Americans Trading Caskets For Urns

Funeral CasketToday most Americans are trading the tradition of a casket for burial and opting for a cremation urn to memorialize a loved one forever. The urn provides family members with a part of someone they cared for forever. It can be passed on for generations. Urns For AshesThe urn represents a significant symbol – the final resting place for a person who meant so much to everyone he or she touched. Whether it’s the centerpiece of a room or placed on a mantel or another meaningful place, family members can select an urn that is quite elegant or matches the deceased one’s style for a way to honor and remember the person.

                More Then Half of All Americans Now Choose Cremation
                                Making Cremation The New Tradition

When choosing between a burial or cremation, loved ones are faced with the many pros and cons of each option. However, the benefits of choosing cremation and an urn are plentiful. In fact, it’s becoming the most popular option for numerous reasons. First and foremost, a cremation is a more cost-effective solution, especially for those who have limited funds but still want to honor a life well lived and the true meaning of their lives. The cost of an urn and cremation is much less than a cemetery plot, burial and casket, and it still recognizes the significance of the person and their life. Additionally, an urn is more eco-friendly. Due to its smaller stature, it takes less material to make. The casket remains in the ground forever, which doesn’t help the environment. Cemeteries are slowly filling up, which will eventually cause a shortage of areas for burial spaces. A cremation urn eliminates all of this. This allows families to utilize the vessel as a centerpiece or focal point in a room and complement their tastes. Another pro of choosing an urn is that the person is with their family. This alleviates the need for the person to commute to the cemetery to visit with a loved one, which is beneficial for those who are busy and still want to be close. Family will always be able to be close, no matter what their schedule. It’s also emotionally difficult for many people to visit a cemetery, but cremation alleviates this fear and unpleasant feeling.

Funeral Urns
Choices!

People aren’t limited whenever they purchase an urn, whether they select one prior to their passing or designate an individual to take on this responsibility. Firstly, a wide variety of materials are available to select from such as stone, wood, metal and ceramic. Some vessels are even biodegradable for those who choose to return to the earth. They come in various styles but all have an inner chamber of at least 225 cubic inches, this allows the urn to hold all of the ashes of an adult. Urns that are smaller are called keepsake or sharing urns. They vary dramatically in style and size. Even smaller is cremation jewelry, this style of jewelry holds just a pinch of ashes.
Families may opt for other types of urns that are meant to solely scatter the ashes and may be used for other purposes. Some scattering urns are specifically designed for individuals to spread the ashes through the air. Once they’re no longer used to store the ashes, they may be recycled since many of them are compromised of biodegradable materials. Birdhouse urns store the ashes, and then convert into a birdhouse that acts as a memorial and provides a home for wildlife.
Obviously, nobody wants to think of a loved one dying, but an urn may help to comfort the person by allowing him or her to act out his or her loved ones wishes. It lets the individual remain close to family and be a part of them for always. The urn helps the person to cope and even be with him or her forever.
While it’s a difficult decision to make, Cremation Solutions wants to help comfort the family and fulfill the deceased one’s wishes. We know losing someone who is close to you is difficult enough without having any added stress. That’s why we work with individuals to find the ideal urn for their future resting place. Whether we work with the individual or their family, we strive to find them the best solution to meet their needs and desires. We’re here to answer questions regarding urns and discuss all of the options. Call or email us today with questions or to schedule a meeting to discuss the available options in person.

Remembering Our Pets when They’re Gone

 

If you’ve ever lost a beloved pet, you know that empty feeling you get when you open the front door and there’s no longer a wagging, happy tail waiting on the other side. And, although you may eventually open your home to another furry companion, there will always be a special place in your heart and your memory for the one that came before.

