Cremation Business is For The Birds

Scattering ashes is now the preferred choice disposition for the majority of people who choose cremation. Places of natural beauty and special meaning are often selected as the final resting place for those scattered near and far. Locations are limitless but two popular choices stand out. Into the sea is very popular throughout the world. Closer to home, scattering into the garden is the preferred choice. If you think about it the garden is a micro world where the full cycle of life continues year after year. It is hard to feel more connected to the earth then when we work with nature in our gardens. Working the soil is a deep rooted and natural cycle that humans have benefited from since ancient times. As we reap the harvest and admire the beauty of the garden, a spiritual connection is ever present. Its no wonder why so many choose the garden as their final place of rest.

Just like when the funeral industry created biodegradable scattering urns for those who scatter at sea, a new way to scatter in the garden will now harmonize with nature to memorialize the dead. Introducing Birdhouse Memorial Urns!

Birdhouse Urns

These urns serve as beautiful and functional scattering urns, that following the scattering ceremony, convert into a memorial birdhouse, providing a true “Living Memorial”

Birdhouse Urns Provide:

•    A dignified vessel to hold the ashes and display at funeral ceremonies.

•    A functional scattering urn that will easily disperse our loved one’s remains back to the earth.

•    A lasting living memorial that will give survivors a necessary place to visit, remember and heal for years to come.

Birdhouse Memorial Urns are the natural choice for many:

They are a natural way to go back to the earth and continue the cycle of life. As birds come and go with the seasons to build their nest and raise their young, the cycle of life continues. These memorial not only provide shelter to our winged friends, but also give comfort to the survivors when they come to these places of rest. Birds often remind us of a sense of freedom and oneness with nature that many of us yearn for. Watching the birds provides us with tranquil moments in time that help us reflect on the lives of our loved one’s for generations to come.

Birdhouse Memorial Urns Are:

•    A memorial that will live on
•    Earth Friendly
•    Creates Wildlife Habitat
•    A place to come where spirits will soar and memories will fly
•    A place where life goes on
Birdhouse Memorial Urns come with everything you need to convert them into a memorial birdhouse. They also come with a handmade cast paper heart that is embedded with seeds. You may plant this heart in memory and beautiful forget me-not flowers will grow year after year.

Jeff Staab, a funeral director and owner of Cremation Solutions got the idea a few years ago when he was selling a traditional scattering urn to a client family in rural Vermont. The family wanted to scatter the ashes of their father in his favorite meadow on their property. They like the idea of the scattering urn and the way it functioned, but asked what would they do with it after the scattering. Jeff suggested that they screw it to a tree and drill a hole in the side so that the birds that lived in the meadow could use it for a home. The family love the idea. A year later the mother died and they requested the same scattering urn so that mom could also have her own memorial birdhouse. These were the first birdhouse memorial urns. Now their are several unique styles to reflect on one’s individual taste and style. Please don’t tell the birds why they are getting such classy new homes, we wouldn’t want them to fell guilty about their new dwellings.

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Scattering Ashes is No Longer The Exception

We hear it a lot these days. “Just scatter my ashes and have a big party”.

Well that sounds pretty easy and parties are fun, right?  It should be easy, but without some thoughtful planning, survivors are faced with many unanswered questions. Often the scattering is put off because of all the questions and the ashes often end up on the top shelf in the hallway closet indefinitely.

Scattering Ashes in Alaska
Places of Natural Beauty Are Often Selected

Helping people learn how to have a creative and meaningful scattering ceremony is a large part of the reason that Cremation Solutions exist. Families are grateful to learn that they can create a meaningful event and still follow the persons request to “just scatter me”. Scattering ashes is often the final act of love survivors can participate in. Scattering is nothing less than a committal service, it is an event that should contain ceremony and ritual. It is important for family and friends to experience a meaningful and memorable final tribute. In some cases it is the only tribute, so let’s do our best. People who choose to have their ashes scattered do not consider scattering to be any less respectful or meaningful than any other disposition option. In fact, families that have scattered are experiencing a higher level of satisfaction. They consider scattering to be a more natural way to return to the earth. Scattering also allows families the flexibility of choosing a site that is personable and has special meaning to the deceased and the survivors. Sites with natural beauty are also often selected.

Scattering a friends ashes
Some Take Turns Scattering a Friends Ashes

The decision to scatter ashes is no longer unique. With more than half of all cremated Americans and Canadians as well choosing the scattering of ashes, scattering is NOW the #1 disposition of cremated remains in the United States and Canada and continues to grow. Funeral professionals are the only ones that aren’t catching on. Most funeral professionals consider scattering a dirty and unprofitable choice of final disposition. They will help you get buried or interred. They will help you create funeral and memorial events, but when the choice is to scatter, they will help you as far as the door! Some of the more progressive funeral homes now offer special urns for families that choose to scatter the ashes, but that’s about as far as it goes. Cremation Solutions was started when our founder, a funeral director for over twenty years noticed how those who choose to scatter have been neglected by the funeral professionals in general. Cremation Solutions has grown to become the #1 resource for those choosing to scatter.

Here are some things to consider when planning a scattering ceremony. Hopefully a funeral or memorial event will take place before the scattering ceremony. Planning these events are what funeral professionals are really good at. Even if you’re not having public viewing and or visitation, you should still give survivors the chance to gather and celebrate the life that was lived. This helps survivors not only with the healing process but also to continue important relationships with each other and to support those who really need it. Now for the scattering ceremony you should consider first if you want a public ceremony or will it just be the family gathering. For a public ceremony, you might want the scattering to follow the memorial event, just like when a procession follows to the cemetery for committal services. Will more than one person scatter the ashes or will there be a chance to share in the scattering of ashes. Will the gathering be at the place of the scattering or somewhere else, either before or after? Will they do more than one scattering if there are relatives or friends in another part of the country? If people know the date and time the scattering will occur, they can then take that time to honor the memory of the deceased in their own way.

