basil, a pasta salad with meat and cheese, and various Costco cookies. The two salads are ones I’ve done for years for large groups, so I can almost do them from memory. The ham rolls required just stuffing ham ordered sliced from the deli in store-bought rolls. Drinks were white wine and individual cans/bottles of lemonade, iced tea, and water. The wine was on a side table with cups and the other drinks were in iced tubs. It was summer so we were outside in a backyard. The house could have fit everyone spread out through the house and garage if needed, just like we do at Thanksgiving. Clean up was to give leftovers to whomever wanted them and trash the rest. My husband took the bags to the dump the following day. I think a scout troop ended up with the extra tub of drinks for camp. Cremation and box was $1800, minister and organist several hundred donation (maybe $500 and $200?), flowers were a couple of hundred, food and drinks were about $500, obit about $150. Gravestone was $400, although that would have been covered due to military service if we had thought about that before we ordered it. Obviously, we were fortunate in the sense of having ancestors who had a farm with a graveyard that is still owned by the family. Each family unit sends $100 a year for mowing now that the close-by relatives are getting older. Prior to that, they mowed it. One uncle must still pay the taxes and insurance. And not everyone has a family member with homes large enough to hold everyone and willing to do that, much less next door to the cemetery, so that’s obviously not a usual thing. But much of the rest some people can do. Another advantage we had was that I’m the DIL, not the bereaved child, and the death was for an elderly person with dementia. So not entirely unexpected and not the kind of sudden, tragic situation that would have rendered me unable to plan and execute what needed to be done.
I took care of my mother's funeral and cremation. Her ashes were buried next to those of my father, who had died some 30 years earlier. In retrospect, I wish that their remains had been handled the same way as my grandparents. My aunt handled both of her parent's funerals and had them cremated and then scattered in a large rose garden near the crematorium. There was a small brass plaque with their names on it put on a nearby wall but that was optional. What I liked about this option was the following: - I tend to believe that the mortal remains of someone should be treated with respect but are not actually the person as they were known in life. Taking up large areas in graveyards seems wasteful just to warehouse dead people. - It ties the person's memory to a particular place. My aunt said that every time she saw a rose garden she could think of her parents and even if she had moved to the other side of the country she would not feel that she had left the grave untended or neglected.
There is something sad about knowing you are neglecting a grave
We interred my mom just Thursday. She died in December, but we live a long way away. We had a very simple ceremony at the cemetery with some family members. Afterward, we rented a private dining room at a restaurant and took everyone out for lunch, where we shared our memories. The bill from the funeral home was $1000, lunch at the restaurant was under $500. We still have to get 2023 added to my mom's niche. (She and my dad arranged everything beforehand, so most of the engraving was done) My mom was very active in her church until her dementia made it impossible. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of ministers. My mom was 86. Realistically, most of her friends are dead, and a lot of her family is gone, which is why we kept it simple.
My dad used to say, "throw my body to the wolves, I don't care." Which is actually the least helpful thing you could say. If you are prepping for your death, at least give people some basic instructions. My little brother died recently and like everyone is saying, it's expensive and the people who operate the establishments are kinda gross. Like car salesman gross. My mom and I have talked about what she wants. My state allows for human composting, she's picked flowers that she would like to have planted in her remains. It's a little weird, but I think a nice way to remember her.
Not weird at all imo, very much in line with the natural order of things. I guess it is outside social norms, which i find kind of sad and I’m hopeful that what your mom wants will become the norm or at least close to it. She may be a pioneer of sorts.
Yeah I guess I meant weird like, not as common. Ive done a good amount of research on the green burial stuff and I'm completely onboard. I hope it rolls out to the whole country. Burial, and even cremation is so wasteful.
Do green burials ever get disturbed? Like back in the wagon train days, they had to pile rocks over a shallow burial when someone died on the trail, to keep animals from digging up the body.
Both my mother and my stepfather's funereal were completely planned out. I didn't really do much of anything. Mom was in hospice care when my stepfather passed and I got a call from the funeral home about 3 hours after he passed. They'd planned out everything years in advance and things just started happening when he passed. Mom went about 6 months later and the funeral folks were right there as soon as they heard. I have no idea how much it all cost for either of them. Literally the only expense I had to pay was for the preacher's time and that was not much. Do your family a favor and do all that work well beforehand. You also know that you'll get the funeral that you want to have. Dad's assured me that he's already planned everything and he had me come into town a few years ago so he could show me where all the documents are and I met with his banker and his lawyer. So now I know both of them.
I agree; it’s a huge gift of love and foresight to deal with this yourself before you die. I’m about to do it after I move so my young child will never have to think about the logistics while grieving.
I felt like it was a racket very similar to the wedding racket. Taking someone in an emotional state and using guilt and obligation-based arguments to get them to overspend.
You would love Ask A Mortician on youtube.
Thank you! I'll check it out. I absolutely love Swedish Death Cleaning. It's a show all Americans should watch.
I'll check it out, thank you! :)
My dad’s was over $25k. He was worth every penny, he had the money, and it was the funeral he would have wanted. We gave him a great and meaningful send off. $2k just to open (and close) the plot he already owned and had the deed to. It IS a racket. I’m going to be cremated and scattered somewhere. 😉
Both my parents died last year, 3 weeks apart, no it wasn't broken heart as they'd been divorced for almost 30yrs. My mom in California and my Dad in Idaho. Both wanted to be cremated and we did a celebration of life after. Cremation in California was $5200, Idaho was $900. I learned that even in death where you die can cost more money. The entire industry is a joke. $400 for a basic urn from the funeral parlor vs $59 for one on Amazon. It's a cash grab at someone's lowest point and unless you know different you just go along with what they tell you
It's a huge waste of money. Mom and I planned dad's funeral. The final price tag was astonishing. She decided then and there that she wanted no funeral, just simple cremation and burial of her ashes beside dad. I followed her wishes and got a lot of flack from her family for not going all out for a funeral. I don't care. I did exactly what she requested.
