The Beauty of Cremation

Walking The Line

There are so many reasons that more and more people are now choosing cremation. Here are some of the main reasons that half of all deaths now elect cremation as the final disposition.

  • More Economical
  • A Greener Earth Friendly Option
  • Less Time Sensitive (Freedom of Time)
  • Easier, No Cemetery Required
  • Endless Memorialization Options
  • Don’t Want To Take Up Space (Land)
  • Like The Idea Of Scattering Ashes
  • Religious Freedom
    Cremation Growth Rate

Funeral CostCOST: When you get down to the basic cost of a funeral, cremation can be significantly cheaper. The average traditional funeral these days can cost $8,000.00 to $15,000.00 or more. And a basic cremation is $1,000.00 to $2,000.00. Why such a broad range in price? Simple, it depends on who you call! And of course the choices that you make. Over the years, I have noticed something about how the general public describes the cost of a funeral that I would like to clear up right now. I noticed that when people quote the cost of a traditional funeral they tend to group all of the related costs together! For example “Mom’s Funeral Cost $18,00.00”… but the actual funeral costs might have been $8,000.00 and included the cost of a cemetery plot, digging the grave, flying in certain relatives, putting aunt Millie up at the Hilton and a $6,000.00 reception at a catering hall. But when quoting the cost of cremation people tend to just quote the basic cost “Instead of having a funeral Dad was cremated and it only cost $995.00”. They don’t mention the $10,000.00 memorial catering cost at the country club, the band and the travel costs! So this is one reason the difference in Cremation versus a Traditional Funeral seems like a huge difference in cost. In actuality Cremation is just a disposition like burial is a disposition and all the related costs depends on the CHOICES THAT WE MAKE. “The cremation cost $995.00”. The burial including the purchase of the plot and digging the grave might only cost $2,000.00 but people never just quote this cost, they lump it all together with the choices that they make. These are the conversations that really annoy funeral directors and instantly put them on the defense of the funeral costs.

What really annoys this particular funeral director is the general consensus that cremation means there isn’t a funeral. “There’s no funeral…he’s being cremated”! The truth is just the opposite. With cremation you can have any kind of funeral you want, even a traditional funeral! The only real difference is that instead of the body going to the cemetery, it goes to the crematory. Remember that cremation like burial is just the final disposition. The word “Funeral” simply means that the body is present at the funeral service. If you have a service without the body present because it was already buried or cremated then we use the term “Memorial Service” or other phrases like a Celebration of Life or a Going Home Ceremony. But if the body is not there it’s not a funeral.

Green AshesGREEN: The general public perceives cremation as a greener alternative to burial. A traditional burial takes up land permanently. And the chemicals that are used for embalming are cancerous and could leak into the water table. Here in the US an outer concrete burial vault is used and requires the manufacture of 1.6 tons of concrete and steel, leaving a large carbon footprint through the process of manufacturing. The caskets are often made of steel and many are shipped here from China (not green). Wooden caskets that are made from unsustainable sources like mahogany destroy the rain forest. BUT cremation isn’t exactly green either! Cremation involves burning fossil fuels (not green) and can release mercury from dental fillings into the air. What’s really green is called “Green Burial” and is only permitted in a natural burial site. More and more of these types of cemeteries are becoming available. Green burial is a burial in a naturally biodegradable casket or shroud with no embalming and no burial vault in a shallow grave. Green burial is the most natural and greenest disposition of all.

TIME: Because we usually want to get people buried in the ground before they rapidly begin to decompose, a burial requires a time frame of urgency that demands some fast leg work and usually having the funeral with in a week! And if you are Jewish then you’re supposed to have the burial by sundown of the day after death! With cremation you have nothing but time. Of course if you’re going to have public visitation with the body present you are back on a time line. But once the cremation is complete the ashes have no “shelf life” and you can plan a memorial celebration of life at your convenience. (WARNING) There is still such thing as waiting too long. Sometimes to meet the schedules of so many, the services are put off for months. For example, when someone dies in the Fall and the family elects to wait until the Spring and make the services part of the family reunion at the club. TOOOO Long! Remember that funerals are to support the living in their grief and loss. A proper memorial services lays the foundation for the healing to begin, just like a wedding provides a platform of support to the joining of a couple for life. With too much time in-between, the months leading up to the service can create more unnecessary grief for the survivors due to a lack of support.