Although pictures and videos are nice ways to remember your pet, Cremation Solutions offers tangible remembrances of your dog or cat. We understand how hard it is to lose a pet. We’re pet owners too. That’s why we offer a wide selection of pet memorials, pet urns and pet cremation jewelry. Just a few of the products we offer to help you honor and remember your pet include:

  • Pet urns. Pet Ashes UrnsCremation urns are not just for human remains. At Cremation Solutions, we offer a complete line of pet urns, both simple in design and elaborate, in a variety of sizes. You can choose from urns shaped like a cat or a dog or even a horse’s head. There are small brass or pewter urns in traditional shapes and wooden urns that hold a picture of your pet. We even have an urn that holds a memorial candle.
  • Pet cremation jewelry.
    Jewelry for dog ashes
    Has an Inner Chamber to Hold Ashes

    Wearing pet cremation jewelry is another way to keep your pet close to you after he or she is gone. These tasteful lockets and pendants have a hollow space in the center where you can add a little of your pet’s fur, ashes or whiskers.

  • Crystal cremation jewelry. Crystal cremation jewelry uses a tiny bit of your pet’s ashes to create a beautiful and long-lasting crystal that can be crafted into a pendant or set into a ring. It’s a unique and lovely tribute to your pet that you can wear for years to come.
  • Garden stone memorials. Maybe you want a small stone memorial, plaque or statue to help honor your pet. At CremationPet Markers Solutions, we offer stylish markers for your garden that will remind you of your cat or dog every time you work in the flower beds, rake leaves or mow the grass. It’s like having a part of him or her in the garden with you. Garden stone memorials are particurlarly apt for those pets who enjoyed “helping” in the garden when they were alive.
  • Natural Garden pet memorials. Natural garden pet are the “green” and environmentally-friendly way to honor your pet. Each year, you can see how your pet’s ashes have helped the memorial tree to grow strong and tall. You simply bury your pet’s ashes in the ground when you plant a tree in your garden. Many people also add a small plaque at the base of the tree to quietly honor their furry friend. Planting a natural garden pet memorial is encouraging nature to recycle the energy that was your pet into a long-lasting, beautiful tribute.
  • Pet paw portraits. Pet Paw PicturesWould you like a reminder of your pet that you can hang on your living room or bedroom wall? Our pet paw portraits use an image of your cat or dog’s actual paw print to create a tasteful and attractive piece of wall art. You can choose from 19 background colors and 19 contrasting colors. Pet paw portraits are available in small, medium and large sizes. You can even add text, such as your pet’s name, to the piece.

Remembering your dog, cat or even horse who has reached the end of his or her natural life doesn’t have to be a sad occasion.  Of course, you’ll also ways miss them. But with a pet memorial, pet urn or piece of pet jewelry, their memory will be with you for years and years to come. Visit Cremation Solutions to browse the wide variety of ways we offer to help you honor and remember your pet.

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Introducing Cremation Urn Hero Figures

At Cremation Solutions, we are always striving to bring our customers innovative and creative custom urns to hold the ashes of a loved one. Today, people are searching for unique and special urn keepsakes that they can cherish forever. One of our latest cremation urns is the action figure urn. These true-to-life action figures look just like your loved one and make a lasting memory. Unlike traditional cremation urns, these urns hold ashes in the head.

How it’s Done

These unique custom urns can be completed with just one or two photos of your loved one. We use a patent-pending 3-D modeling method used by typical 3-D designers. The face and body are reconstructed in 3-D, and this lifelike figure is available in 12 inches. Software is used to adjust color, and you can capture any age, including mid-life. The figure is comprised of hard resin and in 24-bit color. Following state-of-the-art manufacturing technologies, we are able to create urn keepsakes that will last a lifetime. These unique cremation urns can be custom ordered and delivered to your doorstep in just four weeks.

Changing the Paradigm

Much like personal urns with an upper sculpture of a loved one, these keepsake urns are revolutionizing the way we memorialize a departed one. While the media may poke some fun, when you think about it, action figure custom urns are the idyllic way to have a real-life image of your loved one right in front of you. It a real way to reconnect with your loved one and reminisce all the good times shared together. These custom urns are just like a favorite photo; only, the representation is dimensional. Like a pair of new shoes, it just takes time to feel comfortable with any new idea.