After dealing with the expense and headache of funerals for both my parents, I plan to be cremated and scattered on a hilltop on my farm. I even admire a fellow I grew up with who was a few years older that died recently and his final wishes were to donate his body to a teaching hospital and have no funeral service or burial. That said, the wife and I are buying cemetery plots and a headstone. I learned from a cousin who really got into genealogy research that cemetery headstones are quite handy to verify other records of some long ago ancestors existence.
When my husband died, I went with cremation. We'd talked of it often in relation to other family members, so even though he never told me his wishes, I figured he'd be okay with it. He hasn't come back to haunt me, so I suppose I got it right. I arranged the memorial myself. I rented an ecumenical chapel and their reception area which, including the services of a minister, cost me less than $1K. I decorated the reception room with the Southwestern pottery that we'd collected over the years, rather than splurging on flowers, which would've been far less meaningful. The catering was my biggest expense, but I just wasn't up for doing all of that myself. We had no children and no relatives were offering to help, so I went with what was easy. I even designed the program myself and had it printed for under $100. It was exhausting. I didn't really want to do it. But my husband had a lot of friends and I know that if I hadn't done all of that, I would've felt terrible for not giving him a good send-off. I was awfully damn glad when it was all over though, and judging from how I got mobbed at the reception, I'd say his friends were glad I gave them the opportunity to pay their respects. One thing that really helped was that when my husband went into home hospice, I started making the plans. I also wrote the obit and my own eulogy while he was still technically alive. There's a lot of paperwork involved with death, and I knew I wouldn't up for all that would be required after he was gone, so I did as much as I could in advance. It saved my ass. TL;DR: You can pull of a very nice commemoration for far less than if you work through the funeral industry, but plan ahead of time. Once someone is gone, you don't want to deal with much of anything, so it's better to be able to just execute the plan already in place.
It gave me a greater respect for cultural rituals. I am not a particularly religious person, but it's was nice to have the religious and social customs so we could just be on auto pilot during our grief and not have to try to figure out what we should do. I know a lot of people know how to honor their loved ones with personal and deeply meaningful memorials or services, but no one in my family would be even remotely capable of that so for us it was nice to have a pre-determined process flow.
My wife passed away recently, and I had to deal with this for the first time. I was left with a lack of hard wishes, a fragmented family (diff areas of the country), a lot of “advice”, and not much else. I decided a traditional funeral / service was impractical for family reasons. And I was glad; once I found out the prices of such things, it made me realize how important it will be for me to make this simple for my own kids someday. I chose cremation. I had the ashes separated into two containers. One got brought on a plane to her mom, who is going to bury them in an existing family plot somewhere in Alberta. The other we are burying in our backyard, planting a tree, and dedicating it as a space myself and my daughters can visit her. Nobody in the family thought expensive “services” were desired here. We wanted to do things ourselves, kind of a “keep it family business” vibe. I had a few comments from outsiders with a bit of disapproval (“no headstone?”) but ignored them.
We used a local family owned funeral home for my dad in February. The man who runs it was so helpful, so compassionate and we were actually surprised that the total amount was less than we expected. They went above and beyond and we will 100% use them again when needed. He helped us get my dad a plot at Veterans cemetery to bury his ashes, helped my brother write a letter for the request and even made phone calls to the right people on our behalf. My dad’s service was like a museum of his life with all his Army stuff displayed so respectfully. Truly the best experience we could have had.
My dad made his arrangements and paid for it. Thanks dad.
Best one I went to was a cremation then a gathering at a banquet hall type place. Some photos and momentos. No church or funeral industry in the latter. Not sure of cremation cost but banquet hall couldn’t have been more than $700 for 2 hours on a Wednesday evening. No food or drinks involved either.
It made me realize just how important Wills and estate planning actually is. People get real weird when money or property are involved.
Both my parents died 5 months apart in 2022. For me: I would like to be made into a tree or mushrooms 🍄 anything to put me back in the earth. No chemicals, no box, no fire, no music, no crying, no flowers. Funerals are for the living and it seems like people save up all the nice things to say about you the day after you can no longer hear it
Oh yeah the death industry is a total racket. The Neptune Society is both the cheapest and the easiest way I've found to get through it. Burial where you want, or cremation and you decide where the ashes go, done in less than a week, minimal cost and boom done. We did a big celebration a few times for the more popular family members, but that's expensive and exhausting. For me, I'm going to get one of those Green Burial plots when they're available. Stick me in the ground and plant a tree on me. Done. Since the plots aren't marked, those burial yards make really lovely forever-parks.
I recently arranged the funeral for my mother. I knew she insisted on a regular funeral and burial, so I followed her wishes, even know the cost was much higher. My father-in-law passed about 10 years ago, and he was cremated, with a total cost being probably around $2000, including paying for using the church for a memorial service. I went ahead and pre-arranged my mothers funeral and services about a year prior to her death, as I was concerned she may outlast her money, and at some point we may of had to have her go to a Medicaid paid nursing home. The total cost in 2021 was estimated at $13,000, and this was arranged by a funeral director friend of mine who I trusted completely, so there was no fluff or padding of the expenses. Mom already had a plot next to dad, with the tombstone available and she had also prepaid the 'opening' fee, which by itself was $1000 at the cemetery. Since those costs were already paid, it probably 'saved' another $2,000 to 3,000 more for her burial. Even using a friend, I do think some of the funeral costs are a 'racket', when my father passed many years prior to my mom, we used a different funeral home, I just remember arranging those services and it seemed like the funeral director was always pushing us to get something more expensive, using the phrase, 'this is what your beloved would have wanted' - real sales job. Very much like /u/techo-soft-girl mentions in their post. Nice part is if you plan ahead and plan to prepay you can look around and check out prices and compare, and you or your loved ones won't be stressed by the sales pitch. I honestly believe if you prepay, the funeral home won't affect your emotions, but sure in some ways it will happen. The cost estimating sheet provided to me and my brother for my mother's expenses was nice to see all the items listed out. We signed up for somethings, avoided other fees. I understand some funeral homes attempt to 'bundle' the packages so you don't know all those items, just a set price for this casket, hearst, service, etc., which you should try to avoid. At mom's death, we actually got a few dollars back, less than $100, since items didn't cost as much. One fee really terrible is the cost to put an obituary in the newspaper, there is a fee for a picture and so much per word and I'm sure there are some obit's you'll see that are easily over $2,000! Most funeral homes now days put in a minimal notice, with a few personal items and perhaps giving times of service, with them posting a full obituary on their website as part of their services for a minimal fee (I don't think any cost?). Finally I add the prepaid money goes into an insurance policy, setup as a prepaid Trust, shielding those funds from the government in the event mom needed care under Medicaid for a nursing home. For those wondering, her memory care facility was over $7000 a month, and while my siblings and I could have carried those expenses for a few months, it just didn't seem possible long term. When she was alive she was getting about $4000 per month Social Security and Pension, so the cost rate to her was only about $3500. Sorry for your loss.