Easier: Planning a funeral with the disposition of cremation can definitely be easier. You have the freedom of time on your side and don’t have to feel rushed about getting the person in the ground! You don’t have to select a casket, a vault, a cemetery plot, and other related items. You have the time to involve family members in the planning process and hopefully can create a memorable experience that will showcase a life well lived. Hire a certified celebrant and put some thought and time into this once in a lifetime event. You have one chance to do it right, so take your time and plan a Celebration of Life that people can connect with and relate to. This is why I promote Celebrant funerals and not some old 2,000 year old ceremony that an uninformed clergy member throws together! (Insert Name Here). Use the time to write down stories to share, collect pictures for display or better yet turn the pictures into a memorial video. Play the perfect music and serve the food that the deceased would be proud of! There are so many services available through your local funeral home that can add to the memorial ceremony experience, so use the time to learn about them. And do some research via the Internet on how to create a special and memorable memorial event.

Memorial Options: There are so many options available when you choose cremation. Like a Traditional Burial you can still have visitation with the body present for the final goodbyes and support for the family. You can also have an event in just about any public location that you desire. Consider a place that can handle the anticipated number of people who will attend. Choose a place where people are comfortable enough to join in and share a ceremony that will shine a spotlight on the life lived and the many ways that this person has affected the lives and the fabric of life. Use pictures, objects, belongings and stories to help those attending connect. The spirit of the deceased will often convey what would be appropriate for their personal celebration.

Cremation CasketThe money saved by choosing cremation can be used to purchase goods and services that will further personalize the experience of joining together to commemorate a life well lived. First, select a casket. This can be as simple as a cardboard box, a simple wooden box or an ornate cremation casket. They call these things alternative containers and by law you need one for cremation to take place.

If you are having a traditional viewing before the cremation then you should get a casket with a fabric interior that is suitable for public viewing. Most funeral homes rent caskets for this purpose and then a cardboard box is used for the actual cremation.

For the ceremony you can use things like memorial folders or prayer cards and custom programs that follow the services and can then be saved as a memory keepsake. Large photos, custom blankets and a video tribute can add to the memorial service. And a tree seedling or seeds that can be taken home and be planted in memory and will continue the circle of life.

Art Made With Ashes
Glass Art Made With Ashes

Cremation UrnIf an urn is used to hold the ashes, many put it on display at the service on a table or alter that is set with candles and flowers. When selecting an urn you should first know the final disposition of the ashes. Will they be kept at home on display, buried in the cemetery, placed in a niche, or scattered to the winds. Cremation urns are specially designed to suit all of these different destinations. Even floating biodegradable urns for scattering in lakes and oceans. One new style of urn converts into a birdhouse following the scattering of the ashes! With the new “Loved One Launcher” ashes can also be blasted 70 feet into the sky along with confetti and streamers. Talk about going out with a bang! When it comes to ashes there is no right or wrong way… just personal choices and family traditions. Often family members will use small keepsake urns to divide the ashes up between family and friends. These keepsake urns allow those who choose to scatter to retain a small amount of the ashes forever.

Ashes Jewelry
Jewelry To Hold Ashes

Cremation JeAshes inside Jewelrywelry serves a similar purpose and can be worn as a lasting tribute and close connection to the loved one. There is cremation jewelry that has an inner chamber to hold the ashes inside and also cremation jewelry that is custom made with the ashes.

Assorted Cremation Monuments

 

 

Even monuments are made that will hold the ashes inside as an alternative to burial. Some are styled like traditional monuments and many look like natural rocks and boulders that can blend right into the family garden. The advantage of cremation style monuments is that they can be moved as well as serve as a memorial focal point.

Scattering: The decision to scatter ashes is no longer unique. With more than half of all Americans and Canadians now choosing cremation.

Clem's Ash Scattering 2005.09.19 016Scattering is NOW the #1 disposition of cremated remains in the United States and Canada and continues to grow. Funeral professionals are the only ones that aren’t catching on. Most funeral professionals consider scattering a dirty and unprofitable choice of final disposition. They will help you get buried or interred. They will help you create funeral and memorial events. But when the choice is to scatter the ashes, they will help you as far as the door! Some of the more progressive funeral homes now offer special urns for families that choose to scatter the ashes, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Cremation can be an exciting and beautiful way to celebrate the deceased and bring together their friends and family for a positive and memorable experience. It provides an opportunity for the departed to bring together those that they leave behind and touched most during their life well lived. Cremation: it can be more economical; it can be greener; it allows for more time and planning; and it has infinite options only limited by the creativity of the living!