Creative Ideas for Cremation Urn Action Figures

Roberts Urn For Ashes
Robert Pattinson as Indiana Jones Keepsake Urn

Just like a statue, these endearing cremation action figures can be placed anywhere in the home. It’s really up to you. Den tables, fireplace mantles and bedroom tables are ideal. Placing your cremation action figure on a fireplace mantle surrounded by other other family portraits and pictures is one idea that will keep your departed one in perfect company. On an end table in the bedroom, you can keep your loved one close do your heart while sleeping. Maybe your loved one had a favorite room in the home like a sun room. Displaying a cremation action figure in their favorite room is sure to bring back fond memories. Even if you take a weekend trip or go on vacation, you can pack up your cremation action figure and take it right along with you. The ideas are limitless, and it’s up to you.

Mom's Urn
Mom Loved Her Harley

Let’s face it. The loss of any loved one is a personal experience of deep loss and sadness. There is nothing that can prepare you for it. Healing takes a long time along with the support of other family members and friends. Urn keepsakes that hold ashes of a loved one and depict a real-life image and sculpture give you something to hold on to in the real world. Cremation urns really serve two purposes. They are a dignified place for your loved one, and a place where you can keep your loved one close for personal comfort. At the same time, custom urns fashioned into the image of your loved one are like having a loved one right at your side.

At Cremation Solutions, we’ve been in the funeral business for many years and treat our clients with the highest of respect and compassion. We offer a wide variety of cremation urns for both people and pets, including cremation jewelry and traditional urns in many styles. Action figure urn keepsakes are the new kid on the block. Be sure to visit our website at www.cremationsolutions.com for unique and well-made cremation urns. You’ll find that all of our products are high quality, and we offer excellent customer service. Purchase Urn Figures HERE
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The Hottest Dr. Oz Weight-Loss Technique to Date: The Crème Diet (Parody)

End Those Cravings For Good!

Inspiration for the Crème Diet
Many of the weight-loss plans Dr. Oz has created have required intense concentration, will power and organization. With rules governing what people could and could not eat as well as when they were allowed to have meals, most dieters ended up incredibly confused and frustrated. They eventually found themselves weeping into a bag of potato chips and wondering where everything went wrong in their lives.

Dr. Oz heard about these massive failures and decided to concoct the ultimate fat-burning method. The challenge he gave himself was to get his viewers to lose 100% of their body fat without ever having to watch what they eat or submit to painfully rigorous athletic activities like petting a dog or peeling an orange.

Likewise, since he had only released two impeccable diet plans that morning and it was nearing noon, he was just about due to release another best diet in the history of all diets.

Getting the Word Out

Cremation Service is Catching On
So Easy, Hot and Sexy

After spending a full fifteen minutes in his laboratory, which consists of a solid gold elliptical machine and a Mr. Potato Head doll, he emerged shouting, “I’ve figured it out! I now know the way we can burn fat faster than ever before!” Dr. Oz grabbed the closest intern and dragged the lucky individual by the hair to the closest cremation service facility while the rest of Dr. Oz’s staff waiting in anticipation for their return.

When Dr. Oz and the intern came back to the facility, the staff of 43 unpaid interns was speechless. However, this time it was not because of Dr. Oz’s 462nd weight loss technique of removing the tongue; the interns were not even signing amongst each other. In his hands, Dr. Oz held the intern who had previously been close to 150 pounds but was now situated comfortably in a beautifully hand crafted cremation urn. A handful of interns began to weep quietly and Dr. Oz saw one sign the word “escape” to another intern with a sadly inquisitive yet promising expression glazed across her eyes.

The New You. Completely Fat Free!

Dr. Oz took his own interpretation of the meaning of this witnessed exchange and proclaimed, “Yes, intern, that is correct! You can finally escape the cumbersome diets of watching what you eat! The Cremation Diet was born! Interns signed that the word cremation was harsh and thought about a softer alternative. Quick, someone get the camera we need to share this news with the world immediately!”

Before the camera was even brought to his location, Dr. Oz was well into a discussion with himself about the incredible new fat-burning technique while tongueless interns swirled around him applying a heavy coat of makeup. With the cameras rolling and an estimated 125 million people watching live from the comfort of their ice cream stained couches, Dr. Oz described the numerous advantages of what he had by then deemed the crème diet.

Diet is Really Catching On Fire!