It’s a personal decision that binds your loved ones to follow your wishes. This is peculiar to me because the living are the ones dealing with it. Sometimes I feel the dead lost their voice and practicality must take over. The living should do what they feel is right according to what they can afford as far as time goes. All that said, I’m a fan of cremation. Cost wise, a little cheaper. When my teen died, I chose creation because I knew my ex would make a stink about the remains. I knew my mother would make a stink about all of it. Son got cremated. My friend is an undertaker and he divided the ashes in two for each parent. I kept a small jar in case I changed my mind because I bought a headstone at the family plot and buried half his ashes there. Our family is not a grace visiting fam, only when the next family member dies do we visit graves. Since we raised my son in another state, I felt having a burial place would be nice for any friends to have a place to reflect on the life and death of my son. But honestly, when I go to the cemetery, my son is not there. He’s with me everywhere I go. The final costs were around $12,000. Honestly, the whole thing is a chaotic memory. I’m glad I did it the way I had to. Edit: the State Farm auto policy I have has a death benefit. The $10,000 paid for the funeral, I paid for the plot/headstone. Ex paid for nothing and demanded son’s golf clubs from the trunk. That I bought for my son. Yes, I gave ex the golf clubs. I told him to shove all of them up his disgusting ass.
Hugs xx
I never wanted a funeral myself and organizing my dad’s funeral made me realize that is an excellent decision on my part. My wish is to donate my body to medicine but there’s a bit of work involved, so I’m going to get that sorted before I die (hopefully).
Both of my parents opted for cremation. The funeral home made it simple with no upsell. We had a small family gathering and no memorial services. Those who wished to bought small urns for themselves. Very simple and the cost was very low.
It encouraged me to review my own life insurance. And decide that I'd plan my own funeral myself ahead of time. I'll do an all in one deal. Funeral processions have gotten too dangerous. When my last grandparent died in 2005, people were cutting in and out of the funeral procession. And it was only 3 miles from the funeral home to the cemetery. When planning my mother's funeral, it was all I could do to semi-hold myself together in the funeral director's office. By the end of this year, I want to have my own burial plans organized. I don't want to leave it to my (presumably) grieving husband. I'll pick out everything, then the life insurance policies can pay for it and whatever is left on our mortgage, although I very much hope I live longer than our currently planned mortgage payoff time-line.
My parents chose cremation, but they still had a headstone and their ashes are buried in that plot. I've visited once in the 10 years since they've passed away. It's just not my thing. I've chosen not to have a plot or headstone. I told the kids if they need something they can visit, they can donate something to the zoo and hopefully get a plaque with my name on it.
Yeah, a plaque or a park bench would be better than a headstone for me, personally.
Had always been to what seemed to be stuffy and/or sad funerals. (And I'm sure they were expensive) It *really* is a sad time when you say goodbye for the last time but it's also the 1st start to healing. Since being an adult and arranging or being part of arrangements, we've learned to celebrate their lives. Brother had beach boys playing throughout visitation, cremated and sent to the beach. Husband had a 1-day visitation and service, mainly for his mom. Cremated and been to multiple countries since that he probably didn't even know he wanted to go to. Bestie had Korn playing. Cremated and some ashes spread with her infant son. Parents both were cremated with no service per their wishes. I've told the kids to either cremate me or donate me but not to spend extra unless they need to do it for them. Cemetaries are beautiful but they're pretty full.
After paying for my parents' and in-laws' funerals, my husband and I made our own funeral arrangements. We have room in the family plot, funeral home paid, cremations paid, and headstones paid. Please, don't leave those decisions and costs to your family if you can avoid it
I'm a pastor so I do a lot of funerals. Here's my best advice: 1. Preplan your service. You can file it with a funeral home and/or your house of worship. If you're a minority religion in your area and have specific rules for how bodies are handled, you'll want to be sure you find the appropriate place or make it very clear in your file how things are to be handled. 2. Funeral homes will sell you a ton of services you don't need. You really don't need most of the things they offer, or can get them so much cheaper elsewhere. This is why pre-planning your own funeral is a great gift to your family - if you pick these things out then they're less likely to spend a bunch of $$ while they're in the fog of grief. 3. If you're religious, the minister/Rabbi/imam/leader will have most of the service already outlined for you. They just need to talk you through it to make sure it's what you're expecting and wanting. You might want to look over it and make sure you're comfortable with everything. Most evangelical churches, for example, will have some version of an altar call. If you don't want that, tell them. 4. Please pay your musicians and treat them well. After all the services I've done, I've decided I want to be cremated and inurned. It's cost effective, especially since I'm donating much of my body. And I like the idea of there being a place for loved ones to visit. My church has a columbarium and it's so special. People will pop in to visit their loved one before going into worship.