Life Matters! What Will Your Monument Look Like

Why Do Humans Have Monuments?

Scary Man Monument
Are You Big And Scary!

Headstones and monuments  serve as an important piece of history that marks the life and memory of a loved one that has passed. The main purpose of these monuments is to mark where the soul has gone to rest, while bearing the name and lifetime for the deceased so that all can remember. Messages are important, but the material has to remain for a message to remain present. A monument provides you with a place to go and see your loved ones name and remember all of the things they did in their life.

Originally, humans would mark the place of rest with nothing more than a simple field stone. Natural stones such as sandstone, granite, marble, slate and limestone were all used at some point in history. Today, the most popular of all stones is that of granite.

History of Monuments

Natural Stone MarkersBack in times where cemeteries weren’t around, people would often have the burial plot near their family home. Most of the time, the grave was marked with rocks, rough stones or wood as a means of preventing the dead from rising. They mostly contained the name of the deceased, their age and what year they passed. Over the course of time, churchyard burials came into play and large, square-shaped monuments were prepared out of a slate material (1650 – 1900) or sandstone material (1650 – 1890). Inscriptions that were carved into the slate tended to be a little shallow, albeit readable.

During the 19th century, the public cemeteries evolved. Eventually, people started to note the importance of headstones as a means of memorializing those who passed on. They began engraving the headstones with a few words about the one who had passed. Often, those words were either written by the person who had passed or someone who was still alive. One of the biggest advantages to this is that when you read the information contained on the monument, it provides you with information about the deceased. It makes it easier to trace the family history for future generations.

Angel MemorialsIn the Victorian era (1837 – 1901), a strong emphasis was placed on practices and customs that were associated with death. It was during this period that the path was paved for elaborate monuments. When you went to the cemetery, it looked more like a park because of how lavish and elegantly decorated all of the monuments were.

Most of the tombstone symbols that arose from the Colonial period were more of a reflection of being fearful of the afterlife. They believed that very few people were going to be allowed into Heaven upon their passing. Their thoughts were that the majority of people were going to be deemed sinners and there was nothing that could be done about it.

Monuments 101: Everything You Need to Know

Many people opt to purchase a monument in advance. They do not want to wait until they are gone and leave the burden on those who are left behind. After all, who is the best person to decide what they want their marker to have on it than the person who passed away. Also, losing a loved one is stressful enough. The grief can be more than some can handle, so having made this difficult choice beforehand makes it easier on those you love.

Geek Monuments
Game Over!

Today, the majority of monuments and markers are composed of either marble, granite or bronze. Granite is one of the most sought after materials because of how durable the material is. Beyond lasting for years, it also looks beautiful on the site. Granite has been shown to withstand the elements quite well, so it won’t wear out quickly or break down before its time. Marble tends to be more of a sedimentary stone, so it is going to break down far quicker when exposed to the weather. Centuries can pass with no change in a granite stone. You can also choose to purchase a monument in a number of different colors and styles, so the stone can be crafted and designed to reflect the personality of the one who has passed.

Even though you don’t have to get a marker for someone who has been cremated, you might want to think twice about not getting one. The marker provides you with a place where you can go to reflect and find comfort in their passing. Some monuments actually hold the ashes inside. It is also an excellent means for marking the genealogical information of loved ones for any future generations to come.

The cost of the monument is going to vary depending on material, size, carving and etchings and the time spent to create and any extras that you add on to the piece like ceramic photos or a vase. Remember, you are going to get what you pay for. Make sure you are purchasing something that is going to last for years.

What Do You Want People to Remember You For?

Like Your Blackberry Much!
Like Your Blackberry Much!

You move through life from one day to the next like a well-oiled machine. Day in and day out you are doing one thing after another. Some of those things are quite valuable and exciting, while other tasks are mundane. Regardless of who you are, there are always things that you strive for. You want to do good and please all of those around you. Leaving your mark on the world is just one of those things that you want to do during your time on Earth. Heck, maybe we just want to make ourselves happy and do all of those things that we enjoy in life.

