The staggering growth of cremation shows how America's view of death is changing
In his half-century in the business of death, Richard Moylan had never experienced years like this.
As president of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, he spends his days running the historic site, where families spend the last couple of years caring for loved ones lost in the pandemic. But a bigger change was brewing even then: the choice to opt for a conventional cremation instead of the traditional casket burial of years past.
At the height of the pandemic, the Green-Wood crematorium burned constantly, 16-18 hours each day. Recently, a wall collapsed. Maintenance costs have skyrocketed. Last year, the five chambers received 4,500 bodies, a 35% increase over 2019.
So much ashes to ashes, so much dust to dust. Cremation is now the leading form of final "disposition" in America, as it is called in the funeral industry, and that preference is not about to wane.
According to the North American Cremation Association (CANA), 56% of Americans who die will be cremated in 2020, more than double the 27% two decades earlier. CANA and the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) predict that by 2040, 4 out of 5 Americans will choose cremation over casket burial.
This seismic shift could result in serious revenue losses for the funeral industry. This is prompting innovators to create an increasing number of "green" alternatives and other options that move away from the traditional casket funeral. Rapidly changing views on body disposal have also led to changes in the way loved ones are memorialized - and reflect an increasingly secular, transient and, some argue, phobia of death.
"Some people want to get it over with. A lot of them don't want to know what we do, how we do it, or aren't interested in what can be done with a cremated body," Moylan says of cremation. "A lot of families don't want to know what we do, how we do it, or don't want to know what can be done with a cremated body. This generation just doesn't want to do a funeral service that lasts three days."
The staggering growth of cremation is "the biggest change in funeral practice of our generation or, I would venture to say, in the last couple centuries," says Thomas Lynch, a Michigan poet and funeral director with 50 years of experience. "People want the body to disappear, basically. I think it reminds us of what we've lost." In the United States, Lynch notes, "this is the first generation of our species to try to deal with death without dealing with the dead."
Other countries have been quicker to adopt the practice, such as Japan, where the rate is nearly 100 percent, in part because of high population density and a shortage of burial sites. Cremation is central to Hindu and Buddhist funeral practices, releasing the soul from the body. But Judaism, Catholicism and Islam resist it because of views on the sanctity of the body and spirit at the time of death. Although the first crematorium in the United States opened in 1876 in Washington, Pennsylvania, Americans were slow to embrace the practice. They were simply sickened by the practice. It took a century or more to evolve.
The rise in cremations "is shattering conventional wisdom about death and memorialization," said University of Southern California professor David Charles Sloan, author of "Are Cemeteries Dead?" who grew up in one and his father was a cemetery caretaker in Syracuse.
Traditional burials often take up valuable space in high-density areas, may use embalming chemicals and non-biodegradable metal-lined coffins. But critics of cremation argue that it relies on fossil fuels and emits greenhouse gases.
They argue that cremation can also have a desensitizing effect on families. It can be all too easy. For some, it's death on the move. For others, cremation provides an opportunity to control and personalize the last ritual of life.
CANA estimates that 20 to 40 percent of cremated remains are buried in a cemetery - in the ground or in a columbarium, a place to store urns - while 60 to 80 percent are buried elsewhere, scattered (a favorite place is Walt Disney World) or stored at home, on a mantel or in a closet. Some families do without any rituals, whether it's saying goodbye to the body at a crematory, a funeral or creating a permanent memorial. There is a resonance in the body that makes families come to terms with death. "The body is the embodiment of our mortality and our emotional loss," Lynch says.
"Some families take it as: 'I've done my job. They're cremated.' After that, they just freeze in their decision," Sloan says. "I don't think it's a lack of care. It's just confusion."
CANA Executive Director Barbara Kemmis objects, "There is a perception that the funeral director is the only person who can provide a meaningful death ritual." Her family decided to travel to Colorado and scatter her brother's remains in a national park, an event that is still relevant nearly three decades later. "Cremation is 100 percent up to the general public. It's all about what grieving families want. They create their own traditions, their own experiences."
