Care of the person
Embalming, refrigeration, and the difference
Two different things get run together whenever a family asks about embalming, and separating them answers most of it.
What this includes, and what it does not
The first column is ours to do and ours to charge for. The second is either somebody else's charge — the cemetery, the crematory, the clergy, the newspaper, the airline — or it is a thing this arrangement genuinely does not involve. Anything bought on your behalf is passed on at what it costs us.
What this includes
- Refrigeration, which everyone in our care has, from the hour they arrive
- Embalming, which is a procedure we do only with written authority from the family
- Dressing, hairdressing and cosmetic care, with or without embalming
What it does not
- Any assumption. We ask; we do not proceed and bill.
Embalming is not ordinarily required by law. It becomes a practical necessity for a public viewing several days after a death, and it is usually required for travel abroad. It is never done here without written authority.
The part we would rather you heard from us
Embalming is not ordinarily required by law for a burial or a cremation. It is a practical requirement for a public viewing several days after a death, and it is often required for travel abroad. Those are three different sentences and they get run together constantly. There is a page for it.
Refrigeration: what everybody in our care has
From the hour a person arrives here they are refrigerated. Nobody is asked to authorise it, nobody is charged for it as an extra decision, and it is not a product. It is what keeps somebody safely, and it is what care of a person means in the days between a death and a funeral.
For a great many arrangements it is the whole of what is done. A cremation with no viewing, a burial within a few days, a direct cremation: in all of those, refrigeration is sufficient and nothing further happens.
Embalming: what it actually is
It is a procedure, not a standard of care. The blood is replaced with a preserving fluid, the person is washed and dressed, the features are set and the hair is done. It is carried out in a preparation room by somebody trained to do it and it takes a couple of hours.
What it does is slow change for a period and make an open viewing possible some days after a death. What it does not do is preserve anybody permanently, and nobody should tell you that it does. It is also not reversible, which is the reason it is never done here on an assumption.
The three sentences that get run together
These get said as though they were one sentence, constantly, and they are three separate facts. Read them one at a time.
One. Embalming is not ordinarily required by law for a burial or a cremation in this state. That is the sentence families are most often told wrongly, and no funeral home may tell you otherwise when it is not true.
Two. It is a practical requirement for a public viewing several days after a death. Not a legal one — a practical one. If a room of people is coming to see somebody a week after they died, embalming is what makes that possible, and refrigeration alone does not.
Three. It is usually required for travel abroad, and often for travel by air between states, because the destination country or the airline says so. That is a condition of carriage rather than a health rule, and it is one of the few places where the answer is genuinely that you have no choice.
Written authority, every time
We ask, in writing, before anything is done, and a family that says no is not asked again. Nothing is done to a person here and billed afterwards. If a viewing is planned and embalming is what would make it work, we will say so and explain why, and the answer is still yours.
If any funeral home ever tells you that embalming is required by law when it is not, that is the answer to a larger question than the one you asked — the whole argument is on its own page, because it is the thing families are most often told wrongly in this trade.
Dressing and cosmetic care, with or without
Washing, dressing in clothes you bring, shaving, hair, nails and light cosmetic work are a separate item and are available without embalming. They are on the price list under their own heading, and they can be declined too.
That is what makes a short private viewing within a day or so of the death a real arrangement rather than a compromise: refrigeration, a person washed and dressed in their own clothes, a room, and half an hour. It is offered far less often than it should be, and for a family that wants to see somebody and does not want them embalmed, it is the answer.
Worth asking, of us or of anybody else
- Is embalming being described to me as required, and by whom — the law, the airline, or the funeral home?
- What exactly would refrigeration alone allow, and by when?
- What is the charge for preparation without embalming, on the printed list?
- Have I been asked to authorise anything in writing, and have I read it?
- If I decline, does anything about the arrangement stop being possible, and which part?
What we do not do
Every one of these is short, and every one of them is here because a family somewhere was told the opposite of it on the day of a funeral.
You are entitled to decline this, and to be told why it is asked
If anybody tells you embalming is required by law, ask them which law. Ring us and we will tell you plainly what your arrangement actually needs.