Many people don’t consider the aftermath of their actions. They only think about themselves and what they are going to gain out of it in the here and now. In reality, our actions could have a significant effect on all of those around us and how they might perceive themselves for the future. Truthfully, our existence will live on long after we are gone. In the days, nights, months and years once we have passed, our actions will continue to affect those who we cared about the most.

Monumental Fail!
Monumental Fail!

You are only a baby once. You only have one chance to be a toddler, child, teenager, adult and elder. You don’t get multiple times to go back in and make things right. It’s a one shot deal, so you want to make sure you do it right the first time to prevent any undue repercussions. With your one chance, you want to do everything you can to do things right. When you hit that fork in the road, you only get one chance to make a crucial decision. Regardless of what decision lies before you, there are no do-overs. It’s a one-shot deal, so you want to make sure you make the best decision possible. Don’t worry about the pressure being placed on you.

Headstone
Just Passing Through

Take the time to make a decision that is going to be in the best interest of yourself and those you love. No matter how much you pine for the past and regret the decisions you made, you cannot change them. They are what they are. You can only dream, wish and hope for a better future. As time progresses, you quickly learn that all of those things you did are an infinite reminder of who you were and what you became.

As humans, we are social beings. We thrive on being around others and communicating with them. In our everyday lives, we are surrounded by people from all walks of life, regardless of whether we like those people or not. You have to think about the fact that you only have a certain amount of days with those individuals, so don’t you want to make the best of it while you can?

Statue
Almost Glad I Didn’t Know Her!

Once you pass on, you are never forgotten. Those who knew who you were and had the chance to interact with you are going to have sentiments and thoughts about you and how you lived your life and acted toward others. Since you only have one chance for every moment, you want to make that chance count. People are going to think about the time they spent with you. The conversations they once had with you are unforgettable. For some, they will mourn your passing and lament on how your life was. On the other hand, there will be those who are happy to see you go.

It doesn’t matter what the case may be, you are in control of whether people are going to have positive thoughts about you or ones that are filled with resentment and hate. Don’t let it be the latter. Have a positive influence on everyone you come in contact with. Life isn’t all about what people believe and say once you are gone. It is really about how you lived your life while you were here. Did you make the most of your life? Did you do everything you could to enjoy it? You are the only one who can determine what journey you are going to take, so make it a good one.
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Cremation Nation

With almost half of all Americans choosing cremation and more then 60% of them choosing scattering as a final disposition, the sky is the limit!  Or the garden, the sea, the mountains, or the golf course depending on people’s preferences.

It’s a good thing so many Americans are choosing cremation for their dearly departed. The new options for memorializing ‘ashes’ would make some of them turn in their graves.

By Tai Moses

Americans are Scattering to The Wind....

WE WERE SCATTERING my father’s ashes. Ostensibly, that’s what we were doing. None of us had ever scattered ashes before, and no instruction manual came with the plastic urn (which in its army-green rectangularity resembled a C-ration box), so we were proceeding at an awkward clip.

First off, we didn’t have adequate ash-scattering paraphernalia. Always have the right tools for the job, my father once told me. I had stopped at a supermarket and bought a sleeve of paper cups. Now we all stood around gripping them with sweaty palms, wondering who would be the first to open the C-ration box and scoop up his or her portion of cremains.

Our lack of familiarity with ritual, especially the rites and ceremonies connected with death, added to our unease, and it occurred to me later that this might be one reason why so many people skip the scattering and keep the box in the closet.

Awkward as the aftermath may be, the choice to cremate is becoming increasingly popular as our living reality shapes our dying habits. Families whose members were once laid to rest in the same patch of ground for generations have lost their attachments to the land, as well as to the past. Possibly somewhere in Romania, there is an abandoned Jewish graveyard that holds the ancestors of my father’s family. My father was born in Brooklyn. His mother is buried among strangers in Staten Island and his father’s grave is somewhere in Southern California. His sister’s ashes were scattered near San Francisco. America is our family burial plot. In his book The Undertaking, poet and funeral director Thomas Lynch observes that “One of the obvious attractions of cremation is that it renders our dead somehow more portable, less ‘stuck in their ways,’ more like us, you know, scattered.”

