A Dying Art: The last of the morticians | Hacker News Reader

A Dying Art: The last of the morticians

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54 pointsPetiver16 comments

When my wife died, I chose to have her immediately cremated. She was raised Catholic but wasn't religious and a viewing/funeral wouldn't have been appropriate. Her ashes are in an urn on the mantelpiece of the house we lived in for 42 years. This is where she died and where our children were born. It's where she belongs.

It still cost $4K. Dying, at least in the US, isn't cheap.

Cremations can be wildly variable depending on who you pick. My uncle and father both died within about a year of one another and the prices were all over.

We were able to have my uncle cremated for around $800 (Las Vegas, NV) by going direct to the source at the actual crematorium that operates both direct-to-consumer and as a “wholesaler” for many funeral homes.

When my father passed (Savannah, GA), the first funeral home I contacted quoted me around $3,500+ depending on packages, urns, etc. I ultimately settled on another home that quoted me $1,700 but handled all the odds and ends and held my hand through the process. That got me a cheap Temu-tier plastic bag and box “urn” with my father’s ashes which were promptly scattered and returned to the world.

I asked the funeral home why is there such a spread for a simple cremation - they gave me the honest answer, that most homes don’t run their own crematoriums. They take them to a regional one. Higher ends homes that do run their own will have the higher quotes in the $3-5k range.

I know it’s en vogue to call out the predatory nature of then industry and upsells but it all seemed straight forward and fair at that point.

Interesting. This is one of the things that differs hugely between countries. I've taken about 550 funerals in the UK (I have what you might call a "portmanteau career"). I've only had one open-coffin funeral, and that was for a Caribbean family. It's not uncommon for the immediate family to visit the body before the funeral, but I haven't heard of restoration being used for that and I think embalming is quite unusual as well. In fact I was at the National Funeral Exhibition recently, and I didn't see anyone doing restorative services.

I wonder if there is any correlation between open caskets and debt collection rules / norms in each country.

Here in Argentina, most funeral are open-coffin, but very short. Let's say that the guy dies on Monday, then the open-coffin visit is on Tuesday afternoon and early night, there is a short additional time on Wednesday morning and then he is carried in a black car to the cemetery/crematory. So the preparation of the body is very simple.

Yes - in Ireland (both the Republic and Northern Ireland, and irrespective of religion), the funeral is usually within three days. I'm based in England, the south-eastern part of the UK, and here funerals are typically 3-5 weeks after the death, and getting later. This is partly because of needing to get a slot at the crematorium (though this is largely a manufactured problem in my view). However the main reason for delay is additional checks after a serial killer doctor was discovered in 1998.

Usually here te funeral in in the next two days and for cremation after that the body is keep in a storage at the cemetery and you must go two weeks later to pick up the urn. The cremation may be at a random unspecified time like 2am. If you wish, you can pay an additional amount of money to fix the time, during the day, so the family can be there.

> It's not uncommon for the immediate family to visit the body before the funeral, but I haven't heard of restoration being used for that and I think embalming is quite unusual as well.

As you say, that would vary by country. Here in France, while I wasn't the one who managed that, I know that for my grandmother someone intervened so that the body could stay in her home where she died until she was taken for burial a few days later. I think it would have been a Thanatopracteur, which can be translated to embalmer. And for my grandfather, if I remember correctly, died after a fall that left him bruised, bruises which were hidden before I went to visit the body before the burial. But neither of those burials were open-casket, I think it's quite unusual here.

The japanese film おくりびと covers the topic beautifully.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Departures_(2008_film)

Ah, that movie! I started watching it with my wife and we both decided to quit midway through because we found it cheesy and sentimental. The music, in particular, was terrible, despite being composed by Joe Hisaishi.

grim read

Really? I found it very enjoyable.

I agree, also there is a really good historical perspective of the ceremonies in the us.

Offtopic, but the hinting of the body font is absolutely atrocious. Eg the lowercase `u` reaches way higher than the other lowercase letters.

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