Latest sign of hardship: Families unable to bury loved ones

[Liberal_in_LA]

Latest sign of hardship: Families unable to bury loved ones

As funeral costs rise and the economy continues to founder, many communities are seeing a rise in unclaimed bodies and funerals for indigent people.

The trend has been seen "everywhere," says Jacqueline Byers, director of research and outreach for the National Association of Counties.

"The reality is, it's gotten worse," she says.

Many coroner's offices report increases in the number of unclaimed bodies, according to a survey of members of the National Association of Medical Examiners. A little more than half of nearly 50 respondents cited an increase, according to the association's data.

Johnnetta Moore, administrator for the indigent burial program in Jacksonville, says the economy is to blame for an upswing in cremations of indigent people this spring.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-09-15/indigent-burials-increase/50418930/1?csp=24&kjnd=OGCin3jYFtjpR3hTo8GL%2B92QTSw7f9JtlDakDf5IaC91k2avWc7%2Bqlo6Dvd7TOmU-5fb7817f-00fb-427a-96ae-e8c9ed717d16_mFw8m4BBjp8vS7pwZoi8pTQ3g9QXOHR08gkzEGVABwnKCeN0JbOCcIQp0x7PpMrj

[Marrah_G]

1. I would not have the funds.

[madrchsod]

3. neither would i....

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. I recall that the hat was passed around at work when someone died back in the 80s.

The news had reported folks having car washes and asking for funds for a family

[Tesha]

50. That's one reason why people buy those low-value but easy-to-get life insurance policies.

So they can cover funeral expenses.

Me? Toast and sprinkle at minimum cost and give my
kids the savings.

Tesha

[MedicalAdmin]

61. One way to get around this is to pre-donate your body to a local medical school.

And then make sure that info is on your donor card / drivers license.

When I die I'm going to teach a doctor how to slice, dice, dissect and understand. And then they dispose of the parts. They are always looking for healthy bodies. Conversely if there is a disease you have and want to donate it to a research institute of the same disease they might be interested. ...

[madrchsod]

2. the last three yrs illinois has ran out of indigent burial funds.....

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/illinois/article_1bf96c4d-bbad-525a-af89-70cf935fa10f.html

[Mnemosyne]

5. It has been common around here for years to fund raise for medical care and burials.

The last ten years it has increased each year.

NW rural PA. Very red union manufacturing area, or it was once, very depressed economically.

[Texasgal]

6. Latest?

Hell,this has been going on for years!

My grandmother died in 2000. She had paid for her plot and casket over the years, but that still wasn't enough! She even WORKED for 50 years in the industry as a pianist for funerals!

The casket she bought was no no longer available and the new one was over 3,000.00 plus the funeral home fees increased. We ended up burying her for an additional 8,000.00 and that doesn't even include the news paper which wanted to charge us 600.00 for her death notice. <--- we didn't do that BTW because it was such a rip!

The funeral industry is a RACKET! A sad one at that... it preys on people that are emotional about the loss of a loved one.

Stick me in a beer can and throw me in the river. I am disgusted by funeral homes!

[exboyfil]

13. In my grandmas preneed contract

They have certain items which they stand by including the casket, vault, receiving remains, and service. They have set asides for other items which they can't guarantee (third party provider) such as grave opening and closing, air fare for remains, and receipt of remains at my grandma's current location (she will be transported from Iowa to West Virginia).

I hope we do not experience your trouble with my grandma.

I think younger people are more pragmatic about these things, but it is hard to say no to your elders. My mom spent alot of money she did not have on my dad's funeral, so she wants a simple cremation with the ashes scattered in the ocean.

[exboyfil]

7. Funeral Homes and Cemeteries are a racket

I have set aside approximately $8K for my grandmother's burial in preneed contracts per her request, and that still is not enough (haven't said aside dollars for newspaper, headstone, or service). A part of it had to be my money, but I intend to honor her wishes to the best of my ability. My daughters are on board with my plan for myself. I would prefer to donate my body to the state medical school and have my cremated remains interred there. My wife is not on board with this proposal though. She is up for cremation, but she wants interment at a cemetery. Neither one of us want to be displayed like a Christmas turkey. My mom feels the same way thankfully (my dad was on display after a week and two different funeral services in which I had to do the memorial - it was very difficult).

