Caribbean Cremations & Scary Cemeteries | 4M #213

Welcome to the two-hundred-and-thirteenth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #213, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

A first for Antigua

On Tuesday, a 29-year-old Antiguan female funeral director will open her country’s first-ever crematorium, offering the 100,000 residents of Antigua and Barbuda a new, local disposition option. She’ll also work with Antigua’s two existing funeral homes so they can offer their families cremation, which is sure to be appreciated given the islands’ ever-shrinking available burial space. Stefanie Meyer completed her mortuary science studies and apprenticeship in Connecticut and returned home committed to opening Meyer’s Funeral Home — but it wasn’t a simple task. Neighbors protested several proposed locations, and “as Antigua’s first crematorium, government officials had no established procedures,” requiring three organizations to work together to change legislation and create new guidelines. We agree with the Antigua Observer — Stefanie Meyer is a “revolutionary entrepreneur!”

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Scary, spooky, sacred spaces

We’re a few days late, but we had to share the latest rankings from our survey-loving friends at Choice Mutual insurance company. It’s a list you might be happy that your property didn’t make — anytime other than Halloween, anyway. Yes, Choice Mutual asked 3,004 Americans “which cemeteries they would be least willing to visit alone after dark” to come up with The 150 Scariest Graveyards In The U.S. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these properties are concentrated in the Northeast, and there are plenty that gained their “scary” status because they’re tied to history, tragedy, or pop culture.

Doing the right thing

Remember those 300+ piles of cremains that were discovered a few months ago in the desert outside Las Vegas? Authorities became involved in the investigation of their origins because while it’s not illegal to scatter cremains on public lands in Nevada, it is against the law for commercial entities to do so — and who else would have that many cremated remains in their possession but a crematory or funeral home? To preserve the dignity of the remains and to give family members a place to visit (once the identities of the deceased are identified, if possible, when the identity of the secret scatterer is uncovered), a local funeral home, Palm Mortuaries and Cemeteries, removed the ashes last week and will memorialize them in a crypt.

No small mistakes

As you well know, errors of any kind by deathcare professionals are not easily overlooked by grieving families. (I can’t express to you how upset I was when a cemetery misspelled the first name of a loved one on a form a few years ago). So, it can’t be surprising when funeral directors face major consequences — including lots of negative press — when making major mistakes. Two issues, both originating in California, made it to the news last week. In both cases, the wrong body was presented to a family, wearing the clothes of their loved one. One family has filed suit; the other probably will do the same, especially as the sight led one family member to suffer a heart attack in the chapel during the viewing — and the funeral home only offered a refund of 1% of the total $20,000 funeral cost.