Because of the popularity of scattering ashes, suppliers to the funeral industry have been inventive and prolific in providing ways to remember. Three popular product types that relate specifically to families that desire to scatter are scattering urns, keepsakes, and keepsake jewelry. Scattering style cremation urns can be displayed at services, creating a focal point and sense of reality. They allow the cremated remains to be easily disbursed while adding dignity to the process. The location of the ash scattering sometimes determines the style of scattering urn to be used. The most popular location is over water and there are many water soluble urns that are specifically designed for this purpose. The second most popular location is on the family property. Birdhouse memorial scattering urns are a great option for these families because they are scattering urns that will convert into a memorial birdhouse, providing comfort for the years to come. Some scattering urns can be kept as an art piece or provide a place to keep mementos of the deceased or be used as a vase. Because scattering is irreversible, keeping portions of the ashes is even more important to the family that chooses to scatter. If families relocate, they can be left with feelings of abandonment. Keepsake urns and jewelry help provide the comforting knowledge that part of the earthly remains can always be kept close. They come in many sizes and styles and often match the style of the scattering urn. Keepsakes can be used to contain the ashes as well as jewelry, hair or other mementos of the deceased.

Scattering is nothing new, it has been happening for over a thousand years, but it has lost much of its ritual, most of which never made its way into modern times. Research tells us that today’s families still want meaningful celebrations of life with ceremony and personal memorable tributes. The people of today just won’t settle for the cookie cutter, insert name here funeral service anymore. Many are hiring or consulting with funeral celebrants to help create and a more meaningful and memorable event.

Funeral Celebrant
Celebrant Reading For Scattering Ceremony

Funeral celebrants are ceremony specialists who have a sound background in the history of ritual, ceremony and funeral traditions in many cultures and religions. Funeral Celebrants have been drawn to this work by a strong realization that every life has meaning and deserves to be celebrated and celebrated well. Many have experienced grief themselves. All are convinced that funerals can be a valuable source of healing. Nothing can take away the grief, but a genuine, well prepared tribute may ease the pain. Whether your family is secular, religious, spiritual or interfaith, or if you simply wish to express yourself in a manner of your own, choosing a Celebrant can help to create a meaningful, memorable, fitting end of life tribute.

As a response for so many wanting to scatter in the perfect location, a new company has risen from the ashes. You can now hire a professional ash scattering service that will scatter the ashes in the holiest of all locations. In their private memorial scattering garden Holyland Ash Scattering will scatter your ashes on the land where Jesus lived and taught his followers. Now anyone can follow Jesus for all eternity by arranging their final tribute in this very special location. This service is available through any funeral home. Survivors will even receive a video of the actual scattering in Israel. To have final rest where our spiritual roots were set in the beginning is to be truly blessed.

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Personal Cremation Urns

Every Detail is Captured

We have been getting a lot of press about our Personal Urns For Ashes, so I thought I would write a little about them myself. As many of you may or may not know I was a funeral director for over twenty years before starting Cremation Solutions. I attend the industry trade shows and read the trade journals. The industry has been trying to help make services and products more personal for some time now. In the urn department, urns with photos and engraved personal information has become popular. Even urns with digital slide shows are popular. I thought what about an urn that looks just like the deceased, what could be better than that!

The company called “That’s My Face” was the solution to the latest technology capable of producing such an urn. That’s my Face was founded by a PhD from the University of Cambridge (England) computer lab. ThatsMyFace.com specializes in patent-pending technologies around facial reconstruction, facial analysis and in transforming 2D portraiture into 3D sculptures. They make mask’s and action figures that look just like you! The best part is that they can do it from just a photo or two. They digitally create a three dimensional image from a two dimensional photo. The software can adjust coloration and fix blemishes and so on. I suggest people use images from their mid-life era to capture themselves in their prime. One recent customer wanted his own urn created in black and white and wanted his hand on his chin like Rodans famous sculpture “The Thinker”.

So we have been selling the urns now for two years. Sales are not as good as I had hoped for. I call it personalization gone too far! It seems that the Personal Cremation Urns just plain look too real. Creepy is the term that most used for their description. So they are not for everybody but most people do find them fascinating to say the least. At least the people that have purchased them are very pleased with the resulting urn. They rest on a handsome Verde marble base. A threaded plug is removed from the bottom of the base and the ashes are poured directly into the urn for all eternity. For a very personal one of a kind product that is selling well for Cremation Solutions, check our our selection of fingerprint jewelry. Fingerprint jewelry is jewelry that is made from an ink print of anyone’s fingerprint. Our fingerprints are like our one of a kind signature that nature has given each to us. No two fingerprints are alike.

I think in the near future I will offer them with the option of coming in a bronze tone. Casting of heads and bust have been around as memorials and art for hundreds of years and no one calls them creepy. The natural coloring as they are done now really brings them to life. Even the eyes look incredibly real.

Some of the strange request we have been asked are: Can you make them with movable eyes. Can we add a recording that is motion activated. I would like an Ozzy Ozbourne urn so I can spend eternity riding on the “Crazy Train”.  Lucky I have a sense of humor and am used to being asked strange questions. It’s not strange to me! twenty years in the funeral biz have prepared me. Ask away!!

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Sacred Ashes

Judy had not opened the box the funeral director had handed her almost a year ago. Just holding the bag when he handed it to her had made her knees buckle and she had to sit before falling. The reality was the earthly remains of her husband were inside the box and she just couldn’t face the reality that his glorious body has been reduced to a few pounds of ash. The scattering was to be in a month and the 6 x 6 box had never been opened. It was slowly building on her nerves and she knew she didn’t want the scattering ceremony to be the first time she confronted the reality. She knew she wanted to see , feel and smell the ashes in private before the ash scattering event. One sleepless night she knew it was time, her hand’s shook as cut away the brown tape and opened the box. She removed a twist tie from the plastic bag inside the box and there was John!. Tears fell like rain drops as she ran her finger through the John’s ashes.

