It sure does. Burial costs a fortune and I know of several urns of cremains that spent far too long in basements and closets waiting to be interred respectfully (none that I had control over).
The problem is the funeral industry, which is nothing more than a racket for squeezing money out of bereaved people who aren’t thinking clearly. In some states, like Maine, for example, you can do the whole thing yourself for a few hundred dollars; you can build a wooden coffin out of plywood or whatever, lay the body out, dig your hole in the ground, and have a service, have the burial, and that’s that—the way people have been doing it for five thousand years.
But in other states, like Michigan, the law requires that the body be autopsied, that you must have a coffin, and that the coffin be placed inside a waterproof vault. (Why? And why must the body be pumped full of preservatives to make it look lifelike? It’s not alive, it’s dead.) This can amount to several tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it’s often something that the family can hardly afford, which of course doesn’t deter the funeral director from taking advantage of them in their confused and hurting state. You can, of course, shoot a hole in their moneymaking schemes by opting for cremation and take the cremains home and sit them on the fireplace mantel—which will still cost you upwards of about a thousand dollars or more—which is what’s led to this situation in the first place.
It all boils down to unbridled greed on the part of the funeral industry. I’m sorry, but there it is.
Sounds like the good bishop has been reviewing his Corporeal Works of Mercy.
I quite agree.
In my parent’s case, my father, who was not Catholic, was cremated and his cremains sat on the mantlepiece until my mother, who
was Catholic, passed away. Dad opted to not have a traditonal funeral; he had a memorial service put on by the VFW instead. The funeral industry people were just about apoplectic, seeing all that cash flying off into the sunset, but I got kind of ugly with them and said you either do it my way, or we will remove the body from your care, is that clear?, and we got away with only what we absolutely couldn’t get out of: an autopsy and the cremation.
When my mother died, she had a Catholic funeral and was then cremated, and she and Dad were then buried side-by-side in the Catholic cemetary of her parish church—Yours Truly dug the grave, and I also filled it in (working bareheaded in the rain, I might add—luckily with cremains, you don’t have to have a six-by-six-by-three), and I have never had one smidgen of regret for the way we chose to do things.
Rest in peace, Mom and Dad. I know right where you are, and I’ll be seeing you one of these days.