For most of history, death has been a constant feature of daily life. Disease was rampant everywhere. Children died all the time. Mothers died in childbirth - and often the baby died too. Wars created whole graveyards of young men and boys. People recognized the transience of life by placing reminders of it on the paths they regularly walked, rather than shoving cremated remains into an urn in the basement. The dead were laid to rest in homes and buried on family property. They were immortalized in art and photographs, their hair becoming mementos, tucked into lockets and pins. They were immortalized in stone, both modest and grandiose.
In the nineteenth century, "rural" cemeteries on the outskirts of growing cities, such as Mount Auburn in Cambridge (1831), Laurel Hill in Philadelphia (1836), and Green-Wood (1838), were adopted as parks.
Six decades ago, when the cremation rate in the U.S. was less than 5%, Jessica Mitford advocated cremation as an affordable option in her poignant bestseller "The American Way of Dying," an exposé of the funeral industry. Her advice was not heeded, even after the Catholic Church lifted its ban on cremation in 1963 (although Islam, conservative and orthodox Judaism still prohibit it). For many years, the rates remained virtually unchanged.
"Of all the rituals people perform, death rituals are the most stable and least subject to change," says Boston University professor Stephen Prothero. In the two decades since his book "Purified by Fire: A History of Cremation in America" was published, Prothero has been struck by the rapidly growing recognition. "I'm a historian. I'm always skeptical of predictions. I thought they were too high - but I was wrong."
Cremation has finally surged as America becomes increasingly secular. Last year, the number of people belonging to religious communities fell below 50 percent for the first time since Gallup began polling in 1937.
Americans have also begun to realize the convenience of cremation and its low cost. Comparisons are difficult because of the many options, but the median cost of a funeral with burial and viewing is $7,848, according to the NFDA, while the median cost of direct cremation is one-third of that at $2,550. Cremation with viewing and burial is comparable to traditional burial, with a median cost of $6,970.
Families scattered across several states often find that it doesn't make sense to spend the effort and expense of burying a loved one in a cemetery that no one will visit. Cremation, like pet food and holiday shoes, is now available through direct sales sites like Solace and Tulip.
Cremation is more popular in states that vote Democrat, have large populations of unincorporated people, or have harsh winters that make the ground freeze. (Canada has a much higher rate than the U.S.) Nevada, Washington, Oregon and Maine already have cremation rates approaching or exceeding 80 percent. In Utah and many southern states with large religious populations, the rate is half that.
Caitlin Doughty, mortician, attorney and author, says funeral homes haven't done enough to accommodate the wishes of modern Americans.
"Cremation rates tell us something. They scream to us that people are not happy with what they have," she says. "Cremation is more about rejecting the traditional funeral industry than embracing cremation." She yearns for innovation and meaning: "We need safe, beautiful ways to interact with death."
The pandemic has resulted in huge losses. In 2021, nearly three-quarters of U.S. counties recorded more deaths than births. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the age-adjusted death rate rose by more than 19% after a nearly 17% increase the previous year.
Americans are about done with rising mortality rates. According to the Social Security Administration, the number of people over 65 will nearly double in the next three decades. By 2050, the country will have a quarter more deaths than in 2019. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts the death rate will peak in 2055.
Despite these aggravations, many families have not become more adept at planning for the inevitable. "There's a hyper-optimism that reigns in America. You're supposed to look on the sunny side of life, which also mitigates the full experience of grief," Prothero says. Grief isn't always handled properly. The bereavement leaf goes away in a matter of days.
Some people who have lost a loved one rejoice in defying convention and remaining joyful. Families who are not comfortable with the solemnity of traditional funerals have replaced them with birthday celebrations.
When families choose cremation, they sometimes do so without thinking about the long-term consequences. Elisa Krcilek, vice president of a funeral home in Mesa, Arizona, where 80% of families choose cremation, says, "We need to do a better job of informing people that there's a time to say goodbye and a place to say hello. The moment you disperse someone, you're done. People need a memorial so they can be remembered."
