Cremation

A disposition, not a kind of funeral

This is the sentence that clears up most of the confusion. Cremation is what happens at the end. It is not a type of service and it does not replace one. Everything a burial can have, a cremation can have: a viewing on one or two evenings, a service in the chapel here or at your own place of worship with the person present, bearers, cars, music, a rite led by your own clergy, and everybody travelling together afterwards.

The only difference is where the day ends. Most families here now choose it, and most of them have a full service first.

The permit takes more signatures, not fewer

A burial permit waits on the medical certification and then on the death being registered. A cremation permit waits on both of those, and then on an authorisation signed by whoever has the legal right to decide, and then on a further check that a burial does not require — because a cremation cannot be undone and a burial can.

So cremation is usually a little slower to authorise than burial rather than faster. Anybody who describes it to you as the quick option is describing the ceremony and not the process. Where a death has gone to the Medical Examiner, everything waits on that office and no funeral home can hurry it.

What comes back, and roughly when

What is returned is bone, processed to an even grain. It is heavier than people expect — commonly four to eight pounds for an adult, in a container about the size of a large book — and being told that beforehand spares a family a small shock at the door.

The cremation itself takes two to three hours, and the cooling afterwards is not quick either. In practice most families have the ashes back within a week to ten days of the service. They come in a plain sealed container, which is included, or in an urn if you have chosen one. If a gathering is being built around them, do not fix its date until they are actually here.

There is no deadline on deciding

A container on a shelf in a wardrobe for two years is not a family failing to deal with something. It is one of the commonest things there is, and the decision is genuinely easier a year later than it is in the fortnight after a death.

We hold them here for as long as you need — no deadline, and no charge for waiting — or you take them home the day they arrive and think about it whenever you are ready. Nobody will ring you about it.

What families do with them

Kept at home, which is what most people do at least at first. Buried — in the family grave, or in a small plot for ashes, which is the cemetery's booking and its charge and is a good deal less than a full grave. Placed in a niche in a columbarium, which is a wall of small compartments and is the option most families do not know exists.

Divided among the family, which is ordinary and which needs to be said out loud beforehand rather than discovered afterwards, because it is the decision most likely to cause an argument between people who are already exhausted. Or scattered where local rules allow — and there are rules: a cemetery has its own, a park or a beach belongs to some authority, and land belongs to somebody who can be asked. Nobody is going to arrest a family for scattering ashes quietly, and asking first is still the difference between a place you can go back to and a place you cannot.