Why You Should Plan Your Own Funeral

It’s relatively routine for a hospital or hospice chaplain to ask patients if they have their affairs in order, which typically means creating or updating documents such as a will, advance directive, or power of attorney. I took it a step further by routinely encouraging all of my patients to plan their own funerals, down to the last detail, with two people assigned to each role in case the patient outlives the first person. That suggestion was often met with resistance, but patients and families almost always thanked me for it later. For patients, it was an opportunity to reflect on their values and choices (and something to do in the hospital). For families, nobody could argue about what they were convinced Mom or Dad wanted because it was all written down. I’ve seen families shattered over such disputes, so here are some options for your consideration.

In December 2020, Recompose opened as the first business offering human composting in the US. Located in Kent, Washington, about 40 minutes south of downtown Seattle, Recompose can turn your body into one cubic yard of nutrient-rich “soil amendment,” which will then be given to your family or taken to Bells Mountain, a 700-acre nonprofit land trust in southern Washington. The entire process takes 6-8 weeks. The current price is $5500 and includes transportation of the body within the three main counties of the greater Seattle area. Shipping from other counties in Washington is available for an additional fee. Recompose will accept bodies from anywhere, but they won’t arrange for shipping outside of Washington. You can read more about Recompose in this Seattle Times article or on the Recompose website.

Three years ago, I might have considered $5500 to be excessive, but it’s considerably less than a traditional funeral and cemetery burial. The average cost of a funeral is approximately $9000 and covers transporting remains to the funeral home, embalming and other preparation, facilities and staff to manage a viewing and service, hearse, service car, basic memorial printed package, metal casket, and vault. These prices do not include a cemetery plot or niche, marker, or monument, the combination of which can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $15,000. When my mother died in 2019, the total cost for funeral and cemetery expenses was just over $11,000 for a relatively simple affair. I led the funeral service and choked out a few words at the grave site so we saved a bit on that.

Beyond the financial cost of funerals is the environmental cost. Each year, funerals with cemetery burials consume over 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde for embalming (which will leech into the soil), 115 tons of steel and 2 billion tons of concrete (for caskets and burial vaults), and 4 million acres of land. George Carlin famously said golf courses should be used to build housing for the homeless. Golf courses comprise 2 million acres in the US. Imagine what could be done with 4 million acres – per year.

Cremation is significantly less expensive than traditional burials. For as little as $1000, you can have a “direct” cremation, which omits the funeral service and related expenses. The ashes will likely be provided in a plastic bag inside a small cardboard box. If saving money is your primary motivation, cremation may be the best option. But you should know that cremation has a significant environmental impact because it emits multiple toxic gases, including carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, polychlorinated dibenzodioxins, polychlorinated dibenzofurans, dioxin, hydrochloric acid, and mercury vapor.

Slightly more expensive than cremation but considerably less toxic is alkaline hydrolysis, which mimics and accelerates natural decomposition. The body is placed into a chamber with a solution of 95% water and 5% potassium hydroxide, which is then pressurized and heated to 365^o F. Full decomposition including the skeleton takes 4-6 hours. The process uses 1/8 the energy of traditional cremation and leaves 1/4 the carbon footprint with reduced greenhouse gasses and no mercury vapor. It’s been used by veterinarians for decades but was not approved for human use until 2003. It is now legally available in 18 states at an average cost of $2600.

Most people simply don’t think about funeral expenses. They don’t have any idea what is involved with the “final disposition” of a body, what different products or services cost, or even whether those products and services are legally required.

Let’s start with embalming. There is no state or federal law that requires routine embalming for every death. Some states require embalming or refrigeration if the body is not buried or cremated within a certain time; refrigeration is usually an acceptable alternative. No preservation is needed for direct cremation or immediate burial. Many funeral homes have a policy mandating embalming if the body is to be publicly viewed, but it is not a legal requirement. Some states require embalming if the body will cross state lines. The average cost of embalming is $750.

As with embalming, there is no state or federal law mandating the use of a burial vault surrounding a casket. The need for vaults emerged in the late 1700s to make it more difficult for thieves to access a coffin and steal jewelry, clothing, and even bodies, as well as to prevent the dead from escaping their graves and becoming ghouls (a superstition somewhat popular at the time). By the 1880s, the declining practice of burying the dead with their jewelry removed the financial incentive of robbing graves. However, the use of vaults continued, mostly to prevent the ground from sinking and creating uneven ground (without a vault, the weight of the dirt will eventually crush the casket or coffin). From at least the late 19th century and well into the 20th, cemeteries were a popular location for picnics and other family outings, making uneven ground undesirable. In modern cemeteries, the main reason to keep the ground level is simply for ease in mowing and other maintenance. The average cost of a burial vault is $1400.

The average cost of a typical casket from a funeral home is $2300. Most states require a casket in order to be buried in a cemetery, but the laws do not stipulate what the casket must be made of. Cremation does not legally require a casket, but a container of some kind may be necessary to move the body along the rollers into the cremation chamber. A funeral home that offers cremation must tell you that alternative containers are allowed and must make them available. They might be made of unfinished wood, pressed wood, fiberboard, or cardboard.

That covers cremations and typical cemetery burials, but you have other options. A small but growing practice is that of green burials, which involves placing the body in a shroud or biodegradable container 3-4 feet below the ground surface, which is where the heaviest microbial activity occurs for the most efficient decomposition. Within five weeks, nothing remains but the skeleton, which understandably takes considerably longer but rarely more than ten years, after which the skeleton can be moved to an ossuary and the ground repurposed. Green burials are allowed at select cemeteries through the US. The average cost is $2500 and usually includes a burial plot, fees to open and close the grave, a plot marker, and a one-time endowment to a perpetual care fund to maintain the property as a natural burial site. A current list of cemeteries that allow green burial is available from the Green Burial Council. Cemeteries designed specifically for green burials can be found here.

A green burial option that may be particularly attractive to those who live on family-owned land is home burial. Home burial is prohibited in California, Washington, and Indiana, and all other states have regulations that must be followed. You may need to obtain permits from local government, but it’s usually not a problem if you can show legal ownership of the land.

I like the idea of home burials because they tie most directly to home funerals. Funerals were commonly held in the home in early America and families cared for their own dead, including washing, dressing, and display for viewing. The earliest American homes were basic structures without a parlor, which was a room traditionally used for receiving guests. As Americans prospered, socially conscious families made sure their homes included a front room filled with their finest possessions. Because these rooms were usually clean, closed off, and formal, they were often used to lay out a body and hold funeral visitations. This is where the term funeral parlor comes from. When a body was on display, the parlor served as the death room. When funerals became an industry, the home parlor was no longer associated with death and thus became known as the living room.

I’m delighted that home funerals are making a resurgence. Family and close friends of the deceased overwhelmingly say it was a positive experience psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. Family members who help to prepare the body often express a profound sense of acceptance and closure regarding the death and a greater appreciation for both the fragility and resiliency of life.

Few people question the costs when planning a funeral because few people do so in advance. In times of emotional distress, blood flow is decreased in the part of the brain that governs logic and reason. (Have you ever reflected on a particularly emotional situation in your past and wondered what you possibly could have been thinking? The answer is, you weren’t.) When preparing for this article, I reviewed the bill for my mother’s funeral and was shocked to see that it cost $485 just to transport her body less than two miles to the funeral home. And I thought I knew what I was doing.

Part of funeral planning is researching the costs and letting your loved ones know what you want or don’t want, maybe with a few “buts” if certain things become more expensive than you think they’re worth. You will have peace of mind and your family will be grateful.

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