Archive for year 2014
Unclaimed Cremation Urns, Oregon State Hospital, Oregon
Unclaimed cremated remains is a growing dilemma for funeral homes. For various reason, families will choose not to pick up the remains of their loved one after cremation. Despite our best efforts to contact the next-of-kin / informant, our funeral home probably houses about 50 such unclaimed cremated remains (larger funeral homes may have upwards of a couple hundred unclaimed remains).
Many states allow funeral homes to bury/scatter/dispose of unclaimed cremains after a couple years of holding, but — as you can imagine — it just doesn’t feel right to “get rid” of unwanted cremains. So, like the picture below from the Oregon State Hospital, we just hold them in storage, awaiting a family member to claim them.
A Real Life Funeral Crasher
Many of you have probably seen the movie “Wedding Crashers”. At the very end Will Ferrell’s character decides to quit crashing weddings, but takes it up a notch by crashing funerals. I’ve always known that some people “just show up” to funerals for the food, or simply because they enjoy funerals (yes, these people exist). But here’s a story that proves the myth of the funeral crasher is a real thing:
By Paul Chapman in Wellington, New Zealand:
The man attended up to four funerals a week, even taking home leftovers in a “doggy bag” container.
Danny Langstraat, a director of Harbour City Funeral Home in Wellington, said his company finally became so irritated with the intruder’s behaviour that it took a photograph of him, which it distributed to its branch offices.
The firm also alerted grieving families to his presence.
“He was showing up to funeral after funeral and, without a doubt, he didn’t know the deceased,” Mr Langstraat said.
“We saw him three or four times a week.
“Certainly, he had a backpack with some Tupperware containers so, when people weren’t looking, he was stocking up,” he told the Dominion-Post newspaper.
Read the full story HERE.
Personalized Cremation Beads
These personalized beads are made by Dream Glass of Canada. They contain cremated remains and, as you can see, are personalized with pictures/art that represent the deceased. These specific beads were made for a precious teenage girl.
This is an absolutely fantastic way to memorialize a loved one as it displays beauty in the midst of sorrow.
Joke of the Day
When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Mozart was buried.
Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.
When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, “Ah, yes, that’s Mozart’s Ninth Symphony, being played backwards.”
He listened a while longer, and said, “There’s the Eighth Symphony, and it’s backwards, too. Most puzzling.”
So the magistrate kept listening; “There’s the Seventh… the Sixth… the Fifth…”
Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, “My fellow citizens, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Mozart decomposing.”
