To urn a living
overcome with grief,” she says.
Mr Claggett will do whatever the family needs to help with the healing process.
“There was a stillborn baby and after the funeral service the father asked ‘what happens now?’ He was told he could bring his baby to the crematorium, so he came and presented the baby’s coffin to me. We got a nice email from him later saying it really helped him through the process.
“One family requested Bridge over Troubled Water be played as the coffin went in, which I was happy to do.
“A man asked me if he could press the button to the machine when his loved one was being cremated. I couldn’t allow him do that but let him put his hand on my shoulder as I pressed the button.
“The next minute I turned around and there was a conga line of people behind me with their hands on the shoulder of the person in front of them.”
Japanese people will often attend the crematorium and do a ‘bone pick’ from their loved one’s remains.
“They gather around with chopsticks and remove the bone pieces and put them in a ceramic container. They’re looking for the voice box bone which looks like a Buddha,” Mrs Adam says.
There are times the love of the deceased is even apparent from outside the casket.
“I’ve had a coffin that’s had messages written all over it from family and I’ll tap the coffin and say ‘you’re a lucky girl to have had so much love’.
“We get coffins with themes, I had to burn a Batman one which hurt a bit.”
THE UNLOVED
Nearly 80 per cent of all people who die are cremated these days as society moves away from traditional burials.
In recent years the number of cremations at Allambe has jumped from 1400 to about 1900 each year.
But among those are the sad cases where the person has not had a funeral service or does not have family willing to take their ashes.
“We get people who have not had a service all the time … we could have 16 one day and four the next,” Mrs Adam says.
“A homeless man had been in the freezer for 12 months before next of kin could be found.
In the storage room, some ashes have lain uncollected for up to five years because of family disputes or no one wanting them.
Allambe attempts to communicate with the family and after 12 months will send a registered letter advising they may dispose of the ashes.
“Often families will say ‘we’re just not ready’ and we’ll continue to hold the ashes until they are ready to decide,” Mrs Adam says.
“Some people just don’t pick up the ashes.”
She said people do say things like ‘he was a horrible man, I don’t want anything to do with him’. “And that’s really sad.”
If the ashes remain unclaimed and all efforts are exhausted, they are scattered in Allambe Memorial Gardens.