Dead Broke

Each day brings forth fresh reports about Americans being forced to curtail their spending. Naturally, much of the belt-tightening involves discretionary purchases such as eating out in restaurants or going on vacation. But increasingly, the choices people must make are more difficult. Reports indicate, for example, that some families are having to decide between putting food on the table or going to the doctor for needed check-ups. In some cases, even the dead are losing out, as the Detroit Free Press reveals in "Many Families Opt to Cut Frills as the Cost of Dying Skyrockets."

When Verlene McLemore's 36-year-old son Dean died at home last November after a long struggle with diabetes, she knew she wanted a very personal service for him.

But she also wanted something she could afford, and a $7,000 funeral -- the national average -- was out of the question.

So McLemore, with the help of a local funeral director, kept her son's body in her Detroit home in the bedroom where he died, laying it out on a borrowed massage table covered in lavender satin, packing it in dry ice, and inviting friends and family to come and say good-bye.

For two days she kept a simple candle burning and soft music playing. She went to the store for more dry ice. Then he was buried in a pressboard casket in a family plot. Cost for the services: $1,300.

"He wanted to be here, home with me. Why spend all of that money? I was able to keep him here until he went into the ground," she said.

McLemore is among a growing number of family members who are finding that as the cost of living has skyrocketed, so has the cost of dying, forcing many to look for less-expensive options when it comes to making their loved ones' final arrangements.

In a growing number of cases, local medical examiners are reporting that some families can't even afford to claim their loved ones' remains. Many more, like McLemore, are now planning do-it-yourself home funerals. Also, local funeral homes say they have seen a dramatic increase in cremations, which typically are cheaper than standard funerals.

And those who do opt for traditional services also are increasingly looking for ways to cut costs, ordering caskets from places like Overstock.com -- $1,200 for an "In God's Care 18-Gauge Steel Casket" -- and bringing their own flowers.

A growing option
People often are surprised to learn that Michigan law does not require embalming as long as the remains are buried or cremated within 48 hours. And home funerals are allowed, but require that a licensed funeral director and doctor sign the death certificate.

There are no statistics kept on the number of home funerals in Michigan, but Wendy Lyons, a hospice volunteer and board member of the Funeral Consumers Information Society, said she has presented several seminars in the last two years in metro Detroit on do-it-yourself funerals. She estimates about 200 people have attended. "People are really starting to see this as an option," Lyons said.

Funeral directors also are seeing families looking for alternatives.

"I think it just speaks to the economic situation that the state is in, not just in the funeral home business, but everything. People are hurting," said Paul Buchanan, owner and director of Generations Funeral and Cremations Services in Farmington Hills and Berkley.

Buchanan, along with Lyons, helped McLemore with her son's services and provided transportation of the body to the cemetery.

Generations, which also provides traditional funeral services, has been catering to struggling families for years. Now they are the ones that local hospitals call when families are too financially strapped to pay for funerals.

Buchanan helps them get aid from the state, which in some cases will pay about $900 toward a cremation or simple burial in a pine coffin.

Too expensive
At the Oakland County Medical Examiner's Office, grief counselor Joyce Gulley is contacted almost daily by families that cannot afford to claim their relatives' bodies. Two years ago, that happened only once or twice a month.

Gulley attributes much of the problem to job loss.

"Most of our resources are tied to our employment, and so is our life insurance," she said. "Our country is experiencing these economic challenges, and when you get an unexpected death -- especially the head of the household -- funeral costs can be an extraordinary burden."

In Wayne County, counselors said they face the same problem. Some families ask that the bodies of their loved ones be stored in refrigeration until the families can come up with the money for services. Last week, there were 60 unclaimed bodies, and 15 that had been claimed by families, but not picked up because they could not afford funeral services, according to Dennis Niemiec, spokesman for Wayne County.

"That's an increase. They are not taking the bodies because they don't have the money," Niemiec said. "So it will be up to the state."

The Michigan Department of Human Services is the last resort. The state spent about $4 million burying 6,841 bodies -- some of them unclaimed -- during fiscal 2008, which ended in September. That was an increase of more than 300 bodies from the previous year.

When Neal Caverly, 72, died of cancer in a Detroit hospice last month, he had no insurance. His lone family member, sister Linda Daris, 61, lives with her retired husband in a modest home in Sterling Heights. She turned to Simple Funerals, a newly opened business with offices in St. Clair Shores, Birmingham and Livonia.

Simple Funerals picked up the body from the hospital, arranged for a cremation, took care of the death certificate, and provided holy cards for a simple memorial service at St. Blase Catholic Church in Sterling Heights, where the ashes were blessed.

Daris later bought an $18 leather box at Home Goods to hold her brother's ashes -- urns can cost up to $300 -- and set up a small shrine in her kitchen, with the box, roses and pictures of her brother.

The cost was less than $1,000.

"Everything was very nice and peaceful," she said. "It was in good taste. Neal would have loved it."

While cremations have been on the increase nationwide since the early 1990s, they have seen a spike in the last year.

At Cobbs Funeral Home in Pontiac, cremations once accounted for only one out of 20 services. Now, it's one out of four services.

That is particularly telling because Cobbs serves many African-American families, and they have historically preferred standard burial.

"People don't feel like they have a lot of choices. The economy is so bad here ... Families have no health insurance and no life insurance," said Roger Davis, vice president of Cobbs. "It's a lot more broad than you think. It's not just people in our neighborhood here. We're getting families from places like Oakland Township. Everybody is struggling."

Comments

[Owner Earnings]

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[Joe M.]

I find it kind of ironic you have an article on death and burial as the whole economy implodes to it's own death.

[Fu]

Most of the world buries their own dead. It's not such a bad thing.