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States You Shouldn’t Be Caught Dead In
As the director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly — from so-called regulatory boards that ignore consumer complaints to law-makers who’ve decided you don’t have the right to buy reasonably priced caskets, or even skip the funeral home and do it yourself. Here’s five of the worst offenders: Read the rest of this entry »
A small, but growing, group of activists seeks to reform the funeral industry.
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jul 3, 2008
James Green is dead. He’s lying on a classroom table—eyes closed, hands across his chest—while Donna Belk, who lectures on do-it-yourself funerals, explains how to wash a corpse at home. “In my experience, bodies leak a negligible amount of fluid, but you may want to put a plastic sheet down, just in case.” She turns to Green: “You don’t have to do any leaking.” The ersatz corpse cracks a smile and the dozen students in the room shout, “He’s alive! He’s alive!”
For the Homeless and the Indigent, Dying is a Lonely Business, Done Without Ceremony
Most of us know that when we die, we can expect someone to oversee the
disposition of our bodies. Even if we never discuss death and make no
advance plans, we can probably count on a spouse or blood relative to
make arrangements for a funeral and a burial or cremation.
SHADY OAKS GARDENS, the county-owned cemetery near Homeland, is nearly
filled with a multitude of John and Jane Does. Cremation has largely
replaced traditional burial to dispose of the indigent —it’s cheaper.
When people die unable to pay for a funeral, they are usually cremated
at county expense and their ashes are stored in a cardboard box, as seen
at Oak Ridge Funeral care in Winter Haven. The $575 burial budget often
doesn’t cover all the expenses.
Not Sheldon Imbler. When Imbler died of liver failure March 10 at
Lakeland Regional Medical Center, he had no one to mourn him. Imbler,
57, had been living on the streets of Lakeland for at least two years
and had no family in the area.
And so the responsibility for dealing with his remains fell to Polk
County — specifically, the county’s Department of Health and Social
Services. After a search failed to find any next of kin, the county paid
a Winter Haven funeral home $575 to have Imbler’s body cremated. He had
no funeral or memorial service, and the crematory arranged to have his
ashes scattered in the Gulf of Mexico.
‘Two things are guaranteed in this country — one is a public education
and the other is a proper burial,’ said Russell Moline, a funeral
director at Lakeland’s David Russell Funeral Home, which oversaw
Imbler’s cremation. ‘People are entitled to those two items.’
It’s not just homeless people like Imbler who sometimes require public
burial or cremation. Wilma Daniels, Polk’s health and social services
manager, said the county pays for the disposition of citizens in a
variety of circumstances, including elderly residents who have outlived
all their relatives and people whose families just can’t afford to pay
for burial or cremation.
‘Most people, they don’t want to ask for help,’ said Mary Kondelin, a
senior case manager in Daniels’ office, ‘but due to their economic
situation they have to.’
Daniels said the county paid for 246 dispositions — 157 cremations and
89 burials — in the fiscal year from October 2006 through September 2007.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
She said her office follows a protocol to determine whether any
relatives of the deceased have the assets to pay for burial or
cremation, and it does not approve every application for assistance. The
Florida Anatomical Board, which supplies cadavers to the state’s medical
schools, also has the authority to take unidentified or unclaimed
bodies, though Daniels said that is rare, occurring only three times in
Polk in the 2006-2007 fiscal year.
Daniels said all Polk funeral homes are eligible to handle arrangements
for publicly funded burials and cremations, as long as they accept the
flat $575 payment from the county. Keith Fields, a funeral director at
Oak Ridge Funeral Care in Winter Haven, said that payment hasn’t risen
in years and in many cases doesn’t even cover the cost to the funeral
home of disposing of the body.
‘What they pay for basically barely covers cremation,’ Fields said. ‘A
lot of times we’re doing basically charity work by the time the fees and
the expense of picking the body up and all the running around has to be
done.’
That’s one reason the vast majority of cases result in cremation, which
is less costly for funeral homes. The other is the lack of public burial
space.
The county owns Shady Oaks Gardens Cemetery, a 2.8-acre, triangular
tract near Homeland donated by a phosphate company in 1968. Kondelin
said the cemetery reached nearly full capacity in the 1990s, and burials
there have all but stopped. Kondelin, a 34-year county employee, said
her office has unsuccessfully sought land for another ‘Potter’s Field,’
the traditional name for a burial ground devoted to indigents and
unidentified people.
WITNESSES
Back when the county did regular burials at Shady Oaks, a representative
from the social services office attended each ceremony. Kondelin said
she witnessed many such burials.
‘Sometimes there was family there,’ she said. ‘Sometimes the only people
there were the social worker, someone from the funeral home, the person
digging the grave and a minister.’
Asked whether it seemed sad to see someone buried without any family or
friends to mourn, Kondelin said, ‘There was someone from the county
there that did care about an individual, whether they had a family member or not.
As a social worker, you do have to have a degree of professional
detachment, but you do have to have empathy for an individual because
they were a human being. They were either a mother, father, brother,
sister, child.’