I just want a small ceremony at our church - definitely without a casket.

[OneGrassRoot]

8. I wonder what type of alternatives will arise...

Even cremation, without interment at a cemetery, is SO expensive. :(

Donating your body is a good idea, but not everyone will do that, or even have a chance to decide to do it.

What are legal alternatives to the traditional funeral home/cemetery/crematorium options?

Something for me to research. I have life insurance, but it takes a while to get those funds, so there's no way my daughter would be able to handle these expenses.

Sad state of affairs so many are in and faced with each day.

:(

[exboyfil]

9. About $1500

Based on my research. If you were in the situation, I would call around to each of the funeral homes to try to get the best price (cold I know especially when you are dealing with a loved one). As the story said you also may fail to claim the body - not sure if the state could go after you for the funds though.

Funeral homes will expect you to either sign over insurance in advance or pay in advance (at least they did for my grandma and my dad in West Virginia/Ohio).

[OneGrassRoot]

27. Ah, that's true. The option to sign over insurance in advance...

The quote was $3000 here in NC for cremation. Just cremation.

:(

[Tesha]

52. Be careful they're not trying to sell you a fancy box just to burn you in.

You can choose to be cremated in something as simple
as a cardboard carton.

Tesha

[handmade34]

14. my experience...

is that funeral homes and bridal shops are big money scams...

I have donated my body to a number of Universities (just in case I'm near one of them when I die)... and I talked my 83 yo mother into donating her body to Michigan State University.

We knew my husband was going to die so we planned everything before he passed. He died at home and I had arranged for a local man to take him to the local crematorium... everything total was just about $300. My love for my husband and his worth was not going to be dictated to me by some "funeral director"

I recommend that everyone makes some sort of plan...

http://www.npr.org/programs/death/971208.death.html
http://www.cremation.org/faq.html
http://www.med.ufl.edu/anatbd/usprograms.html
http://www.newenglandburialsatsea.com/
http://www.wisebread.com/times-are-tough-would-you-consider-a-diy-funeral

[exboyfil]

16. Thank you for the information

I did not know coroner released the body to someone other than a funeral home. If I were your husband, I would be proud of your decision to not let them take advantage of you. I don't want my family to be burdened with needless expenses either.

[handmade34]

17. laws vary by state

Vermont lets individuals transport a dead body with a permit... I encourage everyone to get as much information as they can and take responsibility for as much of the process as is reasonable.

The death certificate must be signed by an official so that needs to be addressed. We had planned everything... I really don't know how I would have managed otherwise.

[Duppers]

23. Thank you. I recently came across this Walmart site

http://www.walmart.com/cp/Funeral/1058564

For the do-it-yourselfers ??

[OneGrassRoot]

29. OMG. n/t

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

32. Not Sold In Stores... how do know of it fits?

:spank:

[Duppers]

33. Dunno

Aren't the sizes standard?
There has been some discussion of supersized coffins for the very obese.



On a serious and sad note, I had to buy a baby coffin once...for the little girl I lost.

[OneGrassRoot]

39. Me, too.

That was especially horrendous to have to worry about $$ (and it was just as expensive, in my experience...especially with a headstone) given the unimaginable grief.

:cry:

:hug: to you, Duppers.

I've often thought I want to create something that is a beautiful, artistic (even upcycled?) alternative to the temporary markers at so many graves since fewer and fewer can afford headstones.

I personally prefer cremation...for myself...but I respect that others may prefer to be returned to the earth, in a cemetery.

[Duppers]

72. Thank you, OGR

It was a horrific experience that only another mother can fully understand imho.


:hug:

[smirkymonkey]

34. Are there any laws about just burying people in the backyard

like a beloved pet? Or what about a big Bonfire? Those seem like good no-cost options to me. Personally, I could care less what they do with me and I hate the idea of my family getting ripped off by some slimeball funeral director.