It’s only a racket if you let it be. I’ve had the experience of burying my parents—one was cremated, and their ashes were scattered at sea as per their wishes. I used a funeral home and a Costco casket for a memorial service, and I personally wrote the programs for both ceremonies. I buried one body and put the other's in the sea, at their request. I had both names inscribed on a headstone. Having a place to visit and see the names has been essential for our family and others, especially over the past 20 years. I’ve realized that having a physical location to go to is an anchor point; it’s so much better than what I’ve seen with others who have no place or marker and tend to forget and don’t reflect yearly. If you have the chance, check out a Ukrainian cemetery. They have specific days, like St. Andrew’s Day, where people visit, set up picnics with drinks by the headstones, plant beautiful flowers, and have social gatherings. It’s a happy day and seems like a healthy ritual. You can see how they differ from some other empty and unmaintained places. Going even in the dead of winter, you can see people have been there tending. Also, in older cemeterys, you can walk around and see the history progress from the older graves to the newer ones, to your point. Funeral directors often try to sell pre-packaged services with many upgrades, and for some people, that’s all they can manage. The people I worked with offered options but also welcomed my “program managing” approach. Just like car dealers, there are good and bad funeral directors. Consider writing your and any parents (assuming they didn't) obituary and any speeches beforehand, or at least jot down some ideas. When someone passes, you have 3-5 days to plan everything, and you might regret missing something you wanted to say or do. One of the best gifts you can give your survivors is an explicit list of your wishes, kept with your will. It will help them focus and give them the relief of knowing they fulfilled your wishes. Also tell your heirs where the will is, no time to hunt it down. I park mine with a lawyer. I also gave a copy to the named executor, so that they know, and if they read it and need clarification, they can ask. One of my parents described where they wanted to be buried but didn’t specify the exact place. I had to scramble to find the right location with fast research, but at least they had given me most of the details. As per cost, I helped with something similar. In the NJ area, outsourced cremation was $500, a modest stone and plot was 2000$. My costs for the above scenarios (20 years ago) were intentionally not low budget, but I did shop around for the casket and cremation. You can look online for casket and stone costs, you can actually get them online. I plan to set aside a budget range and not have to have my heirs wonder if they spent too much or too little. Hope this helps, its more about process, but it does reflect on my thoughts on your post.
My late husband had cancer. He refused to have anything to do with planning for himself after death. I did know he wanted to be cremated, so I did that and picked out an urn at the funeral home. The people were very kind and not high pressure at all. For myself, I've already prepaid through Neptune Society to cremate me and deliver the ashes to my kids. They won't have to do anything. They have thanked me for taking care of it in advance.
My husband and I also prepaid for a cremation with Neptune Society. We bought a plot years back we will share at a nearby monastery. The Neptune Society had urns that came with the plan, but we purchased two plain wooden urns the monks make for our ashes instead. I like knowing that this is what will happen and knowing exactly where our “ final resting place” will be.
My mom died this year. It was necessarily unexpected, but much sooner than anticipated so we didn't get a chance to hammer out these details. She's upstairs, ashes in a vase we found in her house that I have no idea what to do with. I won't be interring her in a cemetery I know. Paying for a permit to scatter them somewhere seems excessive, as does travelling somewhere to do that since there really isn't any place local or not that screams "this is the sentimental place to scatter". I thought about burying it in the backyard but idk if I want that hanging over me the rest of my life in this house either, and she lived in a condo so it's not like she had a backyard to put her in. Outside of this, between the cremation, visitation at the funeral home, and a small family only get together at my aunt's house afterwards, we spent about 3k. Far too much in my taste, but so much cheaper than an actual funeral. I also have at best a minority view of death. I'm not religious and don't believe in an afterlife or souls. Once the neurons stop firing, the person is gone and exists only in memories. I don't visit gravesites because they mean nothing. It's just a place where the remains are decomposing. I don't need to visit that place to remember the person. I don't feel I'm dishonoring that person (because they're dead) or their memories by not visiting. I know it holds a lot of meaning for others that a person has the "correct" burial and funeral for whatever they believe to be "correct" about the afterlife. I believe that efforts should be made to respect that person's desires for their funeral and remains, regardless of what the family desires to a point. The point being: I believe the loved ones left behind should be allowed the opportunity to properly grieve and say goodbye and I believe no one else should have to go into debt to pay for what others (the deceased or otherwise) want. If you want it, you have to pay for it. For me, dump my ass in the woods and have a good party with laughter and reminiscing then move on with life.
I have explicit funeral plans in my will and money from the estate pays for it. I have $10,000 set aside. My body goes to science. Use me for research, education, training, whatever. That remaining $10,000 is to rent out my favorite bar for the day. Cater breakfast, lunch, dinner. What's left goes to the bar tab. Everyone drinks free until the money runs out. Open door policy, turn no one away. If there's any left at closing time, it gets raffled off to one lucky attendee. I don't want no fancy casket, no embalming, no viewing. I don't even want a grave. Fuck those vampires. Eat, drink, be merry. Remember my life by enjoying yours.
I am going out to Sea on a small boat with a celebration
My favorite crematory/ funeral home is family owned and will stay that way for the forseeable future. I love those people, they are the best.
I’ve buried quite a few people with all the pomp and circumstance. I realized I will be cremated and ashes buried in my backyard under a beautiful Tree. No services. If my kids want to have a memorial for me at our home fine, but nothing organized through a funeral home.
We had a horrible time with the cemetery my parents’plot is in. They ignored our calls and kept putting off my mom’s (prepaid by her) interment and funeral in 2021. She died in JAN and finally in the ground AUG. The crematory was good to work with though and pretty inexpensive for a $1000. Either way it’s such a racket.
Sorry you had to go through that and sorry for your loss
They very much exploit your sadness to upsell and overcharge knowing that you aren't in any place to defend yourself or shop around.
You will understand why some people choose cremation. It seems so pomp and circumstance and very exploitative of people at their most worst moment of time. It is like if you can’t afford the luxury casket, funeral sprays, and multi limo services, you are not honoring your loved one and will not be seen as a good husband/wife/daughter/son/mom/dad/etc. It is painful and once you come out of mourning, you may feel used and still feel like you did not do enough. Yeah.. cremation, if you don’t have a proper religion that has strict rules which help you against the ones that are grifters. Also, like everything, I’m sure the costs are now 4x to 10x what they were 2 years ago. So Viking style (by sea, pyre, or combo), pine box, or cremation seems they only way to go to not strap your loved ones with debt and sadness they did not do enough.
