Like trimming the grocery budget or turning off extra lights in the house, consumers may look for ways to lower funeral costs, but the fact is, we all die eventually, and someone has to deal with the remains. Some funeral industry professionals are responding to the economic downturn by offering a wider range of goods and services to help people arrange their final exit in the style of their choosing.

One Funeral Director’s Response
Peter Moloney, whose family owns six funeral homes on Long Island, has made it his mission to help customers arrange unique funerals on behalf of themselves or their loved ones. From a hearse towed by a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to an ice-cream vendor in a Good Humor truck greeting mourners after a funeral, Moloney’s specialized services allow people to be remembered in ways as unique as they are. According to Moloney, 44, a fourth-generation funeral director: “You have to give people something special. If you’re not, someone else will be. That means adjusting to what people want today.”

Even in Recession, Many Opt to Go in Style
As funerals trend more toward cremation and home funerals and away from elaborate caskets with all the trimmings, consumers are driving the recession home to the funeral industry. One of the ways innovative funeral directors like Moloney are responding is by catering to individual wants and needs. For example, services for environmentally and cost-conscious families may include renting coffins and minimizing the use of chemicals, while custom amenities such as 14-karat gold mementos and personalized coffins and cremation urns appeal to people who prefer to go in style.

Growing Market
One thing funeral directors and others in the funeral industry can count on, even in economic hard times, is an endless stream of clients. And while consumer funeral spending may be on the decline, the rising number of deaths each year ensures a certain level of growth in funeral goods and services. (The annual death rate will continue to grow at about 1 percent per year through the early 2020s, corresponding to the aging of the baby boomers.)

In other words, while the recession is forcing funeral industry professionals to reconsider the goods and services they will offer and how they will deliver them, those who are prepared to adapt and evolve will continue to prosper.

Cremation Urns Reflect Modern Trends

Modern funeral trends can also be seen in the array of unique cremation urns that are designed to reflect the personalities, lifestyles, hobbies and beliefs of the deceased whose ashes they hold. Although most people still envision a classic Grecian urn on a shelf when they think of cremation urns, choices now include motorcycle urns, religious urns, photo-frame urns, and tiny keepsake urns, to name just a few.

Cremation jewelry is another popular choice, designed to hold a tiny portion of ashes in a pendant that can be worn close to the heart. And some companies, like Memory Glass of Santa Barbara, create memorial jewelry from cremains, while others incorporate thumbprint impressions of the deceased in their creations.

A New Generation of Funeral Directors

Much of the credit for these novel trends in funeral goods and services belongs to a new generation of funeral directors, like Leo Dumont III and Andrew Hall, both of Nashua, New Hampshire. Both men earned degrees in other fields before going to work in their families’ funeral homes, while many other young adults who choose careers in funeral services have no family connection to the funeral industry. What these 20- and 30-somethings have in common are the fresh perspectives they bring to their work – innovative ideas that help to breathe new life into the funeral business.

Trinity Memorial Vessel

Memorial jewelry has come a long way since ornate brooches containing locks of hair from deceased loved ones were made fashionable by Queen Victoria in the late 1800s.

Today, cremation jewelry comes in almost countless styles, all designed to hold a tiny portion of cremated remains, burial earth or dried funeral flowers or a lock of hair. One popular example is the Trinity Heirloom Vessel, named for the distinctive triquetra symbol, or trinity knot, displayed on the pendant’s presentation box.

Designed and created by a professional jeweler, the Trinity Heirloom Vessel can be worn as a beautiful pendant or displayed in a glass-domed case. Contents are visible through three window panels around the cylinder, which will accommodate up to three lines of engraved text, with up to
15 characters per line.

Trinity Memorial Vessel

Each heirloom vessel comes with a 20-inch silver chain, instructions and a funnel to aid in placing the contents into the cylinder, which is enclosed by a threaded, dual-gasket seal. A general household glue or epoxy may be used to permanently seal the opening for additional security.

Staffers reported the strange finding to police, and the urns were turned over to Bateman Carroll Funeral Home. Funeral home personnel identified the containers as “keepsake urns,” designed for families who wish to share the ashes of a deceased loved one, and confirmed that the contents were, indeed, cremains.

That was hardly the end of the mystery, though. While Goodwill spokesperson Dale Emanuel described the incident as “uncommon,” she recalled at least one other occasion in her 12 years with Goodwill that a cremation urn was donated. She suspects the donor didn’t know what the urns were or “didn’t know what to do” with them. With no way to identify the deceased or the rightful owner of the urns, the funeral home will retain the ashes in a mausoleum crypt.

Photo by Rob Finch “The Oregonian”

In the basements of funeral homes, hospitals and coroners’ offices across the country, plastic bags and cans containing the unclaimed cremated remains of thousands of humans sit on shelves, collecting dust. Some have been there for years or even decades. Many of them belong to U.S. military veterans.

This shameful secret has come to light in recent years, largely due to the discovery of nearly 3,500 containers of ashes in the dark corners of an Oregon psychiatric hospital. There, the tin “urns,” dented, rusted and water damaged, were stacked like so many cans of old paint on shelves labeled with masking tape. According to one estimate, as many as 1,000 of them may contain the cremains of deceased veterans.

How could this happen in a country where we claim to honor our veterans and the service they gave to protect our way of life?

The answer to that question lies in a complex tangle of bureaucratic red tape, strained relationships and financial distress. Some of the deceased had no known survivors, while some families simply failed to claim the cremains of their dead. At the Oregon psychiatric hospital, some of the ashes belonged to patients who died around the turn of the 20th century and were buried in the hospital’s cemetery. Their bodies were later exhumed and cremated to free the cemetery land for other purposes.

Righting the Wrong

Military Cremation Urns

The Missing in America Project (MIA) is a volunteer organization whose mission is to “locate, identify and inter the unclaimed cremated remains of American veterans” and “provide honor and respect to those who have served this country by securing a final resting place for these forgotten heroes.”

MIA is working to accomplish its goals through long-term, exhaustive searches conducted in cooperation with the American Legion and other volunteer and veterans’ organizations, funeral homes, state funeral commissions, state and national veterans administration agencies, and state and national veterans’ cemetery administrations. MIA is also spearheading a second-phase effort to ensure that, from now on, the remains of every veteran who dies will be identified, claimed and interred in a timely manner, with all the respect and honor due to those who have served our country so well.

Cremation jewelry is a beautiful, personal way to pay tribute to a loved one who has died. Each of our classic cremation jewelry pendants is a unique keepsake created by professional jewelers. With a simple, elegant design that may be worn as a necklace or key chain or elegantly displayed in a glass dome, this cremation jewelry appeals to both men and women.

Classic cremation jewelry pendants feature double-cylinder construction and a threaded screw-and-rubber-gasket closure to protect the contents. The inner cylinder is designed to hold a tiny portion of cremains, a lock of hair, or dried ceremonial flowers. The outer cylinder is made of stainless steel (silver) or anodized aluminum, available in black, blue, green, red and purple.

Each classic cremation pendant comes with a small funnel to aid in filling the inner chamber, as well as adhesive for an even more secure seal. A black satin cord is included; optional jewelry chains and key chains are also available. For your convenience, classic cremation pendants may be purchased individually or in family packs of 2 to 50 pendants.

For a personal touch, consider custom engraving. The classic cremation jewelry pendant’s outer cylinder can accommodate up to two lines of text in either a script or block style font.

Explore hundreds of other unique cremation jewelry pieces – cremation jewelry.