Death is a certainty for all of us, and the ways in which death and the practices that accompany it have changed drastically over the last hundred and fifty years or so. Prior to the civil war, people died at home, were cared for by their families and neighbors, and were buried in simple shrouds or wood coffins. With so many young men dying far from home during the war, the practice of embalming was developed so that the bodies could be transported home without the inevitable decay that begins shortly after death. The funeral industry, which included coffin building, embalming, and public cemeteries grew in the late 1900s. Laws were enacted to benefit this industry and home death and burial became a thing of the past.
The average funeral today costs between $7,000 and $12,000. The viewing, burial, service fees, transport, casket, embalming, and other prep are included in this price. The average cost of a funeral with cremation is $6,000 to $7,000. These costs do not include a cemetery, monument, marker, or other things like flowers. The toxic chemicals used in embalming, the pollution created by cremation, and the nearly predatory practices used by the funeral industry to sell their goods and services have begun to change how many people plan for their inevitable death.
In recent years there has been a movement to return to the practices of our ancestors. Hospice care has made dying at home surrounded by loved ones once again more common. Historical burial practices have been slower to be accepted, but there is a movement to change this. You can find more information regarding this at https://www.homefuneralalliance.org/home-funeral-history.html and https://www.greenburialcouncil.org/green_burial_defined.html.
My family has a cemetery on a small plot that was originally part of our farm in Michigan. I am related, either by blood or marriage, to the thirty-six or so souls that are buried there. I played in the cemetery as a child and I still work to maintain it today. My husband and I recently repaired some old stones that were broken or falling over.
The first person to be buried in our cemetery was Rachel Goeway Kellogg, wife of Ebenezer Kellogg. She died Dec 10, 1853, aged 30 yrs & 5ms. It was common for children to die at a young age prior to antibiotics and other modern medical treatments. There are several children buried in the cemetery. I am sure that all of these earliest people were buried in a simple wood coffin after being laid out for a day or two in the parlor of the big farmhouse. At some point, the more modern practices of embalming, expensively manufactured caskets, and concrete vaults were used. My father and stepmother were the first to be cremated, their ashes are buried in the far northeast corner next to his mother and brother.
I have many family members buried in the public cemetery in town, including my brother, sister, mother, and one daughter. There is room for me in the town cemetery, and I always planned to be buried there, but as I have learned more about the negative effects of modern burial practices on our environment I have changed my mind about how I want my body to be handled after death. I am choosing to be buried in our family cemetery because there I have the choice of a "green burial". I will have no embalming, coffin, or vault. I have a burial shroud that I will be wrapped in and lowered into a hole in the ground. My husband has chosen this as well. We will be surrounded by family on land that has sheltered us for two hundred years.
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