TODAY, Forty Percent Americans choose cremation for themselves or their loved ones. In California, Arizona and Florida, where most of the residents originally came from someplace else, people are cremated at twice the national rate, and among the nomadic population of the Bay Area, more than 70 percent of the deceased are cremated.

Until last year, California was the only state in which it was illegal to freely scatter ashes. State law allowed for cremated remains to be buried or scattered in cemeteries, brought home or scattered at sea at least three miles offshore. The relaxing of the law–ashes can now be scattered on land and at sea as long as they’re 3 miles away from the shoreline–has resulted in a sort of entrepreneurial free-for-all, with people thinking up increasingly creative things to do with human remains.

Karen Leonard was research assistant to Jessica Mitford, the funeral industry gadfly who wrote The American Way of Death. Now executive director of Redwood Funeral Society in Sonoma County, Leonard finds the cremation trend a positive one. Americans, she says, are under less pressure to abide by the manufactured rituals of a funeral home.

“Now people have the freedom to do whatever they want,” she muses. “The nice thing about cremation ashes is, unlike a body, you can do a number of things. There’s only one thing you can do with a body. A lot of people divvy up the remains and everyone gets to create their own rituals, which makes it incredibly individualistic and personal.

“I’ve been to some really far-out memorials,” Leonard continues. “Anything you can think of can be done. That’s all because we’ve been able to break the funeral industry’s stranglehold over cremation.”

Formerly the most no-frills method of committing human remains to eternity, cremation has become the vehicle for some unique procedures from the beautiful to the bizarre, depending upon one’s taste. And as sometimes happens when people become unmoored from convention, their newly fashioned customs take on elements of the absurd. Our ancestors would be spinning in their urns if they knew what was being done with their cremated brethren.

In the past year alone, the U.S. Patent Office has granted 41 patents involving human cremains, among them inventor David Sturino’s football helmet-shaped crematory urn. In his patent application, Sturino argued that even in death, people want their individuality to show: “If given the opportunity, it is believed that many individuals would choose to identify their cremation ashes as those of a football fan for eternity,” he wrote.

The indusrty has gotten creative in their cremation urn offerings. Some “alternative remembrance” urns double as jewelry boxes, picture frames, jewelry to hold ashes and clocks. Others can be fashioned on a customer’s specifications; one customer, whose husband had been a bowling fanatic, asked for an urn that incorporated a bowling pin. Lynch wrote that one of his clients had him place her husband’s ashes in an empty whiskey bottle, which she then had wired as a lamp. “He always said I really turned him on,” she explained.

DEATH IS BY NATURE untidy. It begins and ends with clutter, physical and psychological. The beauty of cremation is that it reduces people to a size positively Lilliputian and makes them eminently transportable. Still, practical problems do arise. This must have been what Douglas Casimir was thinking about when he dreamed up the dissolvable urn (U.S. Patent #5,774,958), which negates the necessity for mourners to have any contact with the ashes during scattering. Relatives can simply heave the biodegradable scattering urn, ashes and all, into the deep and it will dissolve, relegating the remains to the water.

As Casimir commented (perhaps from personal experience?), “When the urn is opened and ashes are sprinkled upon the sea, the wind often causes the ashes to blow about and the ashes sometimes get blown upon the deceased’s relatives who are sprinkling the ashes, thereby causing an unpleasant experience for those involved.”

A dissolvable urn would have been of great help to Dave Eggers, author of the recent memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The sad slapstick saga of what to do with his mother’s ashes is a motif that runs throughout Eggers’ book. He finally decides to throw the cremains into Lake Michigan, all the while torturing himself with the fear that he has made the wrong decision, that this last gesture to his mother–the scattering, the lake–is somehow not enough, is inadequate.

Upon opening the cardboard box, he finds to his consternation that the ashes look like cat litter or “little rocks, pebbles, Grape-Nuts, in white and black and gray.” Then he spills some of them on the ground and tries to kick them into the water with his foot, but, “Should I really be kicking my mother’s ashes? … I stand up quickly and throw, this time some of the cremains sticking to my palm, which is now sweaty … Should I throw them all in one place, or redirect the throws each time? Should I hold on to some for later, to deposit elsewhere?”