[OneGrassRoot]

41. Yeah, I think this varies by location -- local, as well as state.

Wow, a funeral pyre. Never thought about that one. I have a feeling that is likely against the law everywhere here in the States; whether or not it should be, I don't know, 'cause I've never entertained that option.

[Tesha]

54. Claim to be a Viking with Nordic religious beliefs that must be honored?

"If I don't do it this way, Odin won't take them
into his arms!"

Tesha

[OneGrassRoot]

56. Nice! :) n/t

[MedicalAdmin]

62. Or a viking funeral.

American style would be to light the deceased car on fire with them in it.... Same kinda thing tho'.

[Broderick]

40. jeepers they even got their hand

in death sales.

[OneGrassRoot]

42. Word. Next they'll offer the services. n/t

[Broderick]

44. I had to get toner cartridges for several laser printers and I looked online

They don't carry that stuff in the store, but they came up on google search for them.

half the price of all the other online shops. HALF.

how the heck.

[MedicalAdmin]

65. How the heck? By stiffing the manufacturers.

Walmart is the single greatest force behind the offshoring of jobs in the USA. Every dollar spent there = 1 job lost (plus a dead kitten).

[Broderick]

70. ok now I am mad

Kittens? I only met one person online, here in fact, that hated kittens.

[MedicalAdmin]

63. Offer up? I wouldn't be surprised if they are...

"facilitating" it for their employees with dead peasants insurance.

Maybe I could get a job....?

[Tikki]

47. Costco, also....

http://www.costco.com/Browse/Productgroup.aspx?Prodid=11605221&search=adult%20urn&topnav=&Mo=0&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode%20matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=adult%20urn&Ntt=adult%20urn&No=0&Nty=1&Ntx=mode%20matchallpartial


Tikki

[OneGrassRoot]

28. Thank you so much, handmade 34...

I'm SO going to follow up on this information.

"My love for my husband and his worth was not going to be dictated to me by some funeral director."

Well said.

:hug:

[Odin2005]

36. There are few options because the funeral industry racket has made them illegal.

In many places it is illegal to bury somebody without embalming, for example.

[hobbit709]

38. When I had Donna cremated it cost $946.

[Tesha]

51. There's actually been discussion lately that dissolution in lye may be a good green alternative.

Apparently, NaOH (Sodium hydroxide, "lye") is inexpensive,
widely available, very effective at dissolving all your
soft bits, and quite compatible with current wastewater
treatment methods. Then they just grind your bones up
just as they do after cremation. (What you get back as
"cremains" aren't really ashes; they're the bony bits
that don't burn.)

We'll see if this method floats to the top over the years...

Tesha

[L0oniX]

10. Just wait until they destroy SS and Medicare. Ya ain't seen nothing yet.

[shanti]

24. they probably already

have that covered :eyes:

[LadyInAZ]

11. wow..

i can not afford this. they say it cost with birth/death...

[Newest Reality]

12. I will certainly have no

funeral or cremation with no money or valuables or family. But, that's okay because I will be dead.

When will we get back to the point where the cart comes around and we hear, "Bring out your dead!"?

[handmade34]

15. you evoked

a vivid picture... don't mind the idea, just the stench

[The Flaming Red Head]

25. You just made me want to watch Monty Python, again.

Thanks for giving me a smile on a such a grim topic.

[The Flaming Red Head]

26. Here it is

Monty Python- 'Bring out your Dead!'

[MedicalAdmin]

67. Perhaps we should all arrange to be dumped on the lawn of someone...

... like Blankfein when we die and let that blood sucking parasite deal with it.

[richmwill]

18. It's heading to what my Grandfather wanted...

... and what we did for him. He thought a funeral home, visitation/wake, church service, etc. were unnecessary. He was placed in a simple casket, my mother hired a local priest to come to the grave site and say a simple 5-minute brief reading/prayer, and that was all. We mourned at the grave site for a few minutes, then left. Believe it or not, to me it was a fine way to have a funeral service.

