Healing peace

pay for even a direct cremation of a body, which can cost $1,000 or more.

“This is going on all the time. I can’t count how many times I’ve been on the phone with families, and grandpa dies and they can’t put together $800 for a direct cremation,” said Joshua Slocum, executive director of the National Funeral Consumers Alliance in Vermont.

Some states provide cremations for the poor, and some counties offer financial assistance, but they are the exceptions, Slocum said.

“Some places the system is punitive and cruel when a family can’t pay for cremation and with (governmentfunded) cremations they are keeping the ashes,” he added. “‘I sincerely believe most people are not out on the make to get grandma a county cremation.”

Her daughter didn’t know about the new look-back program when she contacted the Montgomery County Coroner in early December about retrieving her brother’s remains, Carol Merinar said.

“My daughter is so generous,” she added. “She wanted to do that even though she knew it would cost her a bit of money.”

James, her youngest child, was a “Dennis the Menace” the kid. His curiosity sometimes got him in trouble, like when he was 9 years old and he and a neighbor went joy riding in a golf cart.

He loved people, and loved helping others, Merinar said. He liked softball and wrestling. He was small for his age and kids gave him a hard time, she said.

After he graduated high school he worked as a handyman doing electrical, plumbing heating and air-conditioning work with his father. He learned bricklaying and cement work. He was married briefly, but had no children, she said.

When James died, he had no insurance to bury him, Merinar said.

“It happened so fast. We couldn’t even think,” she said. “The (coroner’s office) said they store people and when wanted could take him out. We felt so bad at leaving him at the morgue.”