The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [70]
Throughout the industry, cremation today remains the poor, ugly stepchild among the modes of final disposition. Existing state laws, regrettably, serve only to help the industry play havoc with the consumer’s desire for a simple, cheap funeral. Funeral people are forever declaiming that cremation is legally more challengeable than burial. They argue that the reason they so often feel obliged to overrule a decedent’s expressed wish for a cheap exit is their desire to avoid being sued by family members who would find such disposition “emotionally damaging.” Research, however, has turned up only one case in which such an action was filed, and it was thrown out by the judge on the grounds that the primary right of disposition lies with the decedent if expressed in writing during his lifetime.
After Words
A recent report from CANA issued in December 1996 has spurred cremationists to seek ever more Creative Concepts for the extraction of maximum profitability. According to CANA’s projections, 26 percent of Americans who die in the year 2000 will be cremated, and of those who die in 2010, 39.9 percent—three times the number of those who were cremated in 1985—will make their exit in like manner. But not necessarily in the same way. The funeral folk are already looking ahead and have other plans for them.
One such was revealed during a “Keys to Cremation Success” symposium sponsored by the Funeral Service Insider in the spring of 1997. The scholars were urged to require “identification viewing” prior to cremation, “to avoid any mix-ups.” The title of one presentation, “How to Add $1,400 or More to Each Cremation Call,” reveals the larger motive for this tactic. “Seeing Mom in a cardboard box sometimes prompts a family member to ask if we don’t have something a little nicer,” said the presenter. The ruthlessness of subjecting family members to a forced viewing is something to wonder at until one recalls that it is one of the “keys to cremation success.” In one case, where the mother’s body had been embalmed before they chose cremation, family members became so distraught from the unwanted experience of an “identification viewing” that they have turned to the Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA) to seek an opinion from the FTC on whether consumers can decline this procedure. There is no doubt that they may refuse to pay the fee that some mortuaries are charging.
Another key to cremation success? “When families don’t buy an urn, require them to purchase a temporary container to hold the cremains. But make sure you label (or stamp) that box with the words ‘temporary container’ on all four sides. If you usually give cremains to the family in a box from the crematory, stamp that box with the temporary container label. That makes families most likely to upgrade beyond the temporary container,” suggests the Funeral Service Insider.
* In a remarkable coup for the funeral industry, their lobbyists in California won legislation that prohibits survivors from scattering cremated remains on private or public property—forcing them to go through the cemetery or the funeral director to arrange for the disposition of cremated remains. What few undertakers are likely to acknowledge, however, is that it is perfectly legal for a family to simply take the cremains home with them. After speaking with every law enforcement agency in the state from the FBI to county sheriffs, I learned that no officer is vested with the authority to check up on what happens to Aunt Martha’s ashes, nor are they willing to collar culprits caught in the act of “illegal” scattering. Although this law is totally unenforceable, the industry uses it to pressure the family to hand over