[OneGrassRoot]

45. Even without a service...

the cost is extraordinary.

I'm with you -- I definitely don't want a service. No viewing or anything.

Still, if one is to be cremated or buried -- and, if buried, with a headstone of any sort -- the cost can be exorbitant, though I'm seeing it varies from area to area.

[SoCalDem]

19. Whwn my best friend's son was killed in a car accident, we loaned her $5K

so she could bury him:cry:..She had a couple of hundred bucks in her bank account, and her idiot husband had run up their credit cards to nearly maxed out:(..(he was a gambler)

[Rosa Luxemburg]

20. What a country!

[SammyWinstonJack]

46. Great, isn't it? I believe that the President said that we are the envy of the World.

Can't you believe that? I think he was serious. :silly:

[Zoigal]

21. Ever heard of the organization called "Neptune Society?"

My husband and i made our arrangements with them.
Cremation, etc. They even sent us the urns in advance.
Reasonable prices, too........z www.neptunesociety.com

[OneGrassRoot]

43. Wow, I'm going to request more info from that site.

Interesting!

Thanks. :hi:

[newspeak]

53. thanks! I was going to mention the neptunesociety

that's the way hubby and I are going.

[Arthur3284]

22. The cost of this recession is following on regular folk instead of the people who started it

[Mimosa]

30. America is 3rd world for the poor.

Never thought we'd sink so low. :(

[lunatica]

31. When my mother died members of my union gave me money to cremate her body

She had home hospice care and the Social worker helped me find the service. It was cheaper than The Neptune Society and they were very kind and thoughtful. I always assumed they were the people who cremate indigents.

[Odin2005]

35. The funeral industry is a state-protected EXTORTION RACKET.

It should NOT have cost 10,000 to bury by stepdad!

[aikoaiko]

37. I told my wife, "No coffin and cremate me." Funeral services are a racket.

[Gari]

48. Jessica Mitford - The American Way of Death

I read this book, an expose of the Funeral industry, some years ago. Very eye opening.

The best thing you can do for your family is have life insurance (if you can afford it) and a will that spells out in careful detail exactly what you want in the way of a funeral. Tell your family what you want, but be sure to put it in writing. Then, no other family member can accuse another of being "heartless" when choosing something other than a costly, unnecessary ceremony that is "proof" of how much the dearly departed was dearly beloved by their family.

I handled the funerals of a brother (suicide) and a sister (murder by abusive husband). The brother's funeral was easier, everything was in a different city and I took care of everything according to his will. The sister's was more difficult as my mother was involved and she wanted a "nice" service which cost $5,000. My younger brother took out a loan and thankfully we were able to reimburse him from proceeds from the estate.

[lapislzi]

49. I've given explicit instructions to husband and daughter

Do not spend one unnecessary dime on disposal of my earthly remains. Give me to a medical school, and then dump me. Hopefully the medical school will pick up the cost of my disposal.

Husband and daughter feel the same way about their own remains, when the time comes.

Using up real estate on the dead makes about as much sense as golf courses.

[B2G]

66. My grandma donated her body to science

My mom freaked out about it, but I thought it was cool. She was 101 when she died. Joined the Peace Corps at 65. She was amazing.

[piratefish08]

55. don't get sick. if you do, die quickly. when you die, try to fall backwards into a hole.

got it.

[4_TN_TITANS]

57. Inlaws had to cremate 2 family members this year...

no one has the jack to afford a casket/vault/and memorial service.

[LongTomH]

58. Lawn of the Dead

No, I don't mean to be disrespectful; that was the title of a story in a Kansas City alternative newspaper about a mortuary that performs cremations for the indigent. If no one comes to claim the ashes, they're scattered on the lawn of a local cemetery, between a cottonwood tree and a columbarium (a column with openings for urns.).

Lawn of the Dead

[Obamanaut]

59. Rising costs is the reason I've already prepaid for my cremation, and my ashes will

sent to the briny deep.