How the Crème Diet Can Help You
The disadvantages of the crème diet —if any exist at all— are far overshadowed by the incredible amount of weight you are guaranteed to lose. You will be able to fit into the most beautiful designer cremation urns, which will leave friends and family speechless with jealousy. All those too-tight clothes from years past can join in your new weight-burning adventure, and even jewelry that you haven’t been able to wear since your high school days will fit better than ever before. After losing around 95% of your body weight, even a dehydrated Calista Flockhart will be jealous of how little you weigh.

The New Cremation Urn You
Your New Sleek Look

As if that wasn’t enough, research has also shown that those who have gone through the crème diet also face far less stress in their day-to-day lives and have also been found to scatter themselves and travel the world with their families more often than those who haven’t undertaken the life-changing cremation technique. Just imagine yourself in a new, gorgeously ornate cremation urn and leaving your presence on sandy beaches and all your favorite cities across the globe. Finally with the use of cremation jewelry your family and friends can have you with them wherever they go.

All this and more can be yours with Dr. Oz’s new, proven weight loss method. Now all you have to do is pick which designer cremation urn you want to be shown off in then sit back and enjoy your new 4 -6 pound lifestyle.
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Thai Man Marries Dead Girlfriend

On January 4, 2012, an extraordinary Buddhist wedding ceremony transpired in Surin, Thailand. On that day 28-year-old Chadil Deffy, a television director also known as Deff Yingyuen, took his girlfriend of ten years, 29-year-old Sarinya Kamsook, also known as Anne, as his wife.

Cremation Services
Death Till We Part?

The bridegroom, clad in a black tuxedo complete with top hat and tails, was debonair and charming. The bride was a vision in a white satin strapless bridal gown featuring a miniskirt and ornamented with lace and pearls. Fishnet stockings embellished her legs, and in her hands, she held a red and white bridal bouquet.

The bride remained silent and did not object to the marriage. As the groom proclaimed his undying love for his bride, he slipped a diamond ring on her finger as a symbolic representation of his eternal love. This touching and endearing demonstration of everlasting love broadcasted on nationwide television in Thailand.

The unconventional issue concerning this romantic and charming marriage ceremony was not the bride’s unusual attire. Instead, it was the undeniable fact that the wedding ceremony had taken place posthumously and that the new bride was actually deceased at the time that the consolidated marriage/funeral service occurred.  The groom purportedly betrothed her out of tremendous despair and remorse.

In a typical love scenario, the happy couple became acquainted with each other and fell in love a decade earlier at Eastern Asia University in Thailand. The couple had previously planned to get married, but had postponed the wedding repeatedly because of their hectic schedules. Yingyuen had been pre-occupied with completing his degree and Kamsook was focusing on her career.

Regrettably, destiny intervened. On January 3, 2012, the couple found themselves in an automobile accident that resulted in catastrophic injuries to Anne. She was then rushed to an overcrowded emergency room of a nearby hospital. Rather than sending her to an alternative hospital that would be able to treat her injuries immediately, the workers reportedly waited six hours to attend to her, during which time she succumbed to her injuries and perished.

Jewelry To AshesThe matter at hand is whether the groom was a truly a grieving sweetheart, or rather an opportunist searching for a claim to fame. The bridegroom who had the ceremony videotaped also uploaded it to the social networking website Facebook, where he entitled the video, Corpse Bride. Subsequently, he published the video to YouTube where it ultimately proceeded to go viral.

Despite the fact that it’s apparent that he regretted that he had not married the woman he dearly loved while she was still living, his ulterior motives for videotaping the ceremony remain ambiguous. Tremendous grief can make people do abnormal things, but to use a publicity stunt to benefit from the demise of a loved one is excessive.

Regardless of the indisputable fact that he kept his commitment to his bride, he would potentially have been better thought of if this had been a private display rather than a televised event. Irrespective of his motives, from this fiasco you will discover lessons that we all can gain knowledge from. Our lives are way too short, and we should never delay until tomorrow what we could do today. Tomorrow could be too late, as this young man has learned all too well.

Kamsook’s burial occurred immediately following the ceremony and students carefully placed death wreaths throughout the grounds of the university that the couple attended in honor of the deceased bride. On the upside, a couple of things relating to this union are certain. The bride and groom will never argue, and if things don’t work out, the groom won’t be required to hand over half of his possessions.