I was appalled and shocked at the predatory nature of the salesman when picking out everything for the funeral. I went with my uncle who had just lost his wife of over 50 years. They tried to up sale him on everything and actually changed items from the ones selected in the show room to higher priced ones and added unwanted options to the contract they gave him to sign. I took the contact from him and went over the several page document making changes and crossing things out. Having them put the correct casket, etc etc. Ended up saving him about $10,000. He was in shock at the whole ordeal. He would have signed anything they handed him by the end just to get out of there. His wife had been dead less than 48 hours and he was dazed. Later he hugged and thanked me for being there and not letting them take advantage of the weakest moment of his life. He is a very savvy retired business man. It was a nice funeral and everything for my Aunt was handled beautifully but I could have gone back and kicked the salesman in the shin or other painful area. I was so angry!!
My dad was cremated and his ashes spread out over water. It was all decided prior and there was no additional stress re: caskets, flowers, music, pressure by salesmen etc.,.it was simple and beautiful and back into nature. He would never have wanted us to spend thousands on a funeral or sit by his gravestone...but I understand this may not be the way for others.
After the first of my parents died, I was involved in the arrangements. It's like a wedding but at the other end of life. Some people want a big, theatrical show, others just want simple. And for the more complex arrangements, there are companies that will provide whatever experience the people paying would like to have. This includes what is done with the body. Influences like the social traditions of the deceased or their loved ones heavily come into play. Is it traditional to have a place to visit, or is it traditional to have a final good-by and then visit them only in memories? Both (and so many others) seem equally valid for different (sub)cultures or families.
My wife died at Christmas last year. She did not want to be cremated, she preferred a burial, and while it was expensive, it was literally the last thing I could do for her so I didn’t worry about the price. I knew it would be ridiculously overpriced, and knowing that we had bought a life insurance policy for $25,000 earmarked for funeral expenses Hers ended up being about 18,000. Part of the high cost was the fact that she was overweight and had to have an oversized coffin & vault, which were double the price of a regular coffin & vault; part of the cost was we were visiting family out of state when she died so we had to pay to have her transported back home Before she could be buried. Definitely a racket, but what do you do? Her family needed the funeral and such for closure and I wasn’t going to let her down.
Having a solid plan in place is errr…life saving? For the living atleast. Grief already knocks you off kilter, knowing the wishes of the deceased makes it a lot easier to plan while in the midst of grievance. I’m talking colors, locations, songs/hymns, speakers, etc. Hard to think straight at that time, with lots of high emotions and a lot of planning/logistics. Having some kind of outline before needing it, really helps.
Creamates and celebration of life. Not a big mopey funeral.
After my sister in law (who was his last remaining immediate family member) died in 2005 at age 39, he let her bestie set up all the funeral services. It cost us $43k in the final bill. Thankfully, my BIL (my sisters hubby) popped up with his credit card and paid it until her life insurance came in to pay him back. Talk about being forever grateful. It made us realize how ridiculous the pomp & circumstance it all is and we just want to be cremated with no service. Go cheap, we don't care.
The show Adam Ruins Everything did a good episode on this!
Generationally poor and found that you don't need to use an expensive-ass funeral home. Organized it myself in her home. I didn't have the emotional energy or support system to organize anything very nice or big, but it was way better and more personal doing it in her home than a weird funeral home where everyone/everything is so formal, which was very unlike my mom or the life she lived. Cremation was the easiest/cheapest option at the time and in the area. Found that you can order urns online for like $40, so got a couple of those to split her ashes. The funeral home did offer printing services for those little card things since they handled the cremation. Though almost every funeral I've ever seen in person or on TV is handled through a funeral home, I think there are more ways than we realize to handle death. I think there's something to be said for death doulas and grief services, but paying for a service at a funeral home is super weird to me now. And I used to be interested in pursuing mortuary services.
It's an unethical racket preying on people at the most vulnerable times of our lives.
Why pay thousands for a fancy box that gets buried? Don't pay for viewings. Personally, I don't like that idea, and I'm positive I'm not alone in that. Don't have a get-together at the funeral home. Find a no frills low cost cremation. The idea that the amount of money you spend and the number of mourners is any indication of the love you had for this person is outdated and needs to end. I've been to funerals were so called mourners barely knew the deceased.
It has nothing to do with the family or bereavement. It is 100 per cent abput how much money thry can make selling over priced services and even more costly "add ons". It is disgusting how they are money grubbers esp when you tell them you have insurance. It made me sick to my stomach that this service is based on how much money they can make based on the death of a family member. Absolutely disgusting.
We had our son cremated after he died and held a memorial at the funeral home. We had to dig out the spot for his urn [basic plastic box they use is you don't buy a fancy urn] at the graveyard, but thankfully my father in law and pre-paid family plots. The funeral home refused to charge us because our son was a minor. Otherwise, everything would have cost about $5600 dollars. Since we can put 3 urns in one plot, we had a headstone with his name, my husband's and my name for the same plot for $800. We plan on using just one urn for the both of us, to be buried with our son after we have both died, and the third spot is saved for our daughter, where she can pre-pay for a footstone of she wants to be buried with us, or if she ever gets married, she can be buried with them.
Shit js expensive for no reason . Nothing is biodegradable either
Thank star dust my father (deceased), wanted to be cremated and dumped into the ocean at his number one beach. My mother feels the same way when her time comes. I have some of my father’s ashes still and will do the same for my mother. We don’t need a showcase. All we need is the honor of our loved ones.
Buried both my parents. The trip to the funeral home is horrible. You're at your most vulnerable and you're picking out a casket and making decisions that you don't want to make. Prices are crazy and you feel pressured and helpless. Eventhough sales people are generally compassionate, it's a horrible ordeal. Don't be afraid to say no to the fancy caskets and such. It doesn't matter once they are gone.
Went with our local, family-owned funeral home. They were wonderful. They worked closely with our family. My mom was beside herself, showed up at their front door on a Sunday - when they were closed. They live above the business and the owner came to the door in his robe and invited my mother in. Served her coffee and a muffin and talked her through things. He called me when my mom didn’t want to pick up my dad’s urn. I went and brought him home with me. They handled all the arrangements with the memorial park my parents have plots at. The cost was very reasonable. 100% worth it.
I've recently become interested in [natural burials](https://naturalburialassociation.ca/).
If I had to do it over again I would have just had my Mother cremated. As a young girl grieving I was taken advantage of and paid 20k for her entire funeral. I had no direction.
