I can see the necessity of some sort of cardboard box, but anything beyond that sets off my cynical “they want to sell you expensive stuff at a very low point in your life” bells.
Of course, I don’t see why a casket for burial has to be anything more than a nice wooden box, considering what’s going to happen to it.
When my mother was cremated, we certainly did not purchase any sort of casket. We weren’t even asked to, in fact - though if we’d had the cremation after the funeral itself (a possiblity; she was Catholic and some priests require the actual body vs. the cremains, for the funeral) I guess we’d have had to purchase something. Seems like we were even offered the chance to rent one, should that have been an issue.
We did purchase a nice urn, vs. a plain box, for the ashes, since the cremains had to be present at the church for the funeral. We had cleared the process with the priest first - he was fine with having “just” the ashes. He was even fine with having a bit of Mom’s ashes scattered somewhere. Well, his words were along the lines of “I won’t know anything about it, will I?” with a wink. He knew the request in question was to honor her wishes to have some scattered in a place she loved.
Well I must say this thread has cheered me up no end
Casket makers also make rental caskets for the soon-to-be-cremated. In Indiana, caskets are not cremated with the body. I know this because my wife works for a maker of fine hardwood caskets. The rental casket is the same as the regular casket, except it has the fabric liner temporarily attached (each occupant gets a new liner) and the casket is constructed for easy removal of the departed.
We had my mother cremated last week. It cost just over $2,000, which included the container she was cremated in. We dressed her (sure it was just an empty shell, but it seemed wrong to send her in the box naked–she would definitely have preferred clothes). I can see why they would want to move the body in some kind of container. It certainly seems a bit more respectful than having her flop around while they moved her.
We spread her ashes all over Kaua’i, in some of her favorite places. In case you’re interested, that’s pretty common there, and no one even blinked. In fact, most people expected it. There were actually more ashes than I expected, although I guess that’s just because I never really thought about it much before.
That makes sense for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the average casket wouldn’t even fit through the loading door of any modern incinerator.
As far as the ‘ashes’ of the box/casket, I wouldn’t think there’d be many if any. What’s referred to as ‘ashes’ is actually ground bone; I’d think anything other than really heavy wood would be completely incinerated.
In a natural gas-fired incinerator that’s running efficiently then yes, wood *should *eventually burn pretty well. What you’ll get, though, is a need for a whole lot more regulatory testing as required by the EPA or your state’s environmental protection department because now you’ve exceeded what the incinerator is designed to. When you burn wood (not to mention lacquer) you have carbon monoxide and particulate and lots of other things. Too much CO = too much particulate. In many if not all states these incinerators need only an EPA Method 9 Visible Emissions test annually, rather than a more intensive particulate or other emissions monitoring test program.
Plus it takes longer to burn a person AND a bunch of wood at the same time. Plus the metal pieces from many caskets would be a pain to deal with.
I once worked with a funeral home that was opening and they had to go through the permtting process. One of the pieces of information they provided us was the operations manual for their retort (I don’t think they use the term “furnace” and certainly not “oven”). It was very detailed as to how to start it up, how long the process took depending on the size and weight of the individual, and how to go about making it as efficient a process as possible.
When my brother died he was cremated in Washington and the cremains were sent back to my mother via UPS. I signed for the package while she was out and when she got back I said “Mark came home in the mail.” The cremains were divided up between my brothers and I - I keep my portion on my dresser.