Tag Archives: funeral options

Baby Boomer Deaths: This Ain’t Your Grandmother’s Funeral!

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The baby boomer generation has caused a seismic shift in the funeral industry in the last decade. Overall, there has been a large decrease in emphasis on body-centric activities and a resulting shift in focus towards memorial services that honor the life of the deceased person instead.  Personalization of the funeral services to reflect the preferences and hobbies of the person is pervasive:  instead of ‘amazing grace’ and ‘swing low sweet chariot’ playing in the funeral home, attendees at a baby boomer funeral would be more likely to hear ‘stairway to heaven’, ‘imagine’ or ‘into the mystic’.  And instead of a black hearse, the procession could just as easily be led by a motorcycle, a team of horses, or a covered wagon.

The baby boomer generation includes people who were born from1946 to 1965, approximately 78 million Americans and roughly 28% of our total current population.  Exactly as they challenged, rejected, and reshaped their parents’ traditional roles in their own lives with regards to self-identity, gender, sex, marriage, parenting and retirement, they are doing exactly the same in their deaths.  As a result, we are seeing less and less formulaic, traditional funerals and finding ourselves in roles that are more grounded in facilitating, event planning and organization, and above all, providing hospitality and comfort. Currently, it is estimated that only 20% of modern funerals are about body disposition and the remaining 80% of the funeral is to provide a healing experience for the surviving family.

Baby boomers also have a lot more options available to them for their funerals, mostly as a result of 1984 legislation which required funeral directors to unbundle their services and provide price lists, allowing for completely customized funerals.  Some of the more popular personalization trends include video tributes, slideshows, and displaying personal memorabilia such as musical instruments, sports equipment, etc. In a recent service we did, the family brought their loved one’s Harley Davidson motorcycle right into our funeral chapel, which brought fond memories to those who remembered him as an avid motorcyclist.

For the actual disposition of the body, cremation seems to be by far the most popular choice among baby boomers and families often scatter the ashes in the person’s favorite spot, for example at sea.  However, many baby boomers are choosing non-traditional and unusual destinations for their cremated ashes, such as being made into jewelry, or sent into space.  Non-traditional, green burials are also gaining popularity among baby boomers, with such choices as no-embalming techniques, eco-friendly cemeteries, underwater reef memorials, and caskets and shrouds made out of fully biodegradable materials.

At the end of the day, exactly as the baby boomers were a defining, rule-changing generation in life, so are they in their deaths;  as a result, we are seeing this clearly reflected by the significant changes in our industry.

New Hampshire Now Has A Green Cemetery

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Earlier this summer, I wrote a blog on the green burial movement (or lack thereof) in New Hampshire.  While Phaneuf Funeral Homes has offered a very low cost green burial package for some time, we have had no takers.  Why not?  Well until now, there were no true green burials cemetery sites in New Hampshire.  Nearly every cemetery requires some sort of outer burial container to encase the casket.  All cemeteries maintain their properties (or try to) by cutting the grass, filling in ground indentations and trimming trees and shrubbery.  But in September, the trustees of Richmond Cemetery, located in Richmond, NH, a small town tucked away in the southwest corner of the state, opened a green burial section in its cemetery.  The cemetery trustees allocated up to 100 grave spaces for green burials.  You need not be a resident of Richmond to purchase a cemetery lot.  But embalming the body is not allowed as is the use of a casket with metal.  And no vaults or headstones are permitted.  Graves may be marked only by using indigenous field stone.  To maintain the back to nature theme, the town will only mow the grass a few times a year.  While green does not necessarily mean inexpensive, this cemetery is very good news for New Hampshire residents who now have a true green alternative. 

For more information about the Richmond cemetery, pricing and making arrangements for a green burial, please call me at the funeral home.  And for anyone interested in learning more about green burial and other eco-friendly funeral alternatives, Phaneuf will be hosting a free green burial seminar this spring (around Arbor Day) entitled “Dying to be Green”.  If you would like more informaton about the seminar or would like to reserve a spot, please sign up for our monthly e-newsletter on our website.  

 

Green Burials

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I would like to continue my eco-friendly burial and cremation theme from a few weeks ago and discuss green burials.  We seem to get a few calls every month from people asking if we offer green burials. 

What is a green burial?  According to the green burial organization (www.greenburial.org), it is a simple and natural process.  No metal caskets, no embalming and no cemetery vaults.  The body is placed in a biodegradable casket or even a shroud or blanket and then buried in a natural site approved for green burial.  Most green cemeteries in the US are in a wooded area and do not allows monuments or markers.  While there are a few green burial cemeteries in this country, they are sparsely dispersed.  There are some in California (what a surprize), one in New York, a couple down South and another in Texas.  There is no doubt that more green cemeteries will be opening up in the future. 

People have asked me why there are no green burial cemeteries in New Hampshire or for that matter anywhere in New England. While the “back to nature” appeal of green cemeteries seems to be gaining traction in many parts of the country, New Hampshire, with its 55% cremation rate, does not seem to be following suit. 

For many people, the green alternative is a way people can save money and also be environmentally conscience.  A green burial avoids many of the traditional funeral trappings and can save several thousands of dollars.  However, when you factor in the cost of getting the deceased to the green cemetery, filing the necessary paperwork and paying the cemetery their fees, a green burial will easily exceed $2,000 and probably top $3,000.  For about half of that, the family can select a simple cremation.  And by keeping the cremated remains at home, scattering them at sea or burying them above a family member or friend in an existing casket, they are saving land. 

So, when someone now asks me if we offer green burials, I  say that we offer green alternatives to traditional funerals and it’s called cremation.