With the passing of my Mother-in-Law, I was exposed (yet again) to the Funeral Industry and I am starting to think that I might soon be lumping them in with the Pay Day Loan Industry for attempting to suck as much money out of people when they are the most vulnerable. For those who haven’t dealt with them (yet) the “small town funeral home” really seems no longer to exist, and most are owned by a few very large conglomerates.
The overall cost, I won’t go over, since it is a very large cost and it can vary wildly from funeral to funeral, but I did come across a very interesting “extra fee”, should you be cremating your loved one.
If you cremate your loved one, there is the issue of the ashes and what you do with them. If you want to keep the ashes to spread them in a special place, you can get a beautiful urn and for which you’d pay a good deal of money, or you could have a cheap and cheerful box (with the ashes in it (in a plastic bag)), my guess is it might be cheaper to buy your own urn.
Most crematorium or funeral parlors offer to “inter your loved ones ashes in our memorial garden”, or more simply, we’ll bury the ashes for you in our Rose garden (and we’ll keep track of where, and promise not to dig it up). For my family the idea of burying the ashes in a Rose Garden would be nice (my late Father and Mother were rose mavens), however the cost of this privilege threw me off.
The price quoted to my Father in Law was $500 for this service. As a young lad I dug in the garden (begrudgingly) and to dig a hole large enough to bury a loved one’s ashes is about a 5 minute job (if not less), and it will cost $500? Wow!
Any other funeral service charges folks have heard of ? I am curious.
While it’s certainly not for everyone, some of our relatives opted to donate their bodies to medical schools upon their deaths. After the medical students have finished their learning, the body is cremated and the ashes are returned to the family, if desired. There is no cost whatsoever if you go this route.
You can scatter ashes on private property in Ontario with permission of the landowner, and on Crown land (no permission required) but apparently you can’t bury the ashes. Though how anyone would know you did if you chose not to use an urn…. http://www.sse.gov.on.ca/mcs/en/Pages/cemt_fun_guide.aspx
(and yes someone wasn’t thinking too well when they came up with the shortform in that link of “fun” for “funeral”!