This particular wedding is a perfect illustration of why funeral planning is so crucial. The bride undoubtedly would not have desired to have her deceased body exhibited for the entire world. However, if your loved ones don’t know what you want, despair and grieving can lead to unconventional funeral arrangements.

Many people these days are opting for cremation over burial. Cremation services offer family members additional time to organize the funeral service or memorial service. With additional time to prepare you can notify more family members, which frequently generates a significantly better turnout for the funeral.

Cremation urns for ashes are an excellent way to keep your loved one with you as you safeguard their earthly remains. In exactly the same way, cremation jewelry for ashes, which is either filled with the ashes or made from the ashes of your loved one, is an excellent solution for keeping your loved one in close proximity to your heart.
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Scattering Ashes is No Longer The Exception

We hear it a lot these days. “Just scatter my ashes and have a big party”.

Well that sounds pretty easy and parties are fun, right?  It should be easy, but without some thoughtful planning, survivors are faced with many unanswered questions. Often the scattering is put off because of all the questions and the ashes often end up on the top shelf in the hallway closet indefinitely.

Scattering Ashes in Alaska
Places of Natural Beauty Are Often Selected

Helping people learn how to have a creative and meaningful scattering ceremony is a large part of the reason that Cremation Solutions exist. Families are grateful to learn that they can create a meaningful event and still follow the persons request to “just scatter me”. Scattering ashes is often the final act of love survivors can participate in. Scattering is nothing less than a committal service, it is an event that should contain ceremony and ritual. It is important for family and friends to experience a meaningful and memorable final tribute. In some cases it is the only tribute, so let’s do our best. People who choose to have their ashes scattered do not consider scattering to be any less respectful or meaningful than any other disposition option. In fact, families that have scattered are experiencing a higher level of satisfaction. They consider scattering to be a more natural way to return to the earth. Scattering also allows families the flexibility of choosing a site that is personable and has special meaning to the deceased and the survivors. Sites with natural beauty are also often selected.

Scattering a friends ashes
Some Take Turns Scattering a Friends Ashes

The decision to scatter ashes is no longer unique. With more than half of all cremated Americans and Canadians as well choosing the scattering of ashes, scattering 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, 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 Solutions was started when our founder, a funeral director for over twenty years noticed how those who choose to scatter have been neglected by the funeral professionals in general. Cremation Solutions has grown to become the #1 resource for those choosing to scatter.

Here are some things to consider when planning a scattering ceremony. Hopefully a funeral or memorial event will take place before the scattering ceremony. Planning these events are what funeral professionals are really good at. Even if you’re not having public viewing and or visitation, you should still give survivors the chance to gather and celebrate the life that was lived. This helps survivors not only with the healing process but also to continue important relationships with each other and to support those who really need it. Now for the scattering ceremony you should consider first if you want a public ceremony or will it just be the family gathering. For a public ceremony, you might want the scattering to follow the memorial event, just like when a procession follows to the cemetery for committal services. Will more than one person scatter the ashes or will there be a chance to share in the scattering of ashes. Will the gathering be at the place of the scattering or somewhere else, either before or after? Will they do more than one scattering if there are relatives or friends in another part of the country? If people know the date and time the scattering will occur, they can then take that time to honor the memory of the deceased in their own way.

Because of the popularity of scattering ashes, suppliers to the funeral industry have been inventive and prolific in providing ways to remember. Three popular product types that relate specifically to families that desire to scatter are scattering urns, keepsakes, and keepsake jewelry. Scattering style cremation urns can be displayed at services, creating a focal point and sense of reality. They allow the cremated remains to be easily disbursed while adding dignity to the process. The location of the ash scattering sometimes determines the style of scattering urn to be used. The most popular location is over water and there are many water soluble urns that are specifically designed for this purpose. The second most popular location is on the family property. Birdhouse memorial scattering urns are a great option for these families because they are scattering urns that will convert into a memorial birdhouse, providing comfort for the years to come. Some scattering urns can be kept as an art piece or provide a place to keep mementos of the deceased or be used as a vase. Because scattering is irreversible, keeping portions of the ashes is even more important to the family that chooses to scatter. If families relocate, they can be left with feelings of abandonment. Keepsake urns and jewelry help provide the comforting knowledge that part of the earthly remains can always be kept close. They come in many sizes and styles and often match the style of the scattering urn. Keepsakes can be used to contain the ashes as well as jewelry, hair or other mementos of the deceased.