Cremation Ashes

She had read that the ashes were heavy and course. They were grayish and white and she imagined johns spirit talking to her as she examined the bits and pieces of bone ash. Her larger than life husband and best friend was now in the palm of her hand. She stroked the ashes and as marveled at the strange reality that seemed so unreal.
As she regained control of her emotions and feelings she realized the remains were still beloved and sacred. Nothing was scary anymore. She had already been devastated by her loss months ago and nothing could compare with the actual loss of her husband. Though she knew he was not in the box, she gained comfort speaking to the ashes and thanking John for the years of love. She could now be comfortable as she walked past the ashes as they rested on the mantel. Her sister had purchased an urn that was made for the scattering of ashes and together they put the ashes inside. Having the ashes in the handsome wood scattering urn made Judy remember his fondness of nature and trees. Her sister told her that after the scattering on Johns favorite hiking trail the urn was specially designed to serve as a memorial birdhouse that they would put in John’s garden.
As a funeral director and crematory operator for over twenty years it is good for me to share Judy’s story as it serves as a reminder that we in the funeral business do not simply handle ashes and urns. Like bodies and caskets we are honored to be entrusted with the care of others loved one’s. Like our physical bodies, ashes are our earthly remains and should be treated as so. The idea that so many in this business still hand over the ashes when a cremation urn is not selected, in the ugliest cardboard or plastic we can find disgust me! At least they should use a fancy gift box or tasteful cardboard urn. The reflection on your funeral business is also questioned. The time I heard a family member telling a friend that the cremation cost $2000.00 and they gave mom back to us in this box. That’s all I needed to hear to know it was wrong.
I was visiting a funeral director in Maine a few years ago and I was impressed when he showed me how his funeral home turned the ashes over to the family. Once the ashes were signed for he would guide the family member or members to a tasteful quite side room. There on a table in the corner of the room stood the urn. The warm glow of a white tapered nice candle flickered beside the urn and a fresh red rose laid at the base of the Cremation urn. Once in the room he would invite them to sit on the couch and take as long as they needed as he left the room. Some would take a minute and some an hour. The important part was they had the time and space for themselves as long as they needed. When they were ready they would let him know and he would then come and place the urn in a tasteful bag and offer to carry it out to the car. I learned from him, how less traumatizing this simple and dignified this thoughtful handover of ashes could be and I never handed another cremation urn over in a funeral home bag again. Remember we are creating an experience for the families we serve, this is just one way to show you care and are sensitive to the needs of the families who have entrusted your services.
The majority of people choosing cremation today will also choosing to scatter the ashes of their loved one. Most do not know where, only that it should be a special and sacred location.

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A new service now allows funeral homes to assist these families by offering scattering in the most sacred location on earth, the holy land. A place of natural beauty where Jesus had lived and taught, overlooking the Sea of Galilee along the Jesus trail in Israel. Funeral homes anywhere can offer ash scattering in a professional and dignified way by partnering with Holyland Ash Scattering. This is just another way to show your funeral home understands the needs of today’s society, while offering new services and standing out in your profession. Learn more at www.holylandashscattering.com or call #888-720-1961

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Body Parts From 911 Attack on the Pentagon Were Treated Like Medical Waste

I would first like to point out that we are only talking about the Pentagon attack and not the other sites attacked on 911. The the people in charge of the recovery and disposition in New York and Pennsylvania, did their best to treat every body as a hero and all recoverable parts, even as small as a fingernail with the utmost respect. The story below conveys that at the Pentagon it was a different story and in the end, the partial remains were handled differently then the intact fallen victims recovered from the site. My personal view is that every recoverable piece of human flesh and bones is a person and should be treated as so. I can understand that each bit can not be identified and returned to survivors and there is some commingling accruing, but the landfill should not ever be considered as a final resting site. There are many opinions on how to handle such remains and I would like to hear them and or government needs to hear them. What do you think? My personal recommendation would be to cremate remains in this condition, but commingling the ashes into cremation urns does not fell right to me. A ash scattering garden on the grounds of the Pentagon or maybe in Arlington National Cemetery seems more fitting. A public scattering ceremony performed by a trained Funeral Celebrant would provide a non- denominational style of ceremony and would create a environment of healing and closure. A communal monument where names could be etched would honor and give a focal point where survivors could visit makes sense to me. We really need to make sure this does not happen again, so please share your thoughts and lets join our voices and get the message to our elected officials that we will not stand for this kind of disrespect anymore!

Air Force Officials Discussed Burial at Sea for Remains From Pentagon Attack
By ELISABETH BUMILLER, NY Times
WASHINGTON — American military officials discussed scattering Ashes at sea some unidentified remains of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Pentagon, but the officials were overruled and the remains were burned and dumped in a landfill, according to Defense Department documents released on Friday.

In nearly 2,000 heavily redacted pages, the documents show that an Air Force colonel — the name is blacked out — wrote in an August 2002 e-mail,

Scattering Ashes
Scattering at Sea

“I do like the idea of spreading the ashes at sea.” However, the colonel’s superior, also unnamed, responded that “we shouldn’t attempt to spread the residue at sea” because it might “send a message” to the victims’ families “that we are disposing of human remains, and that is not the case.”

The documents were the latest disclosures about problems at the mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the entry point for the nation’s war dead. The papers show how officials at Dover struggled over what to do with small, unidentified biological remains that were mixed in with rubble from the Pentagon. In the end, without telling the victims’ families, they determined that the remains — some 1,321 portions in all — should be treated like medical waste.

Much of the information in the documents has been previously released, including the fact that unidentified remains from the Pentagon attack, which were sent to Dover, were cremated and placed in containers provided to a biomedical waste disposal contractor, which then incinerated them and put them in a landfill. But the documents revealed for the first time that military officials initially discussed Scattering the ashes in the Atlantic Ocean, but ended up following the lead of the unnamed superior, who evidently was worried that families would think of the small portions as “human” if they were treated with the respect of a burial at sea.

Air Force officials said Friday that the superior was following guidance handed down from top Pentagon officials about how to dispose of the remains.

When the military first disclosed last month that some Sept. 11 Pentagon victims’ remains were burned and dumped in a landfill, some people were shocked that even unidentified body parts would be treated in such a way.

Pentagon officials were at the time reluctant to say much in public about the nature of the remains, given the sensitivities of the victims’ families and the emotions surrounding 9/11.

Ashes in Landfill
Never Again!

But at a news conference on Friday, Jo Ann Rooney, an acting under secretary of defense, offered a more telling, if graphic, description of the kind of remains that were burned and sent to a landfill. She said they were small portions that laboratory analysis judged as “biological,” although not necessarily human. “It could have been something from someone’s lunch,” she said.

Ms. Rooney also said it was impossible to determine if the remains had been mixed in with those from the terrorists who crashed United Flight 77 into the Pentagon.

Some other partial remains from the attack on the Pentagon have been cremated and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Remains that were identified as those of the terrorists were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The practice of landfill disposal, which was also used for some unidentified remains of war dead, has since been stopped. After cremation, the ashes are now put in Cremation urns and buried at sea.

The Dover mortuary has been under fire the past year for what the Air Force has called “gross mismanagement” for losing the body parts of two service members, repeated failures of command, doing little to correct sloppy practices and sawing off the protruding arm bone of a dead Marine without informing his family. Three top Dover officials are no longer in their jobs and the Air Force now says practices at the mortuary have improved.

