Burial versus cremation
I’m physically ready and mentally prepared to join the older sister of sleep. This final aspect of life should not be repellent or repulsive. I see it as leaving one home for another; and although there is an argument against it, there is much belief for it. Irish writer Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) wrote: “It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.”
Even though funeral rites are as old as human culture itself, I wish not to follow the usual American tradition and custom of a burial ceremony. I’m taking the option of cremation because it is the shortest and cheapest route. By the way, 2015 was the first year that “cremation surpassed burial as the preferred method of disposition in the United States. There are more than a dozen states that have a 70 percent cremation rate right now.” (The Dirctor.edu: Winter 2023, Vol. 7, No. 2 and Autumn 2020, Vol. 5, No. 1 by Mike Nicodemus, National Funeral Directors Association vice-president of cremation services).
Our community funeral home has a range of burial service packages for one from $12,445 up to $17,950. Cremation service packages for one run from $4,830 up to $8,140. Of course, I will go for the cheapest package. As the saying goes, they have you coming and going. The negative connotation is that they get you coming into the world at birth and they get you going out of the world at death. Nothing is free. Either you pay or someone close to you pays.
Marketing of funeral firm services continues to thrive due to certain anchor forces in our societies, primarily emotional and normal moral social values (plus taboos) in our communities, and, institutional legal components and restrictive political regulation or governance.
Through processes of modernization and detraditionalization, the emergence of price-consciousness (economizing) started in the 1980s when the first funeral discounters were founded. Cost-benefit calculations by consumers began because of shrinking financial resources. Presently, there has been a sharp increase in cremations as a result. However, demographics have undergone diffusion due to high immigration contributing to cultural pluralism, thus introducing unique ceremonies and reform within the funeral market.
In modern capitalist societies, the funeral market is commodified and few take time before exiting the world to research the goods and services available. With preplanning there is no constraint or urgency and it proves to be cheaper than the later decision of a close pressing purchase of immediate post-mortal services by family members.
Don’t worry about minimizing expenses, I assure you that I for one am worthless after gone — no monetary equivalent of a living person.
As a final note, Ecclesiastes records there is a time to be born and a time to die. In the former we did not have a say-so about the timing; in the latter we may know a bit about the timing, and thus, we can plan our ceremonial exit according to our preference.