Final farewell can turn into an explosive sendoff
Crash helmets, bottles of spirits, surfboards and garden tools are among the items some mourners want to pop in the casket when a loved one dies.
While funeral directors and crematoria operators acknowledge that it can be an important gesture to help say goodbye, there are limits on how much memorabilia can travel all the way into the cremator.
Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand president Gary Taylor said most crematoria had a list of prohibited items, but a Palmerston North City Council proposal to include jewellery had him baffled.
Taylor said there were logical reasons for most of the items on most council and crematoria lists.
These included anything that would explode, damage the equipment, endanger the safety of staff, or emit toxic fumes.
Crematorium staff in Bolton in the United Kingdom were recently left terrified by an exploding coconut.
Pacemakers were in a category of their own, as anyone who remembers the first lines of Iain Banks’ The Crow Road – ‘‘It was the day my grandmother exploded’’ – would understand.
Typical troublesome items included alcohol, batteries, hard hats including helmets, lighters, metal, motorcycle leathers, polystyrene foam, rubber, plastics, electronics, aerosols, ammunition, prosthetic limbs, wetsuits and mattresses.
Palmerston North funeral director and private crematorium operator Andrew Beauchamp said most of the items on the city’s proposed exclusions made sense, but including jewellery was ‘‘a bit unusual’’.
He said a simple gold wedding ring, for example, was no problem, although a necklace of large glass beads would be.
Glass melted and solidified into the cremator floor, and chipping it off damaged the bricks.
Hastings District Council, which has a list similar to Palmerston North’s proposal, allows jewellery, and explains what happens with banned items this way: ‘‘Should you wish to place these types of items, then the crematorium would be happy to either dispose of them reverently, or give them back to the funeral director.’’
Palmerston North City Council is updating its policy to avoid damage to its Kelvin Grove crematorium.
The council said staff were working with funeral directors to ensure there were no items that could explode or release carcinogens or fumes that would cause a breach of a resource consent. Around 72% of people who died in New Zealand in 2014 were cremated, one of the highest rates in the world.