The new documents also shed light on problems at the mortuary that the Pentagon has only hinted at in the past. In September 2005, the documents show, the remains of two service members were almost sent to the wrong families, but Dover officials figured out the problem and switched them at the Philadelphia airport.

“Both sets of remains arrived at the proper destination on time without outside embarrassment to the Air Force,” the documents said, noting that the military official responsible for the mistake was not disciplined.

The documents show that the widow of a Marine was paid $25,000 in 2008 as compensation for the mortuary’s loss of her husband’s wedding ring, wallet and dog tags. It was the widow’s desire that her husband be buried with his wedding ring, a letter from an unnamed person who appears to be the woman’s lawyer states, “and she is experiencing great grief over this miscarriage of justice.”

The Pentagon briefed family members of the Pentagon 9/11 victims about the documents on Friday morning.

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Cremation Nation

With almost half of all Americans choosing cremation and more then 60% of them choosing scattering as a final disposition, the sky is the limit!  Or the garden, the sea, the mountains, or the golf course depending on people’s preferences.

It’s a good thing so many Americans are choosing cremation for their dearly departed. The new options for memorializing ‘ashes’ would make some of them turn in their graves.

By Tai Moses

Americans are Scattering to The Wind....

WE WERE SCATTERING my father’s ashes. Ostensibly, that’s what we were doing. None of us had ever scattered ashes before, and no instruction manual came with the plastic urn (which in its army-green rectangularity resembled a C-ration box), so we were proceeding at an awkward clip.

First off, we didn’t have adequate ash-scattering paraphernalia. Always have the right tools for the job, my father once told me. I had stopped at a supermarket and bought a sleeve of paper cups. Now we all stood around gripping them with sweaty palms, wondering who would be the first to open the C-ration box and scoop up his or her portion of cremains.

Our lack of familiarity with ritual, especially the rites and ceremonies connected with death, added to our unease, and it occurred to me later that this might be one reason why so many people skip the scattering and keep the box in the closet.

Awkward as the aftermath may be, the choice to cremate is becoming increasingly popular as our living reality shapes our dying habits. Families whose members were once laid to rest in the same patch of ground for generations have lost their attachments to the land, as well as to the past. Possibly somewhere in Romania, there is an abandoned Jewish graveyard that holds the ancestors of my father’s family. My father was born in Brooklyn. His mother is buried among strangers in Staten Island and his father’s grave is somewhere in Southern California. His sister’s ashes were scattered near San Francisco. America is our family burial plot. In his book The Undertaking, poet and funeral director Thomas Lynch observes that “One of the obvious attractions of cremation is that it renders our dead somehow more portable, less ‘stuck in their ways,’ more like us, you know, scattered.”

TODAY, Forty Percent Americans choose cremation for themselves or their loved ones. In California, Arizona and Florida, where most of the residents originally came from someplace else, people are cremated at twice the national rate, and among the nomadic population of the Bay Area, more than 70 percent of the deceased are cremated.

Until last year, California was the only state in which it was illegal to freely scatter ashes. State law allowed for cremated remains to be buried or scattered in cemeteries, brought home or scattered at sea at least three miles offshore. The relaxing of the law–ashes can now be scattered on land and at sea as long as they’re 3 miles away from the shoreline–has resulted in a sort of entrepreneurial free-for-all, with people thinking up increasingly creative things to do with human remains.

Karen Leonard was research assistant to Jessica Mitford, the funeral industry gadfly who wrote The American Way of Death. Now executive director of Redwood Funeral Society in Sonoma County, Leonard finds the cremation trend a positive one. Americans, she says, are under less pressure to abide by the manufactured rituals of a funeral home.

“Now people have the freedom to do whatever they want,” she muses. “The nice thing about cremation ashes is, unlike a body, you can do a number of things. There’s only one thing you can do with a body. A lot of people divvy up the remains and everyone gets to create their own rituals, which makes it incredibly individualistic and personal.

“I’ve been to some really far-out memorials,” Leonard continues. “Anything you can think of can be done. That’s all because we’ve been able to break the funeral industry’s stranglehold over cremation.”

Formerly the most no-frills method of committing human remains to eternity, cremation has become the vehicle for some unique procedures from the beautiful to the bizarre, depending upon one’s taste. And as sometimes happens when people become unmoored from convention, their newly fashioned customs take on elements of the absurd. Our ancestors would be spinning in their urns if they knew what was being done with their cremated brethren.

In the past year alone, the U.S. Patent Office has granted 41 patents involving human cremains, among them inventor David Sturino’s football helmet-shaped crematory urn. In his patent application, Sturino argued that even in death, people want their individuality to show: “If given the opportunity, it is believed that many individuals would choose to identify their cremation ashes as those of a football fan for eternity,” he wrote.

The indusrty has gotten creative in their cremation urn offerings. Some “alternative remembrance” urns double as jewelry boxes, picture frames, jewelry to hold ashes and clocks. Others can be fashioned on a customer’s specifications; one customer, whose husband had been a bowling fanatic, asked for an urn that incorporated a bowling pin. Lynch wrote that one of his clients had him place her husband’s ashes in an empty whiskey bottle, which she then had wired as a lamp. “He always said I really turned him on,” she explained.

DEATH IS BY NATURE untidy. It begins and ends with clutter, physical and psychological. The beauty of cremation is that it reduces people to a size positively Lilliputian and makes them eminently transportable. Still, practical problems do arise. This must have been what Douglas Casimir was thinking about when he dreamed up the dissolvable urn (U.S. Patent #5,774,958), which negates the necessity for mourners to have any contact with the ashes during scattering. Relatives can simply heave the biodegradable scattering urn, ashes and all, into the deep and it will dissolve, relegating the remains to the water.

As Casimir commented (perhaps from personal experience?), “When the urn is opened and ashes are sprinkled upon the sea, the wind often causes the ashes to blow about and the ashes sometimes get blown upon the deceased’s relatives who are sprinkling the ashes, thereby causing an unpleasant experience for those involved.”

A dissolvable urn would have been of great help to Dave Eggers, author of the recent memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The sad slapstick saga of what to do with his mother’s ashes is a motif that runs throughout Eggers’ book. He finally decides to throw the cremains into Lake Michigan, all the while torturing himself with the fear that he has made the wrong decision, that this last gesture to his mother–the scattering, the lake–is somehow not enough, is inadequate.