Scattering is nothing new, it has been happening for over a thousand years, but it has lost much of its ritual, most of which never made its way into modern times. Research tells us that today’s families still want meaningful celebrations of life with ceremony and personal memorable tributes. The people of today just won’t settle for the cookie cutter, insert name here funeral service anymore. Many are hiring or consulting with funeral celebrants to help create and a more meaningful and memorable event.

Funeral Celebrant
Celebrant Reading For Scattering Ceremony

Funeral celebrants are ceremony specialists who have a sound background in the history of ritual, ceremony and funeral traditions in many cultures and religions. Funeral Celebrants have been drawn to this work by a strong realization that every life has meaning and deserves to be celebrated and celebrated well. Many have experienced grief themselves. All are convinced that funerals can be a valuable source of healing. Nothing can take away the grief, but a genuine, well prepared tribute may ease the pain. Whether your family is secular, religious, spiritual or interfaith, or if you simply wish to express yourself in a manner of your own, choosing a Celebrant can help to create a meaningful, memorable, fitting end of life tribute.

As a response for so many wanting to scatter in the perfect location, a new company has risen from the ashes. You can now hire a professional ash scattering service that will scatter the ashes in the holiest of all locations. In their private memorial scattering garden Holyland Ash Scattering will scatter your ashes on the land where Jesus lived and taught his followers. Now anyone can follow Jesus for all eternity by arranging their final tribute in this very special location. This service is available through any funeral home. Survivors will even receive a video of the actual scattering in Israel. To have final rest where our spiritual roots were set in the beginning is to be truly blessed.

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Personal Cremation Urns

Every Detail is Captured

We have been getting a lot of press about our Personal Urns For Ashes, so I thought I would write a little about them myself. As many of you may or may not know I was a funeral director for over twenty years before starting Cremation Solutions. I attend the industry trade shows and read the trade journals. The industry has been trying to help make services and products more personal for some time now. In the urn department, urns with photos and engraved personal information has become popular. Even urns with digital slide shows are popular. I thought what about an urn that looks just like the deceased, what could be better than that!

The company called “That’s My Face” was the solution to the latest technology capable of producing such an urn. That’s my Face was founded by a PhD from the University of Cambridge (England) computer lab. ThatsMyFace.com specializes in patent-pending technologies around facial reconstruction, facial analysis and in transforming 2D portraiture into 3D sculptures. They make mask’s and action figures that look just like you! The best part is that they can do it from just a photo or two. They digitally create a three dimensional image from a two dimensional photo. The software can adjust coloration and fix blemishes and so on. I suggest people use images from their mid-life era to capture themselves in their prime. One recent customer wanted his own urn created in black and white and wanted his hand on his chin like Rodans famous sculpture “The Thinker”.

So we have been selling the urns now for two years. Sales are not as good as I had hoped for. I call it personalization gone too far! It seems that the Personal Cremation Urns just plain look too real. Creepy is the term that most used for their description. So they are not for everybody but most people do find them fascinating to say the least. At least the people that have purchased them are very pleased with the resulting urn. They rest on a handsome Verde marble base. A threaded plug is removed from the bottom of the base and the ashes are poured directly into the urn for all eternity. For a very personal one of a kind product that is selling well for Cremation Solutions, check our our selection of fingerprint jewelry. Fingerprint jewelry is jewelry that is made from an ink print of anyone’s fingerprint. Our fingerprints are like our one of a kind signature that nature has given each to us. No two fingerprints are alike.

I think in the near future I will offer them with the option of coming in a bronze tone. Casting of heads and bust have been around as memorials and art for hundreds of years and no one calls them creepy. The natural coloring as they are done now really brings them to life. Even the eyes look incredibly real.

