Direct cremation

Exactly what happens

You ring, at whatever hour it is. We collect the person, from a house, a hospital, a facility or the Medical Examiner's office, and they are refrigerated from the hour they arrive here. We file the certificate, obtain the permit, and take the authorisation signature from whoever has the right to give it. The cremation happens. The ashes come back to us and we ring you, and we order whatever certified copies you have asked for.

That is the whole of it. Nobody attends, and the only decisions asked of the family are the ones the paperwork cannot be completed without.

What is not in it, said plainly

No viewing, public or private. No service, here or anywhere, with us. No bearers, no cars, no rooms, no chapel and no procession. No embalming at all — this arrangement does not involve it. No casket: an alternative container is used and it is included, and no funeral home in this country may tell you that a casket is required for a cremation.

No flowers and no newspaper notice unless you ask us to arrange them, in which case they are ordered for you and passed on at what they cost.

The three reasons families give

The first is that it is what the person asked for. Very often it is written down, very often it was written down years earlier, and very often the family's discomfort is with the request rather than with the arrangement. Doing what somebody asked for is not doing less for them.

The second is that the family is scattered. Where nobody is within a day's travel and the people who would come are on three continents, a funeral in this borough next week is a gathering almost nobody can attend.

The third is money, and it should be said without embarrassment on either side. Direct cremation costs the least of the three shapes by a wide margin. A family with nothing put by should hear that from a funeral director in the first conversation rather than work it out alone at midnight, and a family that can afford more and still wants this is not doing anything wrong.

A memorial can follow, and usually should

Choosing this does not mean choosing to do nothing. It separates the practical part from the gathering, and the gathering can then be held at any time, in any place, with or without us — that is its own arrangement and it is the version families most often say afterwards they would choose again.

A hall, a garden, a restaurant, a house, a place of worship, or the reception room here. Weeks later, or in the spring when people can travel.

We are required to offer it, and we would rather say so first

Every funeral provider in this country has to offer direct cremation and has to make an alternative container available for it. That is your entitlement rather than our generosity, and it is on the printed price list as a single item with a single price.

We would rather you heard that from us at the start than found it out afterwards from somebody else. It is also the arrangement that asks least of a family in the week when they have the least to give, and that is a reason on its own.