Upon opening the cardboard box, he finds to his consternation that the ashes look like cat litter or “little rocks, pebbles, Grape-Nuts, in white and black and gray.” Then he spills some of them on the ground and tries to kick them into the water with his foot, but, “Should I really be kicking my mother’s ashes? … I stand up quickly and throw, this time some of the cremains sticking to my palm, which is now sweaty … Should I throw them all in one place, or redirect the throws each time? Should I hold on to some for later, to deposit elsewhere?”

Desperately, he empties the last ashes from the bag into the lake, “like shaking a goldfish out of a Baggie. … This is what it’s come to–winging her remains into the lake.” Now with the introduction of scattering tubes, the process is much easier

"Life Tree's"

LIKE MANY PEOPLE who die suddenly, my father had left no instructions for what he wanted done with his remains. We decided to put his ashes under a eucalyptus tree along the Santa Monica path where he had often liked to walk. He would become part of the tree, its soil and roots, its limbs and leaves. Now the people at the “Life Tree Farm” have made it simple for all those attending a memorial event can get a tree to plant as a true living memorial.

I was in charge of doling out the ashes. Everyone ended up with uneven shares and I noticed people sneaking furtive peeks at one another’s cups. I confess, I was glad of the chance to see my father’s ashes, even to touch and smell them (they’re odorless). They were undeniably his–the box was stamped indelibly with his name–and in the feeling of unreality that followed his death, they provided a much-needed focal point. Sure, I recognized the painful absurdity of the whole procedure. It even got tiresome to keep alluding to how entertained my dad would have been by the bumbling farewell we gave him. One would think our little scattering ceremony was watched over by a grinning Cheshire father, his face etched with a permanent expression of mirth.

One by one we emptied our Dixie cups under the tree. Everyone had a different system. My brother shook the ashes energetically out of his cup; I turned mine upside down and let the ashes fall in a blurred stream onto the ground.

I expected them to sift ethereally away into fairy dust, but they just sat, lumpen and gray atop the leaves. It looked like someone had just cleaned out a Weber. The next day, and the next, the cremains sat there. Finally, a week later, it rained, and they began to disperse into the soil.

MY SON PASSED away four years ago last week and his body was cremated. He asked me before his death to put his cremains into a volcano. This sounds strange but his reasoning was sound. He said he did not want to be put in the soil because worms and insects would eat him and he did not want to be put into water to be fishfood. He wanted a volcano so he could become part of a rock and stay on the earth for centuries. Do you know of any active volcano where this is possible?”

The question comes as no surprise to the discussion list moderator of the website VolcanoWorld (http://volcano.
und.nodak.edu/), who has himself “had similar thoughts about becoming part of a volcanic rock.” He directs the bereaved father to Kilauea in Hawaii, where he believes it would be possible to pour ashes directly onto molten lava, where they could harden with the rock.

For many, co-mingling one’s remains with the natural world brings a sense of symbolic immortality. Volcanoes would probably be more popular among the dead if they were as accessible as, say, the ocean. A majority of people request that their cremains be put in the sea, scattered from private planes like the one owned by Scott Dixon of Ashes by the Bay in Monterey. “It’s an increasingly popular trend,” he says. But for ocean lovers who want their cremains permanently entombed in a lasting monument, there are other options.

A Reno, Nev., company called LegaSEA makes an oceanic time capsule that doubles as a memorial urn. The LegaSEA memorial, fashioned of bronze and glass, is deployed from a boat into international waters. There it descends to the seafloor and rests for eternity, or until it’s discovered by future generations, “making one’s life the subject of archaeological interest possibly thousands of years into the future.”

Another ocean option comes from Georgia-based Eternal Reefs, Inc., which will “turn your loved one’s ashes into a living coral reef.” Eternal Reefs mixes cremains into concrete to create artificial reef modules, made to last 500 years or more, which are placed in locations around the world where the reef could use a little help. Loved ones can be on hand when the reef balls are deployed and can also charter a dive boat and visit the memorial reef later. Once the modules are put in place they’re there to stay, creating new habitats for sea life.

Options like this make the dead not only more interesting, but useful. In some cases they can even be decorative. An outfit called The Ancestral Tree causes the dead to practically rise from their ashes: its “Eternal Bonsai” are planted in a mix of soil and human cremains. The process raises thorny questions, however. What if the tree/person gets sick? Imagine the attendant emotional trauma if the bonsai succumbed to some miniaturized arboreous affliction.

Without tombs or headstones, those mute reminders of mortality, how do we remember our absent, ashen dead? Human beings like dates. They serve to frame a life, the way a picture frame encloses a photograph of a beloved. Undertaker Thomas Lynch recalls how a friend’s widow asked him to scatter her husband’s ashes in a favorite fishing spot. But when Lynch paddles downstream, ashes by his side in a Stanley thermos (less conspicuous than an urn, the widow thought), he finds he can’t fulfill the request. Instead he buries the cremains, thermos and all, under a tree on the riverbank. “I piled stones there and wrote his name and dates on a paper, which I put in a flybox and hid among the stones. I wanted a place that stood still to remember him at,” he writes.

The need to create something to help the living remember the dead inspired Mill Valley architect William E. Cullen. Cullen, president of Relict Memorials Inc., invented and patented a process that turns cremated human remains into granitelike tablets. To the tablets he affixes bronze plaques inscribed with names and dates. The tablets contain the integrated remains for hundreds of years, and since they weigh only 20 pounds or so, can be moved easily from one location to another.

Cullen perfected his technique on roadkill, and eventually made his first Relict for–and from–his son’s cremains. “I needed some sense of my son’s presence,” he explained. “To scatter his ashes would be as though he had never existed.” The younger Cullen’s Relict is in the memorial garden of the family’s church.

Recently the media reported that a Kentucky bookbinder and printer was mixing cremains with pulp to produce the pages of bound volumes called “bibliocadavers.” But when I called Timothy Hawley Books in Louisville, the eponymous proprietor laughed sheepishly and explained that it was a jest that got out of hand. “I’m a bookseller,” Hawley said. “I just put some stupid joke in the front of each of my catalogues.”

Nonetheless, Hawley’s hoax generated enough serious interest to indicate that there’s a real market out there for bibliocadavers. The process was reported in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s. Hawley was also contacted by a woman in Wisconsin who is starting a business doing different types of memorializations and wanted to use him as an independent contractor. She already had several customers lined up who were interested in becoming bibliocadavers. Hawley had to turn her down.

“It wouldn’t even work,” he said, “because of the paper chemistry–the ashes would not bond with the paper pulp.”

