Old notions die hard for U.S. funeral professionals

Dying is easy, the death-care industry is hard.

That’s the grim news from the International Cemetery and Funeral Assn., a trade group representing some 6,500 cemeteries, funeral homes and crematories, that gathered here last week not far, incidentally, from a nearby pyramid hotel entombing gamblers. For four days, about 500 conventioneers somberly listened to the gospel delivered by a host of prophets: Prepare for the future or perish, so to speak.

“Your cushy lifestyles are being threatened,” said Doug Gober, a Louisiana-based retailing guru in the death-care industry. He compared his audience to the ill-fated inhabitants of Pompeii trying to determine what to grasp before being buried in volcanic ash.

Funerals will increasingly be colored green, not as in money, although let’s face it, that’s what the annual convention is all about, but as in the environment. The percentage of people who select cremation, which saves precious land, is already around 30% nationally. That figure is expected to rise above 50% within a generation or two.

The national average cost for a traditional funeral is around $7,000. For a cremation, it’s about $1,500. You do the math. And whether there is a body or mere ashes, people want to be near or among the trees, whether they are just visiting or taking up permanent residence.

In an apparent contradiction of the back-to-nature trend, funerals will often be, simultaneously, more high tech. People want what amounts to a cinematic short of their life. The eight-minute-or-so digital presentation, typically built around family photos and any old footage, is to be played at a service, even broadcast live over the Web for those who can’t make it. Later, the short, perhaps the entire service, will be archived on the Internet, where it will achieve its own kind of immortality.

“Being in Hollywood, we can pull from a lot of unemployed talent,” said Tyler Cassity, president of Forever Cemeteries and the Forever Network, which includes seven cemeteries in Missouri and California, including the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, and a pioneer of video biographies for the deceased. “We get closer to being a studio all the time even though we are on top of a mortuary.”

More than three-quarters of the business owners in the industry are mom-and-pop operations. Many already qualify for senior citizen discounts and have only recently mastered how to send an e-mail without calling for tech support. Now they’re supposed to produce a keepsake “life tribute” video?

Like any convention, ICFA was concerned too with building a better mousetrap. From around the country, death-care industry suppliers were on hand to show their wares for a better way to transport dead bodies by air, a better mix of embalming fluids and a better backhoe to dig gravesites.

But along with the latest hardware came a warning to the funeral directors from the prophets: The public hates you. Between graveyard scandals in the media and shows such as HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” professionals in the death-care industry are viewed as unctuous vultures gouging the grief-stricken for personal gain.

“There isn’t a whole lot of positive being said about us,” said Gober. “Merchandising, that’s where they’re most negative.”

Later, Gober went on to suggest that if consumers are willing to drop scads of money on a wedding -- as is now expected -- why shouldn’t a similar standard apply for funerals?

“How far would folks go if we gave them the chance?” he asked. “Maybe they’ll spend $20,000 if we let them.”

There’s reason to dream. Modern medicine has improved, but they haven’t invented a cure for death yet. That light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train coming -- it’s the baby boomers.

The mightiest demographic block in U.S. history is already changing things by often being the ones to call the shots for their parents’ services. And unlike earlier generations who were led by authority, the boomers want it their way when it comes to both their parents’ and their own funerals.

“The G.I. generation, the silent generation, they’d come in and say ‘Just do what you do,’ ” said Joe Weigel, communications director for Batesville Casket Co. of Indiana. “But the boomers are saying, ‘It’s all about me and I want to make it special.’ ”

Special can take many forms. In Marin County, on one 32-acre site at least, it means being practically invisible. At Cassity’s Forever Fernwood, there will be no gravestones, no artificial markers for those who choose burial.

And with the famously green county’s cremation rate above 80%, the cremated will have their ashes cast to the winds to eventually settle in the surrounding forest. Indeed, the plan already underway is to transform the former traditional cemetery into -- as the website puts it -- “a place of ecological restoration, community and remembrance.”

Visiting families and loved ones, equipped with hand-held computers and GPS technology, will be able to locate the last known spot of the deceased. Upon the site, amid its tranquil landscape, they can then replay the deceased’s biography.

These often elaborate video biographies, which can range in price from several hundred dollars to $100,000, get at the core of the funeral business, said Cassity. “Our profession is memories,” he told the conventioneers.

The audience was spellbound as they watched clips from Cassity’s library, although the concept and availability have been around for years, The sophisticated videos showed interviews with the subject, his family and friends, voice-over narration to old family footage and photographs, all intercut at certain points with additional footage of scenic beauty and the like.

“It’s like your own private reality television show,” said Cassity, whose good looks have earned him comparisons to Brad Pitt within the funeral industry. “They want it because they watch it constantly.”

More inexpensive versions of these “life tribute” videos are beginning to hit the market. Their purpose is to allow technophobes and Luddites to make a competent biography

For example, a Michigan-based company called funer- alOne showcased its new software that allows a funeral home to produce a video for less than $20 each. A person’s photos and videos can be mixed with more than 100 different themes encompassing religion, occupation, sports, family and hobbies to make a DVD or video in about 15 minutes, according to the firm’s president, 24-year-old Joe Joachim IV.

“Funeral directors are scared to death of technology,” he said. “We hold their hand through the whole thing.”

If you miss the show at the service and it isn’t posted on the Web, Sergio E. Aguirre, head of Miami-based Vidstone, has just the thing for the video generation. Inspired after a funeral last year, he developed a thin, solar-powered video screen that can be embedded in a headstone.

Weather-proofed, the small screen will be able to replay an eight-minute video three to five times a day. Screens come in 7-inch, 15-inch and, for large-screen lovers, 23-inch sizes.

“Instead of coming to a cemetery and everybody grieving and crying,” said Aguirre, “why not make it something you can bring the kids and grandkids to?”

The videos are a big part of an overall trend of “personalization,” something the boomers demand, say funeral industry experts. It’s no longer one casket or urn fits all. Responding to America’s growing waistline, Batesville has begun rolling out “plus-size,” even “oversize,” coffins.

“You can sometimes run into trouble with the oversize caskets because they won’t fit inside the standard 30-inch burial vaults,” said Weigel. “It’s just one of the challenges our industry has to deal with.”

Bigger dead people are only part of the problem; you can have almost anything put in or on a casket or urn these days to tailor it to the individual. Photos, emblems, engravings and mementos.

Casket corners can be whacked out and replaced with personal symbols in keeping with the spirit of the deceased, including ornamental flowers, religious icons and military insignia.

A cultural emphasis on personalization can create serious moral issues as well as more mundane ones for the funeral industry as well. The Terri Schiavo case illustrates what every funeral director already knows: Wishes within families often conflict. End-of-life issues don’t end with death, as the Schiavo case has illustrated; her parents wanted a traditional burial, but she was cremated at her husband’s direction.

Even among families that agreed upon cremation, for instance, there could easily be disagreement about what to do with the ashes. As the population has become more open to cremations, it’s also becoming more accepting of dividing up the ashes among loved ones who often live far apart. Urns now can be bought in smaller sizes, and Batesville recently unveiled a new line of jewelry that allows for a small amount of ash to be stored within a religious symbol and Native American-inspired designs.

“Rather than putting it on a shelf,” said Weigel, “you can wear it around your neck. You can keep it close to you.”