Some of the strange request we have been asked are: Can you make them with movable eyes. Can we add a recording that is motion activated. I would like an Ozzy Ozbourne urn so I can spend eternity riding on the “Crazy Train”.  Lucky I have a sense of humor and am used to being asked strange questions. It’s not strange to me! twenty years in the funeral biz have prepared me. Ask away!!

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Sacred Ashes

Judy had not opened the box the funeral director had handed her almost a year ago. Just holding the bag when he handed it to her had made her knees buckle and she had to sit before falling. The reality was the earthly remains of her husband were inside the box and she just couldn’t face the reality that his glorious body has been reduced to a few pounds of ash. The scattering was to be in a month and the 6 x 6 box had never been opened. It was slowly building on her nerves and she knew she didn’t want the scattering ceremony to be the first time she confronted the reality. She knew she wanted to see , feel and smell the ashes in private before the ash scattering event. One sleepless night she knew it was time, her hand’s shook as cut away the brown tape and opened the box. She removed a twist tie from the plastic bag inside the box and there was John!. Tears fell like rain drops as she ran her finger through the John’s ashes.

Cremation Ashes

She had read that the ashes were heavy and course. They were grayish and white and she imagined johns spirit talking to her as she examined the bits and pieces of bone ash. Her larger than life husband and best friend was now in the palm of her hand. She stroked the ashes and as marveled at the strange reality that seemed so unreal.
As she regained control of her emotions and feelings she realized the remains were still beloved and sacred. Nothing was scary anymore. She had already been devastated by her loss months ago and nothing could compare with the actual loss of her husband. Though she knew he was not in the box, she gained comfort speaking to the ashes and thanking John for the years of love. She could now be comfortable as she walked past the ashes as they rested on the mantel. Her sister had purchased an urn that was made for the scattering of ashes and together they put the ashes inside. Having the ashes in the handsome wood scattering urn made Judy remember his fondness of nature and trees. Her sister told her that after the scattering on Johns favorite hiking trail the urn was specially designed to serve as a memorial birdhouse that they would put in John’s garden.
As a funeral director and crematory operator for over twenty years it is good for me to share Judy’s story as it serves as a reminder that we in the funeral business do not simply handle ashes and urns. Like bodies and caskets we are honored to be entrusted with the care of others loved one’s. Like our physical bodies, ashes are our earthly remains and should be treated as so. The idea that so many in this business still hand over the ashes when a cremation urn is not selected, in the ugliest cardboard or plastic we can find disgust me! At least they should use a fancy gift box or tasteful cardboard urn. The reflection on your funeral business is also questioned. The time I heard a family member telling a friend that the cremation cost $2000.00 and they gave mom back to us in this box. That’s all I needed to hear to know it was wrong.
I was visiting a funeral director in Maine a few years ago and I was impressed when he showed me how his funeral home turned the ashes over to the family. Once the ashes were signed for he would guide the family member or members to a tasteful quite side room. There on a table in the corner of the room stood the urn. The warm glow of a white tapered nice candle flickered beside the urn and a fresh red rose laid at the base of the Cremation urn. Once in the room he would invite them to sit on the couch and take as long as they needed as he left the room. Some would take a minute and some an hour. The important part was they had the time and space for themselves as long as they needed. When they were ready they would let him know and he would then come and place the urn in a tasteful bag and offer to carry it out to the car. I learned from him, how less traumatizing this simple and dignified this thoughtful handover of ashes could be and I never handed another cremation urn over in a funeral home bag again. Remember we are creating an experience for the families we serve, this is just one way to show you care and are sensitive to the needs of the families who have entrusted your services.
The majority of people choosing cremation today will also choosing to scatter the ashes of their loved one. Most do not know where, only that it should be a special and sacred location.

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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 Urns for Ashes at Cremation Solutions

Cremation urns come in all shapes, sizes, and styles from classic ceramic designs to more modern motifs to completely personalized urns like the Barack Obama one above. This urn can be customized to be shaped like anyone's face.