[Obamanaut]

60. self delete dupe

[B2G]

64. Cremate me and scatter my ashes

I just haven't decided where yet.

[JuniperLea]

68. That's been the case for years...

Drive through "the wrong" side of town and you will see makeshift memorials alongside makeshift car washes... trying to raise funds for funerals. Just another perfect day... I love L.A.

[Cali_Democrat]

69. America is the greatest country on earth

If you don't think so, you just don't like us for our freedom.

:patriot:

[jtuck004]

71. Nothing new.

In Jack London's story, The People of the Abyss, he relates the story of who and what he experienced when he set himself into a life in the East End of London in 1902. He relates the abject misery and poverty, where people often didn't have enough to bury their dead, including the all too frequent child. They would wrap them up and keep them in a cool place until they could afford it.

Some quotes, most relevant lines bolded.

"Following the summer in question came a hard winter. Great numbers of the
unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a time, and daily marched
through the streets of London crying for bread. Mr. Justin McCarthy, writing in the month
of January 1903, to the New York Independent, briefly epitomises the situation as
follows:-

“The workhouses have no space left in which to pack the starving crowds who
are craving every day and night at their doors for food and shelter. All the
charitable institutions have exhausted their means in trying to raise supplies of
food for the famishing residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and
alleys. The quarters of the Salvation Army in various parts of London are nightly
besieged by hosts of the unemployed and the hungry for whom neither shelter
nor the means of sustenance can be provided.”"
...

“Dull despair and misery
Lie about them from their birth;
Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
Are their earliest lullaby.”

...
The pair had two daughters, and the four of them lived in a couple of holes, called
“rooms” by courtesy, for which they paid seven shillings per week. They possessed no
stove, managing their cooking on a single gas-ring in the fireplace. Not being persons of
property, they were unable to obtain an unlimited supply of gas; but a clever machine
had been installed for their benefit. By dropping a penny in the slot, the gas was
forthcoming, and when a penny’s worth had forthcome the supply was automatically
shut off. “A penny gawn in no time,” she explained, “an’ the cookin’ not arf done!”

Incipient starvation had been their portion for years. Month in and month out, they had
arisen from the table able and willing to eat more. And when once on the downward
slope, chronic innutrition is an important factor in sapping vitality and hastening the
descent.

Yet this woman was a hard worker. From 4.30 in the morning till the last light at night,
she said, she had toiled at making cloth dress-skirts, lined up and with two flounces, for
seven shillings a dozen. Cloth dress-skirts, mark you, lined up with two flounces, for
seven shillings a dozen! This is equal to $1.75 per dozen, or 14.75 cents per skirt.
...

Here, in the evening, amid the manifold smells of the day, the family goes to its virtuous
couch. That is to say, as many as possible pile into the one bed (if bed they have), and
the surplus turns in on the floor. And this is the round of their existence, month after
month, year after year, for they never get a vacation save when they are evicted. When
a child dies, and some are always bound to die, since fifty-five per cent of the East End
children die before they are five years old, the body is laid out in the same room. And if
they are very poor, it is kept for some time until they can bury it. During the day it lies on
the bed; during the night, when the living take the bed, the dead occupies the table,
from which, in the morning, when the dead is put back into the bed, they eat their
breakfast. Sometimes the body is placed on the shelf which serves as a pantry for their
food. Only a couple of weeks ago, an East End woman was in trouble, because, in this
fashion, being unable to bury it, she had kept her dead child three weeks.

Now such a room as I have described is not home but horror; and the men and women
who flee away from it to the public-house are to be pitied, not blamed. There are
300,000 people, in London, divided into families that live in single rooms, while there are
900,000 who are illegally housed according to the Public Health Act of 1891—a
respectable recruiting-ground for the drink traffic."

Critics called London a pessimist. As I said above, nothing new, but I wonder what his critics would think if they saw us work hard for over a hundred years and find an increasing number of people who don't have the resources to eat every day, with some some still not able to bury their dead.

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