Your Funeral: Burial or Cremation?

Preplanning funerals at funeral homes in Solvay, NY is an excellent way to make sure you get the funeral you want and to make sure that you don’t leave your family with the additional burden of having to make almost 275 decisions about what they think you might have wanted in a very short period of time after you die.

Cremations and casket burials are the two most common funeral options. Each of these choices offer ways to keep your memory alive and to give your family comfort in the days, weeks, months and years after you’re gone.

With many casket burials, the actual burial is preceded by funeral visitations, funeral services, and graveside ceremonies. Visitations are usually held right before funeral services, while gravesite ceremonies are held at the cemetery plot where the casket will be buried.

Casket burials will include embalming if there is going to be a viewing (part of the funeral visitation), but embalming may not be necessary if a viewing is not included in the visitation (the body is held in frigid temperatures to slow down decomposition).

Casket burials, until recently, have been a traditional part of American culture. In many small and rural communities where many generations of people live their entire lives, family or church cemeteries abound and the expectation is that casket burials will be the means of final disposition.

Casket burials have many advantages. They are typically accepted and, in some cases, preferred by most religions. Additionally, casket burials in cemeteries offer friends and families a physical location to go to spend time after their loved one has died. With the addition of a headstone or grave marker, a tangible and lasting monument to the deceased’s memory is provided.

There are some disadvantages to casket burials. If you don’t have cemetery plots already or you don’t have a church or family cemetery (or you are not eligible for burial in a national cemetery) where burial plots are free, then a plot must be purchased for casket burials.

Additionally, casket burials are permanent and in one place, so family members who don’t live close to the cemetery have the expense and time of travel to visit the grave. If a family moves and wants to move the grave to another cemetery, they can, but doing so is both very complicated and expensive.

Cremations can be direct (with no funeral service, with the option of holding a public or private memorial service at a later time), or they can be preceded by visitations (with or without a viewing) and a funeral service, after which cremation takes place.

With cremations, there are several options for handling the cremation remains. Cremation remains can be buried underground (this is common among spouses who are cremated and who have a spouse who is buried), stored in a columbarium (a memorial headstone is placed on the slot where the urn is stored), buried in a cemetery’s urn garden (a specific section designed for burying urns), split up into equal portions for each family member to have, or put into wearable jewelry or made into art pieces so that your loved one is always near you.

Now is the time to plan for the future. Whether you choose a casket burial or cremation, be sure to share your plans with family members so they know what you’ve decided and they can be spared the stress, when the time comes, of having to guess at what you would have wished for at the end.

For more information about preplanning funerals at funeral homes in Solvay, NY, our compassionate and experienced team at Bagozzi Twins Funeral Home, Inc. is here to help you. You can visit our funeral home at 2601 Milton Ave., Solvay, NY 13209, or you can call us today at (315) 468-2431.