Desperately, he empties the last ashes from the bag into the lake, “like shaking a goldfish out of a Baggie. … This is what it’s come to–winging her remains into the lake.” Now with the introduction of scattering tubes, the process is much easier

"Life Tree's"

LIKE MANY PEOPLE who die suddenly, my father had left no instructions for what he wanted done with his remains. We decided to put his ashes under a eucalyptus tree along the Santa Monica path where he had often liked to walk. He would become part of the tree, its soil and roots, its limbs and leaves. Now the people at the “Life Tree Farm” have made it simple for all those attending a memorial event can get a tree to plant as a true living memorial.

I was in charge of doling out the ashes. Everyone ended up with uneven shares and I noticed people sneaking furtive peeks at one another’s cups. I confess, I was glad of the chance to see my father’s ashes, even to touch and smell them (they’re odorless). They were undeniably his–the box was stamped indelibly with his name–and in the feeling of unreality that followed his death, they provided a much-needed focal point. Sure, I recognized the painful absurdity of the whole procedure. It even got tiresome to keep alluding to how entertained my dad would have been by the bumbling farewell we gave him. One would think our little scattering ceremony was watched over by a grinning Cheshire father, his face etched with a permanent expression of mirth.

One by one we emptied our Dixie cups under the tree. Everyone had a different system. My brother shook the ashes energetically out of his cup; I turned mine upside down and let the ashes fall in a blurred stream onto the ground.

I expected them to sift ethereally away into fairy dust, but they just sat, lumpen and gray atop the leaves. It looked like someone had just cleaned out a Weber. The next day, and the next, the cremains sat there. Finally, a week later, it rained, and they began to disperse into the soil.

MY SON PASSED away four years ago last week and his body was cremated. He asked me before his death to put his cremains into a volcano. This sounds strange but his reasoning was sound. He said he did not want to be put in the soil because worms and insects would eat him and he did not want to be put into water to be fishfood. He wanted a volcano so he could become part of a rock and stay on the earth for centuries. Do you know of any active volcano where this is possible?”

The question comes as no surprise to the discussion list moderator of the website VolcanoWorld (http://volcano.
und.nodak.edu/), who has himself “had similar thoughts about becoming part of a volcanic rock.” He directs the bereaved father to Kilauea in Hawaii, where he believes it would be possible to pour ashes directly onto molten lava, where they could harden with the rock.

For many, co-mingling one’s remains with the natural world brings a sense of symbolic immortality. Volcanoes would probably be more popular among the dead if they were as accessible as, say, the ocean. A majority of people request that their cremains be put in the sea, scattered from private planes like the one owned by Scott Dixon of Ashes by the Bay in Monterey. “It’s an increasingly popular trend,” he says. But for ocean lovers who want their cremains permanently entombed in a lasting monument, there are other options.

A Reno, Nev., company called LegaSEA makes an oceanic time capsule that doubles as a memorial urn. The LegaSEA memorial, fashioned of bronze and glass, is deployed from a boat into international waters. There it descends to the seafloor and rests for eternity, or until it’s discovered by future generations, “making one’s life the subject of archaeological interest possibly thousands of years into the future.”

Another ocean option comes from Georgia-based Eternal Reefs, Inc., which will “turn your loved one’s ashes into a living coral reef.” Eternal Reefs mixes cremains into concrete to create artificial reef modules, made to last 500 years or more, which are placed in locations around the world where the reef could use a little help. Loved ones can be on hand when the reef balls are deployed and can also charter a dive boat and visit the memorial reef later. Once the modules are put in place they’re there to stay, creating new habitats for sea life.

Options like this make the dead not only more interesting, but useful. In some cases they can even be decorative. An outfit called The Ancestral Tree causes the dead to practically rise from their ashes: its “Eternal Bonsai” are planted in a mix of soil and human cremains. The process raises thorny questions, however. What if the tree/person gets sick? Imagine the attendant emotional trauma if the bonsai succumbed to some miniaturized arboreous affliction.

