What a Way to Go

• Share

(2 of 2)

Cremation is an increasingly popular choice for many people. Just a decade ago, only 18% of Americans were cremated; today, 27% are, and the Cremation Association of North America predicts that number will jump to 48% by 2025. That's owing, in part, to the swell of immigrants who practice Hinduism or Buddhism, as well as to the relaxing attitudes of the Roman Catholic Church, which began to allow cremation in the 1960s. Others are drawn by the convenience and low cost. A traditional funeral runs about $5,800, with burial fees adding $2,000 more. Cremation costs about $1,000. Cremated remains — called cremains in industry lingo — can be kept at home in urns, buried on family property (in all states except California) or scattered at sea.

Ernie Wolfe, an African-art dealer in Los Angeles, plans to have his ashes placed in a 10-ft. lobster-shaped casket. Custom-designed urns also provide distinctive resting places. But there are other things to do with the ashes. They can be melded into concrete "reef balls" by Eternal Reefs in Decatur, Ga. Or launched on a rocket by Houston-based Celestis to orbit the earth in a capsule. Or turned into diamonds by LifeGem in Elk Grove Village, Ill. Allen Lucas, a construction-company executive from Kitty Hawk, N.C., asked LifeGem to turn his share of his mother's cremains into .33-carat stones because "my mother was as hard and brilliant as a diamond." His two teenage daughters will wear Grandma as jewelry.

These newfangled death rites may make traditionalists gasp. But some experts see them as a positive development. "For a long time, people were removed from the process, letting professionals arrange these elaborate but impersonal ceremonies," says Sarah York, a Unitarian Universalist minister and the author of Remembering Well: Rituals for Celebrating Life and Mourning Death. But she cautions that however people choose to commemorate their loved ones, they still have to deal with the loss. "You may want a happy service instead of a downer, but it's also a time to mourn and let go and grieve," she says.

Family members say festive ceremonies help that process. After Lourenzy Cosey, known as L.C. to his friends, died of lung cancer in St. Peters, Mo., a year ago at 62, his wife Margaret had him laid out next to a soda-packed cooler and his beloved barbecue pit. "He would barbecue at every holiday, the Super Bowl or for no reason at all, just to invite the neighbors over," his widow recalls. "He always told me he didn't want a sad funeral; he said he wanted something people could remember. People were talking and laughing. Everybody said it was different, but that it was L.C."