Purchasing a cremation urn is not something most people do many times during their life. When contemplating the perfect vessel to hold our loved one’s ashes for eternity, there are many factors that come into play. One of the first things to consider is where the cremation urn for ashes will be placed or kept and will they be kept at all or divided between family and friends. Today most people are choosing to scatter the ashes in one or more especially meaningful locations. In this case you may wish to use an urn that is specially designed for scattering the ashes. The location and method of the scattering will further influence the style of scattering urn needed. When the choice is other then scattering you should consider where the urn will be kept. We are always just a phone call or email away if you have any questions.

Some popular choices are:

  • Scattering the ashes back to nature in a place of natural beauty or special meaning.
  • Burial in the family cemetery plot or on a home site.
  • Placed in a columbarium niche in a cemetery or other location.
  • Kept at home indoors or outdoors, i.e. in the garden.
  • Placed inside a cremation monument.
  • Turned into cremation jewelry, art or an ocean reef

Once they have decided on the disposition of the ashes most people try to match the design of the cremation urn with the style and or personality of the person or pet. Sometimes you just see a design and say that’s it that’s the one. Certain designs somehow remind us of the life and how it was lived, what they wore, how they decorated, hobbies, careers, etc. Many cremation urns can be further personalized with engraving, photos, or a nameplate. One of the reasons Cremation Solutions offers so many cremation urn styles and designs is because we are all unique in this world and we consider urns to be sacred as life itself. Picking an urn for cremation is not a choice to taken lightly, so we endeavor to provide you with a wide selection that includes cremation urns both small and large made out of bronze, wood, biodegradable material, glass, marble, and more. Whatever style of urn you are looking for, we have it.

Cremation Urns in the Home: Whether the urn is to be placed on a mantle, shelf, cremation urn stand, in a cremation urn cabinet , or in a “Life Alter” at home you may want to consider the matching an existing décor and taste. Do you want the cremation urn to look like an urn? Some people prefer the urn not look like an urn at all. Many choices of urns blend into the décor or can be a piece of art with inner chamber to discreetly hold the ashes while serving as a center piece of art.

Cremation Urns in the Yard: People may choose to keep the ashes outside of their home. This is a nice option for those who might be considering to scatter the ashes in the yard, but because scattered ashes are not recoverable and people move and properties change hands, there are outdoor options that can be moved. First of all you can bury the urn in your yard. In this case you should use a cremation urn vault. An urn vault is a protective box that holds the urn inside that is sealed to be air and water tight. They are made to stand the elements and can always be dug up and moved if needed. A memorial stone marker is placed above the urn vault as both a memorial and location marker. Another favorite of Cremation Solution customers is our natural stone memorials which are large stone and boulders that have a special inner chamber to hold the ashes. These natural markers can be placed in gardens and along walkways and paths. Some simply look like a stone and some have the options of adhering a memorial nameplate.

Examples of cremation monuments for the yard or garden. These rock solid memorials will keep your loved one's ashes safe and secure from the elements.

Cremation Monuments are another outdoor memorial option. These are actual monuments like the ones in cemeteries, only they can be opened up to have an urn placed inside a special inner chamber called a niche. They are made of granite and come in many styles and colors and can be sized to hold individual cremation urns and even whole families in estate sized cremation monuments. Names can be engraved and photos can be laser etched to further personalize the monuments and if you move the monument can be relocated as needed.

Cremation Urns in a Cemetery: You may already have a family burial plot in a cemetery. Almost all cemeteries will let you bury urns on your gravesite. Most have regulations as to how many urns can be interred in a single grave and the depth of the burial. Urn vaults and markers are sometimes required. Cemeteries may have other options too. Some have columbariums. These are structures, usually made of stone, where you may purchase space for placement of the cremation urn. This space is called a niche. It’s like a mausoleum for urns instead of caskets. Some are indoors and some are outdoors. Many new cemeteries are also installing what is called a scattering garden. These are gardens or walkways that people can scatter the ashes in. The ashes are usually scattered on the ground and then raked into the earth. A central monument is often in place were the names are engraved of all who have had their ashes scattered.

Cremation Urn Options: Many people who choose to use a cremation urn will also set aside a portion of the ashes for other memorial options. Ashes can be shared among family and friends to create individual memorial options such as cremation jewelry, cremation diamonds or crystals and small urns called keepsake urns. These precious keepsakes are kept or worn by survivors and have become very popular because of the comfort they bring.

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