Maybe not, but what about another element of a book? Mark Gruenwald, the late Marvel comic-book writer, came up with an artistic use for his earthly remains. As per his request, he was cremated and his ashes were combined with ink and used to print a special edition of his comic book series Squadron Supreme. “He remained true to his passion for comics, as he has truly become one with the story,” his widow wrote in the book’s foreword.

Cremation ashes have even joined the ranks of interactive multimedia. Ohio-based Leif Technologies makes a “Viewology cremation urn” that not only holds the ashes of the deceased but is equipped with a flat screen monitor with a video slide show and biographical narrative about the departed.

THE ETERNAL ASCENT Society is one of many companies that have flourished advertising their services on the web. Eternal Ascent claims to hold the only patent in the world “for cremated remains put inside a very large balloon and airlifted to the heavens,” says Joanie West, 62, president and owner.

Three years ago, West and her husband, who own a balloon and gift shop in Crystal River, Fla., began marketing the process she describes as “a beautiful way to enclose a memory.” Cremains, or a portion of them, are deposited inside a biodegradable balloon which is inflated in a specially designed acrylic chamber. Balloon and chamber are transported to the release site, where the mourners have gathered. When the balloon is released, West explains that it ascends five miles into the atmosphere, freezes (it’s 40 degrees below zero up there) and fractures into millions of pieces.

“You look up and you see a rainbow or a sunrise or a sunset or a cloud and you think of that person,” says West. The Eternal Ascent Society has been so popular, inundated with requests for services from people all over the country, that West and her husband are preparing to sell franchises in other states, with California first on the list. “California should be a wonderful place,” says West. “They’re ready for it.”

For many people, even the sky isn’t the limit. In fact, some of the spectacles one can purchase seem to be attempts to bypass the unpleasant business of bereavement. Death doesn’t have to be a sorrowful event, they imply; it can be entertaining–a Deathstravaganza!

Celebrate Life!, in Lakeside, Calif., makes specially modified fireworks shells (patent pending) for cremains dispersal over the ocean, accompanied by a musical theme. You can almost hear a note of pleading desperation in the text of the company’s brochure: “What if instead of a hole in the ground there was fire in the sky?”

Celebrate Life! has all sorts of pre-packaged pyrotechnic celebrations that are customized for deceased individuals, veterans, children and couples. There are even special “ethnic” celebrations. “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” comes with a display of green fireworks and a rendition of the Irish-American ballad.

The ultimate send-off comes from the Houston, Texas, firm Celestis, Inc., “the world’s leading provider of post-cremation memorial spaceflight services.” It costs about $5,000 to have Celestis put your loved one’s cremains–or a vial containing a symbolic portion of them–into orbit around the earth. After several years, the Celestis memorial satellite re-enters Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes, “blazing like a shooting star in final tribute.”

In 1997, Celestis made headlines when it successfully launched a portion of the cremated remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and counterculture icon Timothy Leary into low earth orbit aboard a Pegasus rocket.

BUT SHOOTING STARS, fireworks and gigantic balloons bring only temporary respite from the emptiness of loss. As the writer Richard Brautigan said, death can’t really be camouflaged: always at the end of the words, someone is dead.

Later the day of the scattering of the ashes, I heard myself utter this melodramatic sentence: “I buried my father today.” The inadequacies of language–after all, I hadn’t buried him. We had left him, or what was left of him in his reduced circumstances, somewhere outside in the gathering dusk in Santa Monica. In fact, we had unwittingly violated the part of California law that stipulates scattered ashes should not be distinguishable to the public. I conjured a scene: A jogger kneels to tie her shoe and sprints off with some of my father’s ashes in the tread of her Nikes.

For a long while I toyed with the idea of getting a plaque on a cremation monument bench for him, someplace I could visit, something solid and immutable, with writing on it. A “Beloved Father,” a favorite quotation, some dates. A chunk of real estate. In the end, I settled for a sort of renewable relic: a scrap of the eucalyptus tree. I went back and plucked a leaf, and when time reduces it to dust, I will go back and get another one.

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In the UK and the USA Every Funeral Home Has a Room for Unclaimed Cremation Ashes


Unclaimed cremation ashes sitting in storage.

Why are so many ashes being left at the funeral home? Here at Cremation Solutions, we believe that the funeral directors who are making arrangements are not going into enough depth with families as to the final disposition of their loved one’s ashes. The question is WHY?! Do you see rooms full of caskets waiting for families to make a decision? Of course not.  It would be illegal and a health hazard. With urns of ashes though, funeral directors tend to be lax in finding a home for them.  Then, they get bothered as the urns of ashes pile up. If they would just talk about the ashes and all the options available, such as cremation or keepsake jewelry in addition to traditional urns, as well as doing a little follow up with the family, we believe that the storage problem can be avoided and the survivors granted the piece of mind they need deserve. When cremation ashes are left in urns at the funeral home it can cause unresolved grief. The longer you wait the harder it becomes to deal with.  As time goes on, what could have been a ceremony turns into disposal.

What happens to uncollected ashes?

Feed Me To The Wind (Caleb Parkin Producer)

With more people being cremated rather than buried after death, ash-scattering ceremonies are gaining in popularity. But what happens when it doesn’t go according to plan – or if no-one collects the remains?

There is a moment in the film The Big Lebowski where the Dude (Jeff Bridges) and Walter (John Goodman) take their late friend Donny’s ashes to a cliff top. Walter insists on saying “a few words”, then scatters Donny’s mortal remains from a giant coffee cup.

But prevailing winds mean that Donny, instead of ending up in the “Pacific Ocean, which he loved so well”, ends up all over the Dude.

For a meaningful, solemn occasion to be unexpectedly blown off course is a real and increasing phenomenon. We want to say the right words, in the right place, at the right moment and with all the right people in attendance. But it doesn’t always go according to plan.

Adam Heath, a funeral director from Sheffield, has noticed a shift in how the bereaved treat ashes during his 30-year career.

“It used to be that everyone was scattered at the garden of remembrance [at] the crematorium,” he says. Now, as fictional depictions of ash-scattering are more common, they prefer to take the ashes to a location with personal significance for the deceased. “They would like to be able to do their own thing, too.”

Although some 70% of Britons will be cremated, few specify what they would like done with their remains. Those left behind have to make an educated guess.

“One minute he’s your dad, then the next you’ve got this urn – plastic and disappointing,” says Sally, of Bristol. “You want to do it poetically, like in the movies, but there’s always more of it. And, in the end, you’re like ‘Oh, just tip him out.'”