As our supermarkets show, Americans are hungry for choice. And as the number of annual deaths has increased, so has the choice of how to handle the bodies.
Many new ideas pick up on people's desire to do away with the coffin, but are considered more environmentally friendly than cremation. These include "green" burials (where the body is placed in a shroud or biodegradable container to decompose naturally in the ground), natural organic reduction (human composting), prometrization (freeze-drying the body), endless burial suits (a mushroom suit that accelerates decomposition), and alkaline hydrolysis (an energy-saving water-based cremation process).
"If anything will slow or reverse the growth of cremation in the U.S., it's green burials," says Kemmis, CANA's executive director. "People are seeking the most environmentally friendly burial methods so that our deaths reflect our lives."
Recompose, founded in Spring 2019 in Seattle, is the first company in the country to offer natural organic recovery. Bodies are placed in a receptacle on a bed of sawdust, alfalfa, and straw and turned into enough soil to fill a pickup truck in 30 days for a flat fee of $7,000. Some families take some of the soil for personal use; about half give it to a forest or farm. The number of subscribers to Recompose's newsletter about the "death trip" has reached 25,000. "People are looking for different options," says Recompose public relations manager Anna Swenson. "Cost is a factor. Cultural beliefs are a factor. Guilt is a factor. Environment is also a factor." Recompose plans to expand to 10 sites over the next decade.
The new initiatives are facing resistance from state legislatures and the funeral industry. The changes are costly for the nation's 18,874 funeral homes, many of which operate on minimal profit margins and are often consolidated. Cremation, in which the chamber is heated to an optimal temperature of 1,400 to 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit, takes an average of two to three hours; alkaline hydrolysis, which costs from $174,000 at Bio-Response Solutions, can take 16 to 20 hours.
Natural organic remediation is only approved in Washington, Oregon and Colorado. Promiscuity is approved in Sweden and South Korea. Alkaline hydrolysis, which requires expanding the legal definition of cremation to include water, has been approved in 22 states but is available to people in only 14.
Pets are another matter. West Laurel Hill Cemetery in suburban Philadelphia has installed the state's first alkaline hydrolysis machine, which looks like a giant fishing poaching machine. Over four years, 90 pets were turned into a fine white powder similar to baking soda, starting with a five-foot alligator named Sheldon.
With burials being abandoned and families choosing to spend less, some in the industry fear some cemeteries will fall into disrepair. "We've always had dead cemeteries, family cemeteries where a family dies out, a farm is sold or a church is dissolved," Sloan says. With the decline in burials, he notes, many cemeteries are "struggling to support themselves."
Older urban cemeteries face other challenges. "The movement toward cremation is a boon for a cemetery like Green-Wood, which is short on space," Moylan says.
Many historic sites have been transformed, hosting cultural events, membership programs, and death cafes where people discuss the last stage of life. Hollywood Forever, founded in 1899, was on the brink of ruin in 1998 until new owners added author discussions, podcasts, outdoor movie screenings and a massive Dia de los Muertos celebration. These events not only provide additional funding, but also raise awareness at a time when cremation is king. "Ultimately, we are connecting with the community," says Laurel Hill and West Laurel Cemeteries President Nancy Goldenberg.
Cemeteries are adapting to attract families interested in "green" alternatives by advertising them as a return to past practices. At West Laurel Hill Cemetery, 258 people pre-purchased a space in a natural burial plot that was once a cemetery dump. A century later, the burial ground will become a forest. The graves are dug by hand with a shovel, not a gas-powered backhoe loader. "People want to get back to the land in a very purposeful way," says arboretum manager Aaron Greenberg.
More Americans are choosing to die at home or in hospice care with loved ones, as people have done for centuries, rather than in hospitals, according to a 2019 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. "End-of-life care at home results in death becoming a place that matters," Sloan says. "It can lead to more personalization and ways to memorialize."
Lynch, a poet and mortician, said he would like to see more cremations performed in front of witnesses, with family members present for the final moments before the body goes into the chamber. "Cremation should be public, not private," he said.