CREMATIONS
County-funded burials do still occur, as the 89 examples from the
previous fiscal year attest, just not at Shady Oaks. Daniels said
sometimes a family owns a cemetery plot, but lacks the money to cover
burial costs. Or she said a friend of the deceased might donate a plot,
or a cemetery might offer a space at no charge.
But Kondelin said cremation has become the dominant form of disposition,
not only in Polk, but in most Florida counties as well. She said funeral
homes do not hold ceremonies for cremations and sometimes ship bodies to
crematories outside Polk, and the county doesn’t send a representative
to cremations.
In cases of cremation, Kondelin said family members have the option of
claiming the ashes. Otherwise, funeral homes dispose of the ashes in any
legal manner they see fit. Moline said dispersal in the Gulf of Mexico
is the most common method.
For people like Sheldon Imbler, who have no family in the area, Daniels
said her office makes every effort to track down the next of kin. She
said the funeral home that receives the body often joins in the search,
checking with nursing homes, hospitals and neighbors and often enlisting
help from law-enforcement officials.
Daniels said there is no statutory deadline for waiting to find a next
of kin. She said she doesn’t recall ever having directed a body to be
buried or cremated only to learn later of a living family member.
‘We give it what we think is a good effort, and that length of time may
vary,’ Daniels said. ‘If we think there’s a relative, we’ll wait a
little longer. We don’t have any set time.’
But she knows that some people, like Imbler, are truly alone as they
depart this world.
_____
By Gary White, The Ledger, published 3-29-08. Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or at
863-802-7518.
Family members help lower Pansy Anna Palmer’s coffin, covered by a quilt, into her grave in a “green” cemetery in South Carolina. After a Baptist service, she was buried in a wooded grove in a biodegradable casket.Ashes blasted out of cannons. Gemstones, paintings, and eternal reefs of cast concrete that are made in part of cremated remains. Mummification. Custom caskets. Personalized services designed and run by friends and family.
Members of the Baby Boom generation want their deaths to be as individual as their lives.
“The people who have done home birthing or home schooling seem to be attracted to this. It’s definitely a boomer thing,” says Jerrigrace Lyons, the founder and director of Final Passages, a non-profit educational website on home funerals. “People are looking for things that are more relevant to their lifestyle, and to celebrate that person’s life through creating a death that makes sense for who they were.” Read the rest of this entry »
Small but growing trend helps people reclaim death rituals, experts say
When Pam Howley’s 17-year-old daughter died of brain cancer in 2005, she knew one thing: “I did not want her embalmed.” Read the rest of this entry »
“A Family Undertaking” explores the growing home-funeral movement by following several families in their most intimate moments as they reclaim the end of life, forgoing a typical mortuary funeral to care for their Read the rest of this entry »
When Imam Abdullah El-Amin’s closest friend died 18 months ago, he ritually bathed his friend’s body, anointed him with oil and fragrant herbs and wrapped him in a simple white burial shroud. Read the rest of this entry »
Green burials offer an eco-friendly alternative to traditional methods
If you’re like most people, you probably think that your environmental footprint disappears from the planet once you’re dead and gone. After all, what harm could you possibly do? But it seems even the dead aren’t off the hook. Whether you choose to make your final exit six-feet under or up in smoke, according to Joe Sehee, executive director of the Green Burial Council, and Dr. Billy Campbell, founder of Ramsey Creek Preserve, your death will leave a mark, and it’s going to hurt. Read the rest of this entry »
Personal touches reflect personalities of departed in funerals held at home
The rich, full life that Betsy Brack led could be seen everywhere. This was her home, after all.Her clothes hung in the closets.
Her favorite jewelry was laid out in the dresser drawers. Read the rest of this entry »
When 90-year-old Daniel Shuck died of a heart attack in June, his family members didn’t call a funeral home. They went to St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, dressed him in clean clothes — nothing fancy, just what he usually wore — placed him in a wooden coffin made by his son-in-law and took him home to the family’s land in Pecos. Read the rest of this entry »
Many Bereaved Opting to Bypass Funeral Industry
After Richard Saul died of Lou Gehrig’s disease just before Christmas last year at age 77, neighbors and friends gathered at his Cleveland Park home to extend sympathies to his widow, Judy, and their sons and grandson. Many were surprised to learn that they could also pay their respects to Richard. Read the rest of this entry »
Family and friends gathered together to give Jacksonville sexton a fitting farewell
Wayne Maxson’s family members wanted his funeral to be just so. Instead of turning to a funeral home, they decided to do it themselves. Read the rest of this entry »
Some want to be remembered with lavish services, others want their remains launched into space. Bob Prater envisioned his passing in simpler terms: A funeral at home.
Very few Americans opt for funerals in their homes — there’s no firm number of how many, exactly — but interest is growing as consumers yearn for a more personal way to bid their loved ones adieu, and are frustrated by sometimes high-priced, cookie-cutter services. Read the rest of this entry »