From an anthropological perspective, funerary rights & rituals are one of the things that make us distinctly & uniquely human. There’s really only a small handful of species on earth that acknowledge their dead: elephants, primates, dolphins, and crows. There’s evidence that Neanderthals & other early hominids had similar funeral rituals as well. But largely, funerals are a very human behavior, which I think is very interesting. As for my personal experience… my grandpa died during COVID. He’d had dementia for over a decade; we all knew it was coming but it still felt like a gut punch tbh. I’d never considered the importance of a funeral until we *couldn’t* have one. There really is something to be said about gathering your loved ones and collectively acknowledging that the world is fundamentally different now. Regardless of whether they were a good, kind person or not… 🤷♀️ the world is different, whether it was a bright soul that left this world or a broken human being. The world, even if it’s just *your* world, will never be the same. For better or worse. And it’s really important to acknowledge that fact. I don’t think it ever gets easier to lose the people you love. Grief is a complicated and incredibly personal experience. But coming together and sharing that grief is such an important part of the process. Without that, it felt like my family was stuck in limbo. It left us as little islands of our own personal grief, which is a heavy burden to bear on your own. Together, that grief isn’t any less painful but it is a little easier to bear. ❤️🩹
Sorry for your loss. I had two relatives that passed during the early onset of Covid but they passed from different ailments. Neither one were able to have a church service which was disappointing to the families but what could we do. Small graveside services for both
Fuck funerals. That's what I learned. Cremate my remains. Scatter them somewhere fun. Have an Irish wake aka party.
When I die, I don’t want my body to take up a whole plot in a cemetery. I don’t want my loved ones going into debt picking out fancy caskets and the cost of burial and all that. I’ve instructed them to cremate me. They can do whatever they want with the ashes. They can decide if they want to hold a funeral/memorial, which I’m sure they will. I don’t want my death to burden the living.
I planted a tree in the “dog graveyard” (we are rescuers and many, many of our dog children are buried there.) The tree has grown huge and provides lovely shade over the area. I’ll be composted or cremated and scattered beneath that tree, with my beloved pets. I don’t care about the feelings or the expenses or who thinks what. Just put me with my dogs.
My stepdaughter recently lost her mother. She had the remains cremated and she has a lovely blue urn in her [home] office. She said it gives her comfort to have it there, that she always thought people who did that were a little weird, but she likes it. We had a nice little send-off for her, with the urn in the center of a lovely arrangement of white flowers.
P.S., We have Neptune Society. They will come get you, cremate you, and take you out to sea where they “bury” your ashes. Efficient and affordable. Your kin can go on the boat if they want.
Our family doesn't indulge in expensive funeral arrangements. We did cremation for our parents and dad was interred in a columbarium at the VA and mom was added when she passed. Cremation was $1,500 each and the VA is free. Dad had a funeral service at my parent's church. Mom we had a dinner with friends at our house. We also had my brother cremated and we spread his ashes at our ranch.
Yes realized how expensive it was, but glad to take that responsibility away from my grieving mother.
My aunt had terminal cancer and planned her own funeral. Even went and had new photos done so they could be displayed.
My father died about five years ago. The cost of the funeral was mind-boggling. My cousin was also married to a local funeral home owner and it was sad to watch him slowly get pushed out by bigger companies and corporations. He did wonderful funerals for my family, but now it is impersonal and more pricey. I want to be cremated. As a Catholic, I am not supposed to, but hopefully they will come around by the time my day comes. If not, it’s still what I want. The cost is part of it, although I have heard it isn’t actually that much cheaper, especially if you still do the whole funeral home and service thing. But I also can’t stand the idea of being in a box forever. Which is weird, because part of the reason I am good with cremation is that I don’t really believe I will still be with my body. I don’t find comfort in going to the cemetery to visit graves and rarely do so, so I don’t see myself putting that obligation on anyone else. I also want to be an organ donor and donate everything possible, so cremation afterward makes the most sense to me. I am undecided if I want my ashes spread somewhere or if I just want my family to decide what to do with them. But I am glad they won’t have to worry about staying close to where I am buried. My family is originally from Detroit and most of my family is buried at a cemetery in a dangerous part of town. My mom and my late grandmother talked about moving them, but it is so expensive and they didn’t know how to decide where to draw the line of who gets moved and who gets left there. But those graves are rarely visited anymore. My paternal grandfather was a veteran and was buried at the closest military cemetery at the time, about 3 hours away. After he died, a new one opened an hour away. When my grandmother died, we had her buried there and had him moved. Again, so expensive, but because military burial is paid for by the government, it was worth the cost.
My mom had specific instructions for cremation facility and scattering of ashes. It was a huge relief knowing her wishes beforehand. I actually said my last goodbyes at the crematorium, and asked the worker if I could watch the process. He was super nice allowed me to observe…..I’m in the medical field (lab) and it was reassuring to see what happens.
I was by my mom's side when my dad passed. The funeral director was very good and kind. The service went extremely well. I'd recommend them any time! However, they definitely pushed their best goods. It is a business after all. My mom just wanted to get it done, so she wasn't thinking straight and was agreeing to just about everything. So, I pulled her aside and explained that if Dad was choosing the vault and casket himself, he definitely wouldn't care if his dead body got wet. He's rolling over in his grave before he's even in it. We laughed a little and she changed to some more reasonably priced choices. I'm sure that Director wasn't too happy with me in that moment. 🤭 Oh well!
No change, but boy is it a LOT. A ton of things to do, and a HUGE amount of emotional labor. If at all possible, lean on people who are very close, but not ***immediate*** family. The closest of the close will be hardcore grieving, so try not to count on any of them to be useful. Of course, since everyone grieves in their own way, some of them may actually WANT to be involved, but you shouldn't expect it. Make sure to leave space for your own grief as well. They comedown when it's all over is also real... it's a relief but you may also experience profound depression when the activities are complete.
I’ve been lucky in the sense that my parents funerals were done by one of the few still family run funeral homes left in the home town where they passed and they had also handled our grandmother and I went to school with their son. So I didn’t feel like I was being taken for a ride on cost. My parents also had prepaid burial plots with my mother’s family so that was also taken care of. But for me and my husband it will just be an unfussy cremation with no services.