Without tombs or headstones, those mute reminders of mortality, how do we remember our absent, ashen dead? Human beings like dates. They serve to frame a life, the way a picture frame encloses a photograph of a beloved. Undertaker Thomas Lynch recalls how a friend’s widow asked him to scatter her husband’s ashes in a favorite fishing spot. But when Lynch paddles downstream, ashes by his side in a Stanley thermos (less conspicuous than an urn, the widow thought), he finds he can’t fulfill the request. Instead he buries the cremains, thermos and all, under a tree on the riverbank. “I piled stones there and wrote his name and dates on a paper, which I put in a flybox and hid among the stones. I wanted a place that stood still to remember him at,” he writes.

The need to create something to help the living remember the dead inspired Mill Valley architect William E. Cullen. Cullen, president of Relict Memorials Inc., invented and patented a process that turns cremated human remains into granitelike tablets. To the tablets he affixes bronze plaques inscribed with names and dates. The tablets contain the integrated remains for hundreds of years, and since they weigh only 20 pounds or so, can be moved easily from one location to another.

Cullen perfected his technique on roadkill, and eventually made his first Relict for–and from–his son’s cremains. “I needed some sense of my son’s presence,” he explained. “To scatter his ashes would be as though he had never existed.” The younger Cullen’s Relict is in the memorial garden of the family’s church.

Recently the media reported that a Kentucky bookbinder and printer was mixing cremains with pulp to produce the pages of bound volumes called “bibliocadavers.” But when I called Timothy Hawley Books in Louisville, the eponymous proprietor laughed sheepishly and explained that it was a jest that got out of hand. “I’m a bookseller,” Hawley said. “I just put some stupid joke in the front of each of my catalogues.”

Nonetheless, Hawley’s hoax generated enough serious interest to indicate that there’s a real market out there for bibliocadavers. The process was reported in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. Hawley was also contacted by a woman in Wisconsin who is starting a business doing different types of memorializations and wanted to use him as an independent contractor. She already had several customers lined up who were interested in becoming bibliocadavers. Hawley had to turn her down.

“It wouldn’t even work,” he said, “because of the paper chemistry–the ashes would not bond with the paper pulp.”

Maybe not, but what about another element of a book? Mark Gruenwald, the late Marvel comic-book writer, came up with an artistic use for his earthly remains. As per his request, he was cremated and his ashes were combined with ink and used to print a special edition of his comic book series Squadron Supreme. “He remained true to his passion for comics, as he has truly become one with the story,” his widow wrote in the book’s foreword.

Cremation ashes have even joined the ranks of interactive multimedia. Ohio-based Leif Technologies makes a “Viewology cremation urn” that not only holds the ashes of the deceased but is equipped with a flat screen monitor with a video slide show and biographical narrative about the departed.

THE ETERNAL ASCENT Society is one of many companies that have flourished advertising their services on the web. Eternal Ascent claims to hold the only patent in the world “for cremated remains put inside a very large balloon and airlifted to the heavens,” says Joanie West, 62, president and owner.

Three years ago, West and her husband, who own a balloon and gift shop in Crystal River, Fla., began marketing the process she describes as “a beautiful way to enclose a memory.” Cremains, or a portion of them, are deposited inside a biodegradable balloon which is inflated in a specially designed acrylic chamber. Balloon and chamber are transported to the release site, where the mourners have gathered. When the balloon is released, West explains that it ascends five miles into the atmosphere, freezes (it’s 40 degrees below zero up there) and fractures into millions of pieces.

“You look up and you see a rainbow or a sunrise or a sunset or a cloud and you think of that person,” says West. The Eternal Ascent Society has been so popular, inundated with requests for services from people all over the country, that West and her husband are preparing to sell franchises in other states, with California first on the list. “California should be a wonderful place,” says West. “They’re ready for it.”

For many people, even the sky isn’t the limit. In fact, some of the spectacles one can purchase seem to be attempts to bypass the unpleasant business of bereavement. Death doesn’t have to be a sorrowful event, they imply; it can be entertaining–a Deathstravaganza!

Celebrate Life!, in Lakeside, Calif., makes specially modified fireworks shells (patent pending) for cremains dispersal over the ocean, accompanied by a musical theme. You can almost hear a note of pleading desperation in the text of the company’s brochure: “What if instead of a hole in the ground there was fire in the sky?”

Celebrate Life! has all sorts of pre-packaged pyrotechnic celebrations that are customized for deceased individuals, veterans, children and couples. There are even special “ethnic” celebrations. “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” comes with a display of green fireworks and a rendition of the Irish-American ballad.

