What we do not do
Embalming is not ordinarily required by law
It is a choice with practical consequences, and it is the thing families are most often told wrongly.
For an ordinary burial or cremation in New York, embalming is not required. Everyone in our care is refrigerated from the hour they arrive, and for a great many arrangements that is sufficient and nothing further is done. Where it genuinely becomes necessary is a public viewing several days after the death, and travel to most other countries. Those are practical reasons and we will explain them; they are not the law saying you must.
No funeral home may tell you that embalming is required by law when it is not, and none may embalm without authority and then charge you for it. We ask, in writing, every time, and a family that says no is not asked twice.
Three sentences that get run together
Separately, all three are true. Run into one, they become something that is not.
The first: for an ordinary burial or cremation here, embalming is not required by law. The second: it becomes a practical necessity for a public viewing several days after a death, and it is usually required for travel to another country. The third: everybody in our care is refrigerated from the hour they arrive.
Said in that order they describe a choice with consequences you can weigh. Said as a single sentence with the middle clause stressed, they sound like a requirement, and that is how most families come to believe there was one. Nobody had to say anything false for that to happen.
What to do about it
What to do if you are told it is required
Four questions, in this order. All of them are ordinary and none of them is confrontational.
Ask which rule requires it, for the arrangement you have actually chosen
Not in general, and not for somebody else's funeral. For a burial in a few days with no public viewing, or for a direct cremation, or for whatever it is you have asked for.
Ask what refrigeration does instead
For a great many arrangements it is sufficient and nothing further is done. It is not a lesser substitute and it should not be described as one.
Ask to see the authority form
Nothing at all is done to anybody here beyond keeping them safely without written authority from the family. It is a page you sign, having been asked. If none has been put in front of you, nothing should have happened.
Say no, once
A family that declines is not asked again. If you are asked a second time, that has answered a different question about where you happen to be standing.
Ask early if you want a viewing
The genuine constraint here is time rather than law. If a public viewing several days out is what the family wants, that is a real conversation and it is much better had on the first day than on the third.
How to recognise it
What a less honest version of this looks like
The untrue sentence does not have to be spoken. The shape of the conversation says it instead.
A form arriving already completed
Authority is something you give in writing, having been asked, before anything happens. A pre-filled page handed over inside a stack of other paperwork is not that, and you may take it out of the stack.
The word necessary, with no reason attached
Necessary for what, and under whose rule? For travel abroad the answer is usually a real one. For a burial next week it usually is not.
Silence about refrigeration
If the only preparation ever mentioned is the one that is charged for, ask what the alternative is. There is one, it is in use in this building from the hour somebody arrives, and it appears on the price list under its own name.
We ask, in writing, every time, and we ask beforehand rather than afterwards. A family that says no is not asked twice and is not charged for anything that did not happen.
The service page sets out what each of the two actually involves and what each one is genuinely for, without either of them being described as the default.
- Embalming and refrigeration — What each one is, what it is for, when it becomes genuinely necessary, and what it is not.
- Policies — The standing rules of this building, including the one about authority and the one about not being asked twice.
- Viewing and visitation — What a viewing is, how the timing works, and why the day it is held on changes the question.
The rest of the argument
One argument in nine parts
Each of these is a place where a family is told less than it needs to know, by somebody, in an ordinary week. They are on separate pages because they come up separately. They are the same argument.
The other eight
If somebody has told you it is compulsory
Ring and ask which rule, for the arrangement you have chosen. It is a short call and you are entitled to a plain answer wherever you are asking.