My parents are dead and I’m so grateful they prepaid their cremations and headstone. After my dad’s funeral I had a reception with music and food because I wanted people to gather and rejoice and share memories. When my stepfather died we had a somber funeral followed by a party with music and food and drinks because we believe in celebrating the memory of those we love who are no longer here. Death is sad and the people we love are worth sending off fondly in the way we see appropriate to who they were when we had them.
I’m a licensed funeral Director/embalmer and I teach mortuary science now, happy to answer any questions.
For years my mother told me that when her time came she wanted to be cremated. No viewing, no funeral. I would always say we have time to talk about that and I think I’d rather give you a funeral so we can say goodbye. And maybe lots of times we had that conversation. I was horrified that that’s what she wanted and why should it be so unceremonious for her, when our family had had other dignified services??? She was the most important of them all. At least in my eyes. Skip ahead many years and some unexpected tragedy later, my sister died, then 4 months later, my mother died. And just before she died, we drove out to my mother’s home (as she was in the ICU) to check on our grandmother and we discovered her dead, eyes open, in a chair in her bedroom. I did exactly what my mother asked me to do. And I was so grateful that it was what SHE wanted. I could never have handled it otherwise.
I ended up choosing not to have a regular service or burial. Did a cookout and invited all his musician friends to play. Cremation.
We had my grandma cremated out of concern about COVID and the aftereffects. It cost a few thousand dollars. I sing. I conducted her funeral. It was during the lockdown era. It was an unusual experience but it was oddly satisfying to know I had managed to do it and to give her a decent one in the middle of all that. I'm proud. It shot my confidence into space. Relatives dug the hole and we put the ashes in. I had the attendees put a handful of dirt in then I gave them the opportunity to talk about memories of her. We sang a hymn, too.
I did a burial in 22 and cremation in 23. I am weird, I don’t visit my daughter in the cemetery, she is in my heart and memories, it is her body in the casket in the grave. Dad’s ashes are in a box next to his favorite chair. We will take care of them this summer when my brother visits Both were devastating. I am probably in the least favored way to look at it Sorry for your loss.
Both my parents donated their bodies to science. 1 year later we got their ashes in an urn, both of which are installed side by side under a single small stone in a cemetery near their friends' plots under a young tree (in a different state, so we don't visit often). We had Memorial gatherings for each of them several months later, which was perfect. Kinda thinking I'll do something like that, too. But my husband's grandmother (who lived to 102, mostly healthy and active except for the last couple of years; she once moved to a different assisted living facility because the first one had old folks in it who went to bed by 8:00 and she wanted to have fun!) had a very standard big ol' funeral with tons of people (I think she was friends with everyone in several states. Her hundredth birthday party was a blast!) and an enormous, fancy, layered casket (which she had chosen herself) to protect her remains from everything up to a nuclear blast. Great funeral, but really expensive. That's not for me. And then there was my husband's stepfather's funeral (his mom survives, she'll probably make 100, too), who was a Viet Nam veteran. He was cremated and his ashes scattered after a brief chapel funeral. The scattering was amazing. My MIL chartered a fishing boat to take us all out to the middle of Monterey Bay (right after the funeral). Since he was an ex-marine (I know, there's actually no such thing as an EX-Marine. Semper Fi), a team of marines came with us to do the traditional military ceremony on the boat. Also along for the ride was a native American friend of my FIL; my FIL had basically semi-adopted/rescued him when he was a scared, angry teenager. He had grown up to be a shaman of his tribe. All the family members were there, kids, grandkids, cousins, everyone. It was rather a cloudy, chilly day, but traveling out into the bay was amazing. The shaman pointed out all the ocean creatures to the kids. We saw otters and seals and a number of seabirds (no whales; wrong season). When we got out there, the shaman did his ceremony, which was awesome (chanting and smudging in full costume), then the adults helped all the kids scatter Grandpa's ashes off the back of the boat. After that, the marines did their ceremony, including taps played by a single cornet from the crow's nest in the rigging (spine-tingling and tear-making), while they folded the flag in their special way and gave it to my MIL. It was an absolutely amazing afternoon. A perfect tribute to Grandpa Jim. Won't do for me, but it was amazing. (Pretty sure they won't let you scatter ashes on Broadway, so mine will probably stay in the urn.)
We did our own thing recently. We signed up to receive a $300 discount through a cremation society in our state and had my MIL cremated. We bought a beautiful urn online and held the Memorial Service in a beautiful historic hotel's family suite. I catered finger foods and non alcoholic drinks. Everyone loved it and said it was much more personal and a better vibe.
That's really nice.
Follow Caitlin Doughty if you aren't already. She does deep dives into the funerary industry. My dad died with no money and no final wishes. I had to take out a loan for about $3600 for cremation, copies of his death certificate, a rep to contact Social Security on our behalf, writing and publishing an obituary, an appointment so his immediate family could see him one last time before cremation, the cardboard box he was cremated in, and a 2 hour get together for family and friends. On first meeting with the funeral people I straight told them we were all poor AF and didn't want any extras. Bare basics, and if we needed anything we'd do it ourselves. I got a sign in book at work and made a photo board myself. They were understanding; the place we went to was excellent. Our one splurge was his urn. Most urns are boring. This was a ceramic cookie jar thing in the shape of a John Deere tractor and we couldn't resist. My great aunt and uncle paid for that. As for myself... recycle any bits you can, and chuck the rest over the back fence of a body farm. Donate me to a school. Go full Weekend at Bernie's. ONLY IF THERE'S MONEY TO DO IT wrap me in a sheet and bury me natural in a green cemetery. Then go out to a good bar and play my jams and eat all the chips and queso you can stand.
