By Andrew Hoffman
This week’s article I am writing because of some recent experiences at my funeral home. It may be self-indulgent, but I feel it is a good topic to talk about. I recently had the opportunity to talk to a funeral director in Arizona since a family that had lost a loved one and wanted to send their family member home. As most funeral directors do, since it is a pretty unique profession, we started to talk about business and trends in my part of the country and his.
I asked the standard questions: How long have you been in the business? How many burials do you do? How many cremations do you do? It was the last question that really opened the door to more disturbing insights. He told me that 95 percent of his business was cremation. This is very high. I thought ok maybe it’s because he owns his own crematory and promotes that fact. He then went on to tell me that of that 95 percent of cremations, 90 percent of them were direct cremations. To explain what a direct cremation is if you don’t know is a form of disposition where an individual who has passed away is taken to a crematory and the ashes are returned to the next of kin or responsible party. That means there is no formal viewing for the public, no funeral service with the body present, public or private, no memorial service and no formal graveside service for interment. Basically, there is no honoring of the memory of the deceased at all.
I was floored! He said 90 percent of his families were not having a service. The overwhelming majority do not meet to honor their loved one in the long-established institution of a funeral. This scares me on a personal and professional level.
Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You believe the reason this bothers me so much is because I am worried about my livelihood. If I am being honest, yes that does concern me. Just like it would concern a factory worker that they are coming out with automated machines that can do the job or a video store owner would be concerned that live streaming will make DVD rentals obsolete.
But honestly, that is not the main reason. My concern is what this says about our society.
How have we changed in our values, morals and traditions and where are we heading? Are we becoming less in touch with our need to grieve, and if so, is this a good thing?
So, let’s ask the question, does the body of a person lose value when they have died? This is a hard ethical question and I think most of us don’t try to think about it. Some intellectualize it without feeling. I will tell you that I have dealt with families and talked to people that act like once the person dies, their body is treated like an empty soda can.
If this offends some of you, I apologize but I am just telling you what I have witnessed as a funeral director.
I will ask another question of you: once a body has been cremated to ashes, do they lose value? Stay tuned for my next article as we try to answer some difficult answers and consider the changing perspectives of today’s society.
Andrew B. Hoffman is a funeral director at Jeffries and Keates and Keates-Plum Funeral Homes. He is a twenty-two year veteran of the funeral industry.