Kevin Browne, bereavement services manager for Broxstowe Borough Council, says it is part of our national psyche to be surprised by ashes.

“We’re so British, we don’t talk about death, do we? People aren’t aware of the options they’ll have – they haven’t given it any thought at all.

“On TV you just see a token gesture [amount] being scattered – a couple of egg cupfuls. The quantity and weight seem to catch people off guard.”

And that’s if the ashes are even collected.

Funeral directors up and down the country have a room of unclaimed ashes. These can range from tens to hundreds of ashes, some of which date from the late 19th Century. Uncertainty about what to do with these remains is certainly a factor.

Scattering the Ashes of GandI

Gandhi’s ashes – held in secret for decades by a family friend – were scattered in 2010. Many families wait a considerable length of time pondering just the right way on how to scatter ashes. Ashes do not belong to anyone, in the same way as a person cannot belong to another under British law. Ashes will be returned to whoever made the funeral arrangements, not necessarily the next of kin.

Nor do funeral directors press the issue with the recently bereaved, says Heath.

“It’s important, to arrange someone’s funeral, to get some insight into their psyche, to get what’s right for them at the time. But what they want to do with the ashes, collecting them or not, I don’t want to take sides or pick a fight.”

Until recently, there was scant advice for funeral directors on what to do with unclaimed ashes.

In December, the National Association of Funeral Directors published guidelines stating that unclaimed ashes must be stored for at least five years, with efforts being made to locate the rightful recipient, before a funeral company could dispose of them. This includes scattering ashes with a scattering urn in a garden of remembrance or at a beauty spot. Some scattering urns will convert into a memorial birdhouse where life will continue. Always get the landowner’s permission when scattering – or interring them.

Douglas Davies, of the Centre for Death and Life Studies at Durham University, says even Britons who are not religious want to mark a loved one’s passing in a way that reflects that person’s values and preferences.

“In the Christian idea, people thought you would gain a new identity in heaven. But with a decrease in this idea, this ‘looking back’ [at a person’s past] came on – and there were the cremated remains as a symbol.”

Sasha Baron Cohen "The Dictator" Scatters Ashes on the Red Carpet

But death and human remains can have shock value, as the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen showed at last month’s Oscars ceremony. Carrying an urn emblazoned with the image of the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, he began scattering the ashes on the red carpet, claiming this to be the dying wish of the leader – who, incidentally, had portrayed himself as a film buff. Security did not take kindly to the gesture.

But fulfilling one’s identity through their ashes is what many hope to do. Famously, journalist Hunter S Thompson’s ashes were fired into the sky – as per his wishes – in a giant firework, paid for by his friend Johnny Depp.

Others want their ashes turned into cremation jewelery or even cremation diamonds . Many get comfort by keeping the ashes home in a simple cremation urns – or perhaps scattered from a specially designed plane.

So the choice is yours. Or at least, it should be.

Original transcript via BBC

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Questions About Scattering Ashes and Scattering Urns and Keepsakes

“Just scatter my ashes and have a big party” We hear it a lot these days. Such celebrations of life are easy and parties are fun, right? It should be easy, but without some thoughtful planning, survivors are faced with many unanswered questions.

Often the scattering may be put off because of all the unanswered questions (“Do I need a scattering urn?”, “What’s the best way to scatter ashes?”, etc.)and the ashes can end up on that top shelf in the hallway closet indefinitely. Helping people learn how to have a creative and meaningful scattering ceremony is a large part of the reason that Cremation Solutions exists.

Scattering ashes outdoors is on a piece of land with significance to the deceased is often selected by their families.

Families are grateful to learn that they can create a meaningful event and still follow the persons request to “just scatter me”. Scattering ashes is often the final act of love that survivors can participate in. Scattering is nothing less than a committal service, it is an event that should contain ceremony and ritual. It is important for family and friends to experience a meaningful and memorable final tribute.

People who choose to have their ashes scattered do not consider scattering to be any less respectful or meaningful than any other disposition option. In fact, families that have scattered are experiencing a higher level of satisfaction. They consider scattering to be a more natural way to return loved ones to the earth. Scattering also allows families the flexibility of choosing a site that is personable and has special meaning to the deceased and the survivors. Sites with natural beauty or familial significance are also often selected.

Ash scattering is becoming fairly common in North America with more than half of all cremated Americans and Canadians choosing the scattering of ashes. In fact scattering is now the most common disposition of cremated remains in the United States and Canada. And the number of people selecting cremation continues to grow, not only in North America, but also internationally in such areas as Europe, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

However, funeral professionals are the only ones that aren’t catching on. Most funeral professionals consider scattering a dirty and unprofitable choice of final disposition. They will eagerly help with a burial, an interment, or the planning and creation of funeral and memorial events, but when the choice is to scatter, they will help you as far as the door!

Some of the more progressive funeral homes now offer special urns for families that choose to scatter the ashes, but that’s about as far as it goes. Cremation Solutions was started when our founder, a funeral director for over twenty years noticed how those who choose to scatter have been so neglected by the funeral professionals in general. He created Cremation Solutions to be an informative and authoritative source of information for those choosing to scatter.

Here are some things to consider when planning a scattering ceremony. Hopefully a funeral or memorial event will take place before the scattering ceremony. Planning these events are what funeral professionals are really good at. Even if you’re not having public viewing and or visitation, you should still give survivors the chance to gather and celebrate the life that was lived. This helps survivors not only with the healing process but also to continue important relationships with each other and to support those who really need it.

For the scattering ceremony you should consider first if you want a public ceremony or will it just be the family gathering. For a public ceremony, you might want the scattering to follow the memorial event, just like when a procession follows to the cemetery for committal services.

  • Will more than one person scatter the ashes or will there be a chance to share in the scattering of ashes?
  • Will the gathering be at the place of the scattering or somewhere else, either before or after?
  • Will there be more than one scattering if there are relatives or friends in another part of the country? If people know the date and time the scattering will occur, they can then take that time to honor the memory of the deceased in their own way.

As the popularity of scattering ashes has grown, new options for remembrance have been created. Three popular product types that relate specifically to families that desire to scatter are scattering urns, keepsakes, and keepsake jewelry.

Families often scatter ashes over water during scattering ceremonies.

Scattering urns can be displayed at services, creating a focal point and sense of reality. Urns allow the cremated remains to be easily disbursed while adding dignity to the process. The location of the scattering sometimes determines the style of scattering urn to be used. The most popular location is over water and there are many water soluble urns that are specifically designed for this purpose.