My mom worked for the Catholic Church for years. The clergy are mostly older folks so she ended up being responsible for helping arrange funerals for a lot of them. She has nothing but contempt for the death care industry. She saw every trick, scam, and upsell in the book over the years. She's made it clear that she wants her body donated to science followed by a fully green burial, because donating your body is the absolute only way to completely circumvent the death care industrial complex. In her later years she began to serve as an unofficial death doula/consultant for family and friends, going with them to the funeral homes to make sure they aren't taken advantage of. I wish more people had access to that kind of resource. The industry is rotten to the core. I could go on and on, but in case you're not aware, the vast majority of funeral homes are owned by huge multinational companies that are concerned about nothing but making as much money as possible by fleecing people when they are at the lowest points in their lives and at their most vulnerable. I highly recommend Caitlin Doughty. The is an author/funeral home owner/ YouTube personality who has made a career about speaking openly about the industry and everything that's wrong with it.
i was SHOCKED that stuff would cost so much for something that’s in the ground. Like, wtf is a casket for then? it’ll be put into a concrete box and covered with dirt? what are all these fancy things for? I’ve always thought i’d donate my body to science, because you might as well dissect my weird ass brain and try to learn something from my troubles. but my relatives won’t hear of it. i grew up thinking cremation was horrible, “how could you do that to your loved one?” but i’ve changed my views since. i actually love the idea now that i could nourish a tree and other nature somewhere, and “live on” in that sense or “give back” somehow. but then i also understand why people don’t want to destroy the body and want to provide a nice final resting place because it hurts so much that they’re gone. Edit to add: funeral in the early 00s in New England cost about 14000 for: funeral services and organizing by the funeral home, church service, singer at the service, funeral home’s car driving us from the church to the cemetery, 2-person plot in a cemetery, flowers for church and gravesite, the most basic casket, cement sarcophagus, opening/closing the grave, tombstone with carving and placement, guest book at the service, thank you cards to send out afterwards, small semi-catered reception with food in the church hall. man it’s a lot of little things sometimes that add up, and you don’t really find out that most of it is totally up to you - they just pull you in and say “this is what’s usually done” and because “this is what you’re used to seeing” for others and because you don’t know what parts you can pick and choose (for either financial or social reasons), and because you’re just trying to organize it so it’s settled because you’re grieving at the same time, you just say yes to almost everything that falls under “what most people do.” Now I know better, but unless i have some financial tragedy, i’ll be doing the same thing for the other parent if they go before i do, because that’s what they also want. oh well.
I'll tell you. Funeral directors are ghouls who take advantage of people at their lowest. If they don't think you have the money for an extravagant burial they don't wanna hear from you. It's their job to convince you to waste money at a time when you're emotionally vulnerable. I'd call them vultures but I respect vultures far more.
It's a biz, and like everything I found the more I researched the better prices I was able to get.
My family (including extended) has always opted for cremation. After reading *The American Way of Death,* I’m wholly against the entire funeral home industry. The book is enlightening.
Cremation is the way to go, and even it is ridiculously expensive. I’ve learned I have no desire for anything special, just throw me in a jar if need be.
When my father passed suddenly last year, my siblings and I all thought he had cemetery plots for him and my mother already arranged. To our surprise, she told us no, that they wanted to be buried near where they now lived, but they hadn't actually taken any steps. We are talking people in their late 80's, but no serious illnesses. My mother was in the hospital at the time, so we contacted that funeral home/cemetery and made all the arrangements. Their wills only stated that the surviving spouse or executor should make whatever arrangements they deemed fit, but didn't have any specific requests. Plus we made the future arrangements for our mother, so now we don't have to worry about it. The prices were crazy, but at the same time, the funeral home wasn't pushy about upselling, and even dissuaded us from some more expensive options. The biggest cost were the plots. They also had no interest financing, so the future arrangements get paid off over five years. Altogether, it was the equivalent of buying a new car. We could have gone with options that were more like buying a used car of we wanted. My big lesson from that experience is to put some instruction or suggestions in the will for guidance, even if it isn't a hard demand. It makes it easier on the surviving family to at least have a little insight. Personally, I don't want to be buried. But I also don't know what I would want done with my ashes yet. We didn't want/weren't expecting a big funeral, mostly out of concern for our mother's health and our general shock at the situation. I've been to some massive funerals, but except for my grandparents passing when I was young, I haven't been in the position of being the person who lost someone at those funerals. Now in that position, the thought of having people being in my face giving me condolences in that moment was too much to stomach. It was too raw. Maybe if he had been suffering from an extended illness and we had already come to terms with his passing, it might have been different. All of the immediate family wanted to just band together without a bunch of other people around. Far more people showed up than I expected, but it was difficult to interact with them. I know they say the funeral is for the survivors/family, but I really think it is more for the other people. In that moment, it wasn't comforting for me in any way. So it has definitely changed my views some what.
I don’t care what happens to my body after I’m dead. I like the idea of the Zoroastrian sky burial, leaving my body on a tower to be eaten by birds. It would be great if my body could be dumped on a mountain for all the creatures to eat. Now they have the system where your body is turned into mulch, which I think is the next best thing.
In the past 7 years I’ve buried two fathers and two sisters. I feel pretty knowledgeable when it comes to planing a funeral- service and/or burial. While I agree cemeteries are generally peaceful and beautiful, I seldom visit my loved ones that are buried there. If I’m thinking of my dad, or missing him, I will look through photos or go for a walk. I’ll sort of talk to him in my head. I in no way feel I MUST be at the cemetery to feel close to him. Therefore I don’t think I will be buried or memorialized at one.
Ask a mortician is a great series on YouTube that delves into this in great detail. Short answer: a lot of it is a racket. Embalming is unnecessary and incredibly wasteful. Unfortunately ‘natural’ burials are tough to do and it’s hard to find places that permit them. I guess I’ll will myself to a body farm. 🤷♀️
Not a direct answer to your question, but you might look into a youtuber called Ask a Mortician. She does a lot of deep dives into the funeral industry and is very pro "have a death plan that brings you peace of mind." Here's one of her videos. https://youtu.be/wM6HeLp2ywg?si=ya4p4ztYqHxmOM00 It is largely focused on death rituals in the US, though. Don't know where you are in the world. But she does historical dives (her series "the middle ages were magic!" was a surprisingly funny bit of dark humor) and sometimes brings up topics from other parts of the world. On the whole, mortuary practices are quite varied and fascinating around the globe, reflecting the values of the people who practice them. So basically there's no one answer to your question because someone in Japan will have had a different experience than someone in Louisiana, who would also have had a different experience from someone in Michigan or Germany or Peru.