The Unclaimed and the Unwelcome
Welcome to the two-hundred-and-fifty-ninth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #259, kicking off the week with urn-est (so sorry) issues. We’re on fire this week, so lets get to it.
An Unclaimed Remains Story with a Twist
One of my serious pet peeves in consumer reporting on the funeral industry is when a funeral home closes and the headline enumerates the cremated remains found in the basement (or wherever). Chalk it up to my (cliche) jade journalist approach to the news, but knowing how common it is for families to leave remains (or even return them) for whatever reasons, I always want to call the reporter and tell them that the real story is unclaimed remains.
As a result, I nearly skipped this story from the CBC about a cremated remains, “scandal” in Nova Scotia. The upshot is that while the former owner blamed the stash of ashes on that very same issue (unclaimed remains piling up over decades) the actual circumstances here go way beyond typical family abandonment.
When East Coast Memorial took over Serenity Funeral Home in the Annapolis Valley, they didn’t just find forgotten urns sitting on a shelf. They began calling families who were under the explicit impression that they had already buried their loved ones years ago. Multiple relatives have now discovered that the urns they put in the ground contained only partial remains, or worse, someone else’s entirely, while the actual complete remains were left sitting in storage under a sticky note.
So, while the headline looks like the classic sensationalized “abandoned remains” trope on the surface, this one isn’t just about families failing to pick up ashes. It’s an actual disaster of split remains, misidentified urns, and families grieving all over again.
It’s also the subject of a story I’ll be running here tomorrow. I spoke with Honnalora Hubbard of Coldspring about how she got her company to support National Cremated Remains Placement Day and the concomitant promotional push (so stay tuned).
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‘A Very Dangerous Facility’
Something you should know about me is that I am radically anti-NIMBY. The Not-In-My-BackYard had been the bane of my existence since well before I started covering the funeral industry. I’ve been a professional reporter for most of this century and started at town meetings. They are brutal. Occasionally, someone who wasn’t sure whether the town had a mayor or that that person’s name could possibly be would get wind of something going on near their homes and lose their minds.
Then, they would come to the meetings, spew nonsense I was obliged to write down, and extend my workday by half-an-hour, while also lowering my IQ. So, I have a bias, is what I’m saying. I also have lived about a block from a crematory for the last 30 years. I didn’t even think about whether or not the local funeral home had one untill I started writing about them. I have a lot of trouble reporting “fairly” on anti-cermatory sentiment.
All that to say I’ve been following this story on a bunch of NIMBYs trying to stop a crematory from opening. Here’s their primary argument:
“I mean, even though they are saying intermediate levels, I understand what intermediate means, but what does it mean, you know? That’s a concern.”
Oh, I know. It’s just gross to use your children as a shield. What you’re saying is: “It creeps me out and I don’t like the idea of being near one.”
Now the school board is getting in on the action, also formerly voicing their opposition to a project they literally haven’t cared about since its origination back in March. They’re saying this is a very dangerous facility that shouldn’t be anywhere near the school.
