Neighbours in Stafford County, Va, Kurt Zimmerman and Lawrence Mervine got to musing about death one day. Mervine had read that people could have their cremated remains placed in an underwater reef if they wanted. They could even shoot them to the moon.
The men were still talking when they drove past a garden centre and paused just long enough to think: what if they mixed cremated remains with concrete to make garden statues and planters?
“We kind of looked at each other and said at that point it could be a very good idea,” Zimmerman said.
Twenty years ago, such an idea would have been unthinkable, and certainly not marketable. But as demand for cremations rises nationwide and the funeral industry finds itself personalizing what was once fairly standard, it is no longer far-fetched that two men who knew nothing about the business of death are trying to patent a process for preserving remains.
Nationwide, cremation is estimated to have been the choice in about 35 per cent of the deaths in 2007, up from about 28 per cent in 2002, the Cremation Association of North America reported recently. And the association’s estimate for 2025 is about 59 per cent.
It makes sense: the economy falls and cremations rise. Cremation has always been more affordable than traditional burial, and industry experts say that cost is the main reason families choose it. But funeral home directors say that more families are also opting for memorial services and burial of the ashes, indicating it is not only economics driving post-life choices but also transient lifestyles and the desire for personalization.
“Even in death, the consumer wants options,” said Michael Lyon, a Clarksville funeral director and owner of the Cremation Society of Virginia. “Whereas 33 years ago when I first entered death care, it was very commonplace for funerals to look identical from person to person, today I am finding that death care is as unique as the life lived.”
The Cremation Society’s website offers a cast-bronze urn depicting an eagle in flight for $2,420 or wind chimes “available in alto or soprano.” Alto, it turns out, costs $207, $45 more than soprano. Browsers may order the equipment and staff for a memorial service or choose the “Do it yourself” package, complete with thank-you cards and matching envelopes.
“I am trying to figure out every single option that is available to the consumer,” Lyon said. “Death is like going to the clothing store for a suit. It’s not a ‘one size fits all.’”
And cremation, it seems, offers the most variety, coming in all sorts of sizes, styles and prices. It allows relatives who live in different parts of the country to plan services around their schedules and split the ashes if they choose. They can pick five urns or two, one cemetery plot in New York and another in Idaho. If Dad was a golfer, there is an urn to match. If he loved flying, his ashes can be scattered from the sky.
During this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, US beach volleyball star Misty May-Treanor sprinkled some of her mother’s ashes in the sand, just as she did after winning gold in Athens in 2004. “It’s important to me,” she said. “But I have more left of her. I always will,” she said, referring to Barbara May, who died of cancer in 2002.The cremation association estimated the cremation rate in Virginia at 28.5 per cent in 2007. The rate is expected to reach 33 per cent in 2010. But several Virginia funeral homes report that cremations already represent more than 30 per cent of their business. In some places, including the Virginia Beach funeral home where Michael Nicodemus is a director, the cremation rate is approaching 50 per cent.
“We haven’t been shocked by what we’ve seen. We expected it,” said Nicodemus, who serves on the association board. “It was just a matter of time. That time just got here quicker.”
The trend is leading more funeral homes to install crematories, and cemeteries to set aside land for cremation gardens. While cremation was once considered the alternative to burial, industry experts say that families today are choosing to bury ashes rather than placing them on a mantel or scattering them.
Andrea Schwarz of Chestnut Grove Cemetery in Herndon, Va, said that staff members noticed the trend in June 2007, when they buried more cremated remains than caskets.
“There really is a place for cemeteries for the healing process and for families and individuals to have a place to come and reflect,” Schwarz said. She remembered talking to a woman who had held onto the ashes of her husband for years. “And it was her 11-year-old daughter who said, ‘But where do we go? Where do we go if we want to visit Dad?’”
Sam Found, who runs Virginia funeral homes in Manassas, Culpeper and Fredericksburg, said that cremations represent 40 to 50 per cent of his business and that the industry is finally realizing that customers want options in the handling of ashes. Found said cremation starts at about $1,500, but once services and other options are added, it can approach the cost of a traditional burial, anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000.
“We can’t sit around in our industry and build caskets like the old days,” Found said. “The options are becoming A to Z. Before, it was A to D.”
Found was responsible for entrepreneurs Zimmerman and Mervine’s first sale back in March. Today, samples of their products are displayed at funeral homes across the region. After seeing one of the products at the funeral home in Fredericksburg, a woman chose a planter to memorialize her daughter, son and grandchild.
“We have people ask all the time, ‘What are those about?’” Found said. “We tell them, and some will say it’s not for them and some will say, ‘What a neat idea.’”
Zimmerman, a stay-at-home dad, and Mervine, who installs tile, say they are regular guys who did not give much thought to the death industry. They never would have considered pursuing a patent for their process, they said, if signs did not point to an emerging market.
“Everything is heading that direction,” Mervine said. “Whether it is this idea or something else someone else comes up with, it’s going in the direction of cremation.”
There are endless possibilities for personalizing memorials when people choose cremation, Zimmerman said. Headstones in cemeteries, he said, are so nondescript, listing the name, a date and perhaps a mention that the deceased was a spouse, child or parent to someone.
“Maybe our generation, mine and yours, is just looking for some way to say we had a wonderful life or we didn’t,” Zimmerman said. “Maybe people just want to be a little more expressive of how they feel about life.”—Dawn/LA Times-Washington Post News Service