The ultimate send-off comes from the Houston, Texas, firm Celestis, Inc., “the world’s leading provider of post-cremation memorial spaceflight services.” It costs about $5,000 to have Celestis put your loved one’s cremains–or a vial containing a symbolic portion of them–into orbit around the earth. After several years, the Celestis memorial satellite re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes, “blazing like a shooting star in final tribute.”

In 1997, Celestis made headlines when it successfully launched a portion of the cremated remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and counterculture icon Timothy Leary into low earth orbit aboard a Pegasus rocket.

BUT SHOOTING STARS, fireworks and gigantic balloons bring only temporary respite from the emptiness of loss. As the writer Richard Brautigan said, death can’t really be camouflaged: always at the end of the words, someone is dead.

Later the day of the scattering of the ashes, I heard myself utter this melodramatic sentence: “I buried my father today.” The inadequacies of language–after all, I hadn’t buried him. We had left him, or what was left of him in his reduced circumstances, somewhere outside in the gathering dusk in Santa Monica. In fact, we had unwittingly violated the part of California law that stipulates scattered ashes should not be distinguishable to the public. I conjured a scene: A jogger kneels to tie her shoe and sprints off with some of my father’s ashes in the tread of her Nikes.

For a long while I toyed with the idea of getting a plaque on a cremation monument bench for him, someplace I could visit, something solid and immutable, with writing on it. A “Beloved Father,” a favorite quotation, some dates. A chunk of real estate. In the end, I settled for a sort of renewable relic: a scrap of the eucalyptus tree. I went back and plucked a leaf, and when time reduces it to dust, I will go back and get another one.

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Cremation Monuments Offer a Nice Alternative to Scattering Ashes

Cremation monuments are monuments that hold ashes inside. Cremation monuments look like the assortment of monuments, memorials or headstones seen in a cemetery. However, they are either hollow or have been bored out to have a special space inside to hold ashes or cremation urns.

Cremation monuments are usually made of granite and come in a variety of colors depending on which granite quarry the stone was harvested in. The granite we use to build our cremation monuments comes from both inside and outside the USA and they are custom built to order and engraved to your specifications.

Cremation monuments start at the individual size. Meaning a monument that holds the ashes of one person. The monuments are made in many styles and sizes, to hold the ashes of couples or whole families, called estate sized cremation monuments. Very large cremation monuments are called columbariums. The individual spaces inside are called niches. Most cemeteries allow cremation monuments as long as they are sized to fit on your plot.

Cremation monuments are gaining popularity for use on private land, such as in home site gardens along borders and pathways. One reason is that the monuments can be moved if needed. Today’s Americans do not visit cemeteries like our past generations did. We are a more mobile society that are likely to move for numerous reasons. This makes a movable monument more appealing to today’s survivors because they can be relocated with relative ease.

People are more and more interested in natural objects, green living and nature. That is why we offer an assortment of cremation monuments that look like natural boulders, stones and tree stumps. Set in a garden you cannot even tell that some of them are anything but stones and boulders.

Cremation Solutions also offers a variety of bench style cremation monuments. They look nice by the garden and serve as a dual place of rest. With advances in engraving and laser etchings, cremation monuments can be designed with the ultimate in detail and personalization. Even photo’s and portraits can be set in stone that capture every detail.

Cremation monuments can serve as an alternative to scattering ashes. One of the most popular places to scatter ashes is on our own property and cremation monuments can easily be installed on our own property. No permits are necessary and you save on the cost of purchasing a cemetery plot. It’s also nice to have a place right at home to visit and reflect.

If you are planning on purchasing a cremation monument to hold ashes, you should first decide on the location in which you plan to install it. Some cemeteries have size restrictions and regulations. For larger cremation monuments it may take heavy equipment to get it to your desired location, so you need to be sure that it is possible.

Cremation Solutions will arrange the engraving, shipping and even find you a qualified contractor. We can also work with your own contractor to guide them on the proper way to install your monument. Larger cremation monuments require a cement foundation. The foundation needs not only the right sized footprint but also needs to go deeper then the frost line in northern climates. Cremation Solutions has experience setting up the installation of cremation monuments country wide. We look forward to helping you find the right cremation memorial for your family.

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