The second most popular location is on the family property. Birdhouse memorial urns are a great option for these families because they are scattering urns that will convert into a memorial birdhouse, providing comfort for the years to come. Some scattering urns can be kept as an art piece or provide a place to keep mementos of the deceased or be used as a vase.

Because scattering is irreversible, keeping some of the ashes can be very important to the family that chooses to scatter. If families relocate, they can be left with feelings of abandonment. Keepsake urns and jewelry help provide the comforting knowledge that part of the earthly remains can always be kept close. They come in many sizes and styles and can usually be ordered match the style of the scattering urn. Keepsakes can be used to contain the ashes as well as jewelry, hair or other mementos of the deceased.

Scattering is not new a new practice: it has been happening for over a thousand years, but it has lost much of its ritual, most of which never made its way into modern times. Research tells us that today’s families still want meaningful celebrations of life with ceremony and personal memorable tributes.

Many families are hiring or consulting with funeral celebrants to help create and a more meaningful and memorable event. Funeral celebrants are ceremony specialists who have a sound background in the history of ritual, ceremony and funeral traditions in many cultures and religions. Funeral Celebrants have been drawn to this work by a strong realization that every life has meaning and deserves to be celebrated and celebrated well. Many have experienced grief themselves. All are convinced that funerals can be a valuable source of healing. Nothing can take away the grief, but a genuine, well prepared tribute may ease the pain. Whether your family is secular, religious, spiritual or interfaith, or if you simply wish to express yourself in a manner of your own, choosing a Celebrant can help to create a meaningful, memorable, fitting end of life tribute.

If you have any question about scattering ashes, cremation urns, scattering urns, or anything else, please feel free to contact Cremation Solutions for further info.

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Cremation Urns for Ashes at Cremation Solutions

Cremation urns come in all shapes, sizes, and styles from classic ceramic designs to more modern motifs to completely personalized urns like the Barack Obama one above. This urn can be customized to be shaped like anyone's face.

Purchasing a cremation urn is not something most people do many times during their life. When contemplating the perfect vessel to hold our loved one’s ashes for eternity, there are many factors that come into play. One of the first things to consider is where the cremation urn for ashes will be placed or kept and will they be kept at all or divided between family and friends. Today most people are choosing to scatter the ashes in one or more especially meaningful locations. In this case you may wish to use an urn that is specially designed for scattering the ashes. The location and method of the scattering will further influence the style of scattering urn needed. When the choice is other then scattering you should consider where the urn will be kept. We are always just a phone call or email away if you have any questions.

Some popular choices are:

  • Scattering the ashes back to nature in a place of natural beauty or special meaning.
  • Burial in the family cemetery plot or on a home site.
  • Placed in a columbarium niche in a cemetery or other location.
  • Kept at home indoors or outdoors, i.e. in the garden.
  • Placed inside a cremation monument.
  • Turned into cremation jewelry, art or an ocean reef

Once they have decided on the disposition of the ashes most people try to match the design of the cremation urn with the style and or personality of the person or pet. Sometimes you just see a design and say that’s it that’s the one. Certain designs somehow remind us of the life and how it was lived, what they wore, how they decorated, hobbies, careers, etc. Many cremation urns can be further personalized with engraving, photos, or a nameplate. One of the reasons Cremation Solutions offers so many cremation urn styles and designs is because we are all unique in this world and we consider urns to be sacred as life itself. Picking an urn for cremation is not a choice to taken lightly, so we endeavor to provide you with a wide selection that includes cremation urns both small and large made out of bronze, wood, biodegradable material, glass, marble, and more. Whatever style of urn you are looking for, we have it.

Cremation Urns in the Home: Whether the urn is to be placed on a mantle, shelf, cremation urn stand, in a cremation urn cabinet , or in a “Life Alter” at home you may want to consider the matching an existing décor and taste. Do you want the cremation urn to look like an urn? Some people prefer the urn not look like an urn at all. Many choices of urns blend into the décor or can be a piece of art with inner chamber to discreetly hold the ashes while serving as a center piece of art.

Cremation Urns in the Yard: People may choose to keep the ashes outside of their home. This is a nice option for those who might be considering to scatter the ashes in the yard, but because scattered ashes are not recoverable and people move and properties change hands, there are outdoor options that can be moved. First of all you can bury the urn in your yard. In this case you should use a cremation urn vault. An urn vault is a protective box that holds the urn inside that is sealed to be air and water tight. They are made to stand the elements and can always be dug up and moved if needed. A memorial stone marker is placed above the urn vault as both a memorial and location marker. Another favorite of Cremation Solution customers is our natural stone memorials which are large stone and boulders that have a special inner chamber to hold the ashes. These natural markers can be placed in gardens and along walkways and paths. Some simply look like a stone and some have the options of adhering a memorial nameplate.

Examples of cremation monuments for the yard or garden. These rock solid memorials will keep your loved one's ashes safe and secure from the elements.

Cremation Monuments are another outdoor memorial option. These are actual monuments like the ones in cemeteries, only they can be opened up to have an urn placed inside a special inner chamber called a niche. They are made of granite and come in many styles and colors and can be sized to hold individual cremation urns and even whole families in estate sized cremation monuments. Names can be engraved and photos can be laser etched to further personalize the monuments and if you move the monument can be relocated as needed.

Cremation Urns in a Cemetery: You may already have a family burial plot in a cemetery. Almost all cemeteries will let you bury urns on your gravesite. Most have regulations as to how many urns can be interred in a single grave and the depth of the burial. Urn vaults and markers are sometimes required. Cemeteries may have other options too. Some have columbariums. These are structures, usually made of stone, where you may purchase space for placement of the cremation urn. This space is called a niche. It’s like a mausoleum for urns instead of caskets. Some are indoors and some are outdoors. Many new cemeteries are also installing what is called a scattering garden. These are gardens or walkways that people can scatter the ashes in. The ashes are usually scattered on the ground and then raked into the earth. A central monument is often in place were the names are engraved of all who have had their ashes scattered.

Cremation Urn Options: Many people who choose to use a cremation urn will also set aside a portion of the ashes for other memorial options. Ashes can be shared among family and friends to create individual memorial options such as cremation jewelry, cremation diamonds or crystals and small urns called keepsake urns. These precious keepsakes are kept or worn by survivors and have become very popular because of the comfort they bring.

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