After my father passed away suddenly, my mother, siblings and I all struggled with planning his funeral. We were already in a state of shock and sorrow, and then we were overwhelmed with the options and decisions we had to make in regards to the funeral. Luckily for us, we worked with an amazing funeral home and funeral director who helped guide us through the process. I know how hard it is to plan a funeral and how many decisions need to be made. This website was created in order to give families preparing to lay a loved one to rest a guide of sorts that will help them determine what decisions will need to be made and information about those decisions. I extend my sympathies to you if you are in this position and hope my website helps to make things a little bit easier for you.
When you start thinking about what you want done after your death, you start trying to figure out if burial or cremation is better for you. There are a lot of benefits to choosing to go with cremation over a traditional funeral.
Cremation
When you are cremated, your body is incinerated until it largely ash. This is done at an extremely high temperature, generally between 1400 and 1800 degrees Farenheit. Your bones won't truly be ash, but they will have broken down into smaller pieces. Funeral homes and cremation services will generally further process the ash so that the bones are also in very small pieces, causing your cremains to be more uniform. The heat will have made the bones brittle, which makes processing the bones easier to do.
Benefits to Cremation
Benefits to being cremated include the fact that your family and friends can have a memorial service at a later date. If your family is spread out all over the country, they may not be able to get to a funeral on short notice. However, if you are cremated, your family can have a memorial service at a time that is more convenient for everyone. They will be able to have your cremains there and everyone can gather for their farewells.
Your cremains are also much more portable. Your family will be able to take the container with your ashes anywhere they are going. This can come in handy if you die in a foreign country and your family would like to bring you home. If you are cremated, your family can make arrangements for you to be flown back to your home. It will be less expensive than having your body embalmed and shipped home.
Drawbacks to Cremation
One of the drawbacks to cremation is that if your family decides to not keep your cremains with them and choose to bury you instead, your family will still have to pay for the gravestone, burial plot, etc. Some cemeteries will have mausoleums that are specifically for cremains, but not all will, so your family may have to pay for a full size burial site.
Not all religions are OK with cremations. If your family members belong to one of those religions, they may have problems with your choice to be cremated. Your religion, while nominally alright with cremation, may still put pressure on your family to bury you instead.
Cremation is one choice as to what you can do with your body after death.
To learn more, contact a funeral home like Fletcher Funeral Home PA.
Share23 June 2015
