The Los Angeles Times headline was grim:
“More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs.”
Reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske reported on July 21, among other things, the following shocker:
“The poor economy is taking a toll even on the dead, with an increasing number of bodies in Los Angeles County going unclaimed by families who cannot afford to bury or cremate their loved ones.
“At the county coroner’s office … 36 percent more cremations were done at taxpayers’ expense in the last fiscal year over the previous fiscal year, from 525 to 712. …
“‘It’s a pretty dramatic increase,’ said Lt. David Smith, a coroner’s investigator. ‘The families just tell us flat-out they don’t have the money to do a funeral.’
“Once the county cremates an unclaimed body – typically about a month after death – next of kin can pay the coroner $352 to receive the ashes.”
In the same week of this mortality problem reported by the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times had a Page One headline just above a casket photograph:
“Home burials offering an intimate alternative at lower cost.”
From Peterborough, N.H., Times reporter Katie Zezima reported, among other things, the following:
“Advocates say the number of home funerals, where everything from caring for the dead to the visiting hours to the building of the coffin is done at home, has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals ‘where home births were 30 years ago,’ according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Maine.
“The cost savings can be substantial, all the more important in an economic downturn. The average American funeral costs about $6,000 for the services of a funeral home, in addition to the costs of cremation or burial. A home funeral can be as inexpensive as the cost of pine for a coffin (for a backyard burial) or a few hundred dollars for cremation or several hundred dollars for cemetery costs.
“More people are inquiring about the lower-cost options, said Joshua Slocum, director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit watchdog group. ‘Home funerals aren’t for everybody, but if there’s not enough money to pay the mortgage, there certainly isn’t enough money to pay for a funeral,’ Mr. Slocum said.
“While only a tiny portion of the nation’s dead are cared for at home, the number is growing. There are at least 45 organizations or individuals nationwide that help families with the process, compared with only two in 2002, added Slocum.”
This Times story then went on to report one of the most outrageous apparent triumphs of the mortuary lobby:
“In Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska and New York, laws require that a funeral director handle human remains at some point in the process. In the 44 other states and the District of Columbia, loved ones can be responsible for the body themselves.”
Hopefully, legislators in those six states – with this burgeoning movement toward home burials – will repeal this outrageous requirement of the presences, at considerable cost, of a professional mortician.
