Table Of Contents
In This Issue Editorial Letters News Slant Articles Speaking Out Loose Lips Dirty Dishes Common Sense HIV Digest Queer n There Sex Histories Movie Reviews Book Reviews Gay Video Reviews

Further Reading
Creative Cremains Containers
It's not as if every budding lesbian wakes up one morning and says "Mummy, when I grow up I want to...

Magazine Article	Articles Archive

It's a bit much; pumping all sorts of icky embalming fluids into your veins, a hairdresser trying to remedy terminally pillow hair, and they could have gone a little lighter on the rouge. Then there's cremation; no fuss, no muss, so sensible! There's something nice and tidy about being reduced to handfuls of gravel that can be tastefully spread around the camellias bushes in the garden, or dramatically flung from a Cessna as it swoops over Herring Cove.

These days cremation seems to be the burial method of choice for queers. While in the Midwest and the Bible Belt where only about 5 percent of people are cremated, and in the San Francisco Bay Area where the cremation percentage climbs to about 60 percent, nationwide the cremation rate hovers around 25 percent. Though no hard statistics exist the percentage of cremations among gays in large American cities like San Francisco is thought by some in the funeral industry to be as high as 80 percent to 90 percent, a phenomena attributed to several religious and social reasons, and AIDS.

View our poll archive

"I attribute the high number to the fact that in the Gay Area­" laughs Michele Corandelet, the openly gay director of the San Francisco Columbarium, at her slip of the tongue-- "I mean the Bay Area tends to breed more liberal social and political views. It's not always a financial decision, because the wealthy here certainly have the economic means for expensive funerals, but they don't value those things."

"Hundreds of studies show that the affluent and educated, are more likely to be cremated," said Buddy Phaneuf, a 4th generation funeral director in Manchester, New Hampshire. "For example, New Hampshire has a rate of about 30 percent, while in Hanover, where Dartmouth College is, the cremation rate skyrockets to about 65 percent to 70 percent."

In the early years of the AIDS epidemic cremation for PWAs was not necessarily out choice. "Just as health care professionals were nervous, many morticians and embalmers were hesitant or outright refused to deal with HIV infected corpses, so cremation was usually done. Now universal precautions are taken and it's different," explained Phaneuf.

"I'd guess that 98 percent of the PWAs who died who are brought to us are cremated, and are often the first in the family to be cremated," said Marianne Robertson, owner and director of Pacific Internment, a mortuary service in San Francisco since 1987. "Later, after experiencing the simplicity of cremation, when other family or friends die of other things they follow suit. In a sense gay men, who are often on the forefront of new ideas and trends, legitimized cremation."

Initially most of her business was AIDS related, but now with the death rate declining so has the percentage of AIDS customers. "But many of the clients now choose us because of their positive experiences with friends or relatives that died of AIDS," said Robertson, whose services usually cost $520; the body is incinerated in a wax-covered cardboard box, then returned in a plastic container. "I feel like we've done something good in the gay and AIDS community by providing a straight-forward, honest service."

Some PWAS, doubly shunned by their families for being gay and having AIDS and are already alienated from their religious upbringing and often physically distanced from the family burial plot, are less likely to feel any compunction about choosing cremation over cemetery burial. Others feel it's a waste of good land, and a waste of money.

And then there is a certain element of vanity. One New York man who has been living with AIDS for 14 years summed up the sentiments of many PWAS by saying, "I just hate the idea of them trying to prop up and pretty up this tired, old body. I mean, it would be indecent, and I'd look terrible. When I finally go, I want my haggard corpse to burn, baby burn!"

Traditional funerals tend to be in a church with the priest or minister reading arcane prayers from a funeral liturgy book. One of the attractions of cremation is that family and friends can take more control. "You can have the service on a mountain top, on a lake where dad loved to fish, or scatter them from a yacht at sea," said Phaneuf. "People get much more involved in the service helping select the songs and who is going to say what."

Phaneuf, who founded the Internet Cremation Society, a group of 50 or 60 independent cremation society owners marketing on the internet, also owns the Cremation Society of New Hampshire. He explained that the first cremation societies were formed about 30 years ago on the West Coast, most non-profit organizations whose members pre-pay a set fee. Cremation societies encompassing a country or state offer lower cost alternatives, particularly in small, one funeral home towns, where directors may over-charge for cremation, and all their other services.

Michele Carondelet, the openly gay director of the San Francisco Columbarium, recalls that her mother instilled in her at an early age that death wasn't an occasion of dread, but just another fact of life. After working as a florist for many years, she decided to get into the funeral business. "I didn't want to sell graves that cost as much as $15,000 to $50,000. It seemed liked wretched excess," explained Carondelet, who, after learning the ropes of the industry at a ground burial cemetery switched to cremation services. "I wanted to work in an industry that better reflects the desire of the Bay Area, and makes less of a dent in the pocket book."

While the average price in the United States for a burial funeral is about $5,500, a simple cremation-- you receive a cardboard box of the remains; dispose of how you wish-- begins at around $1,000; but that can quickly multiply, depending on if a memorial service is performed, if interred in a columbarium, and the type of urn. Wholesale urn companies-- of which there are dozens-- create vessels in the just about any shape imaginable; golf bags, bowling balls, the earth, and some specifically for the gay community; inverted triangles, rainbow flags, etc. (I can see it now, the Diva Collection; busts of Judy, Barbara, Diana, Bette....)