Cemeteries are also feeling the effects of the cremation trend and fewer ground burials. To offset the decrease in cash flow, for years operators have sold burial vaults, monuments and markers, and now even caskets. In the early 1970s, funeral directors and cemetery operators began what is now an ongoing adversarial relationship. Directors took offense at cemetery operators’ sales of and profits from items that were once their exclusive domain.
When cemeteries first began to sell burial vaults, funeral homes dismissed it as a passing fad. Soon consumers would realize the error of their ways and stop buying products from vendors who had no business selling them. One early problem with cemetery vault sales was that cemetery personnel did not know the difference between a concrete box and an actual sealing vault. And since consumers had even less knowledge, many times a cheaply made fragile box was placed in a grave with the assumption that it was a sealed vault. Funeral directors banded together to try to stop cemetery operators from selling traditional funeral merchandise without a director’s license. That attempt went nowhere, and cemetery operators still actively promote burial vaults.
The fact that the cemetery usually stores the complete burial vault outdoors until needed is a thorn in my side. Concrete burial vaults stored in heat, cold, rain, and snow lose significant strength over time and become very fragile indeed. I have seen several cracked, cemetery-provided burial vaults being installed in graves, even though structural integrity was clearly lacking.
Forest Lawn Memorial Parks, in Los Angeles, probably initiated the idea of combining burial and a funeral home in the same location. Memorial parks are cemeteries with either very few or no upright monuments. Forest Lawn takes pride in the fact that there are no upright monuments to clutter the park-like setting, and the beautiful rolling hills attest to that. Flat bronze, ground-level grave markers are barely visible from a distance. You have to walk right up to a grave site to find out who is buried there. For them, it makes sense to have “everything in one place,” to quote a 1940s Forest Lawn newspaper ad. “Everything” means cemetery property, crematory, mortuary, and flowers and grave markers available for purchase.
Forest Lawn’s founder met tremendous resistance from area funeral homes when he first introduced the concept. However, Forest Lawn prevailed and is the largest such operation in the United States today, and it’s still owned and operated by the same family. The combination idea is another one whose time has not yet arrived in my neck of the woods, where the funeral industry evolves at a snail’s pace.
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed reviewing the old funeral records at my former places of employment. Dusty binders from the 1950s and 1960s were a favorite research item for me, especially to review funeral costs back in the day. Besides the obvious itemized entries of the time, such as the funeral home service charge and merchandise charges, I noticed that the preprinted records of the funeral often listed a fee for a door badge and wreath. I asked my elderly employer at that time what those things were. He informed me that, many years ago, following the Victorian tradition, people would affix an intricate black badge or a black wreath on the front door of a home that had experienced a death in the family. Sometimes they attached black bunting to the outside entranceway of the residence to further inform the community that death had visited the home and that proper respect and sympathy was in order. Even today, we Americans still somewhat cling to the Victorian ritual of wearing black as a symbol of mourning. In England in Queen Victoria’s time, a mourning widow was expected to wear black clothing for the entire year following her husband’s demise. The mourning period for other members of the family depended on their relationship to the deceased and included wearing a black armband. We follow that tradition to a degree today, as when a police officer or firefighter dies in the line of duty and his or her colleagues wear black armbands or a swatch of black tape over their badges. Also, in the sporting world, mourning is displayed conspicuously on uniforms with the deceased player’s uniform number or initials.
Another Victorian practice is still found today. In the 1800s, it was common to keep some of the hair of a deceased person, and the practice expanded into an art form. Jewelers of the day would take woven hair of the deceased and design and produce bracelets, earrings, and even watch chains in which the hair was the focal point of the design. Watch chains made of intricately woven hair survive today. I currently grant two or three requests a year for the hair of a deceased person. Sometimes people ask for just a small wisp, and other times they ask me to clip enough to fill a paper sack.
Wearing jewelry constructed from the hair of the deceased is probably the reason for the recent popularity of cremation jewelry that the major casket manufacturers and others are producing. Cremated remains are now “processed,” or ground up, much more finely than in the past, to a consistency of white sand, to accommodate the customer’s desire to retain some of their loved one’s remains. Gold and silver chains that feature a tiny urn or receptacle for cremated remains are very popular today, as are hollow bracelets that can be unscrewed at the ends for a portion of ashes to be deposited inside.
CHAPTER TWELVE
You might remember the General Motors factory worker who had saved money over the years specifically for his wife’s burial. He wanted the most expensive casket for his wife, and he didn’t care what it cost. As we sat at his kitchen table, I saw that the man had no use for banks. I watched in amazement as he pulled $100 bills, one by one, all rolled tightly, from an entire row of old olive jars. Each time he reached $1,000, he asked me to reroll the bills in the opposite direction so they could be smoothed out to be counted. Our transaction complete, I went straight to the bank to deposit the money, which still reeked of olives, as did my fingers. He apparently never thought to rinse out the jars.
Several times each year, a family demands the finest casket available—and the reasons run the gamut. Wealthy clients, if they don’t opt for cremation, insist on the best because that’s what the deceased sought in life. Other well-off families are intent on impressing their well-heeled friends and colleagues. They make such remarks as, “Dad always drove a Mercedes-Benz, so we want the Mercedes-Benz of caskets.”
Some families assume that the most expensive casket is invariably the highest quality; therefore, they easily justify the purchase. A few look at every casket on display, and then, not finding one costly enough, ask to see a catalog picturing the most elaborate solid bronze or solid mahogany options (every funeral home has such a book on the premises).
A staunch Republican friend recently prearranged his own service and selected the exact same solid mahogany casket of his hero, Ronald Reagan. Another gentleman had just lost his wife to cancer. Before his wife died she had been impressed by a neighbor’s casket. The husband asked me how much it would cost, and then requested one that cost twice as much. His wife, he said, always tried to outdo her neighbor in life, so he was going to make it so in death as well.