Why Are More People in the United States Choosing Cremation?

By Blake Blomquist · Memorial Design Artist and Monument Installer · 31 years of experience

Why are more and more people in the United States being cremated these days?

The cremation rate in the United States has been rising slowly but steadily over the past 30 years. Today, in many areas of the United States, the cremation rate is more than half.

What Often Happens to the Ashes

Saddening statistics show that far too many cremated remains are never permanently placed, and some are eventually discarded.

Think about it… at first a wife has her husband cremated. And she sets his ashes in a container on the mantle, or on the second shelf of the hutch in the dining room… or maybe on the bedside table. Eventually, as she grows older, she gives those ashes to her daughter or her son and says please keep these for me after I am gone.

At that point, they end up on the closet shelf. Or maybe in a cabinet in the garage. Or even in the attic or down in the basement in a box along with other items that are seldom used or seen. And then later on down the family line they simply get discarded.

One funeral director that I recently spoke with said that he has over 400 boxes of cremains sitting in a large closet at the funeral home that family members had not come back to pick up after their loved one was cremated — even after multiple calls and written requests to do so.

Cemetery operators have stated that it’s not uncommon to find a box of ashes by the front door of their office when they open up on a Wednesday morning, or commonly finding them lying outside up against a random tree in the cemetery, or simply placed on top of their spouse’s gravesite that was buried traditionally years before.

Why Cremation Has Risen

The reasons why cremation has made a very slow but steady rise across North America are many… and a little confusing.

Human beings’ oldest tradition is “burying the dead.” But more importantly… memorializing their life with a headstone or marker of sorts, and then visiting those graves on a birthday, anniversary, or on Mother’s or Father’s Day, has become a little less and a little less important to almost half of the population.

Some say because the costs of traditional burial have gone up some. Others will say because families are not as close-knit as they used to be. And many say that even now, deeply aging family members are seldom kept at home but rather placed in an “old folks home” or in a hospice facility.

And in today’s culture people are still moving around a lot, still working a job, and just “busy” on a day-to-day basis up into their late 70s. Add in the fact that the average lifespan is now in the late 70s. And with as often as people change where they live from one place to another, many older people move away from their longtime friends later in life.

So as is clear, various factors contribute to the cremation trend.

When There Is No Permanent Memorial

But the most intriguing part of cremation is the surviving family not actually memorializing that loved one’s life in any permanent and lasting way whatsoever. A trend is scattering the ashes somewhere during a 15-minute ritual.

Many family members don’t consider the options of having a headstone or memorial placed somewhere, or a bench with a name and dates with the ashes set and sealed inside of it, or in a small niche in the mausoleum wall down at the church or at the local memorial park with a photo engraved on the front cover…. There are many other things that many families do. But to do “nothing” has become more and more accepted.

The question is “why”?

Maybe it’s because we have social media platforms that hold details of a person’s life. Maybe it’s because our society has become more self-absorbed than ever. Possibly it’s a product of it becoming more common to live far away from family members, with them being scattered all over the continent. Possibly it’s just a “shift” in culture.

We used to take the TV and have it fixed. When a car needed a transmission, we got it repaired and kept driving it. We didn’t ever throw away leftovers. Our culture has become a “disposable” culture. Maybe that is part of the reason. We could study and debate it for as long as we want and maybe never pinpoint the exact correlations and reasons.

The Desire to Be Remembered

But one thing is clear. When a person’s days are coming to an end and they know that they have only a few days or even hours on this earth, the thought that their life will be memorialized is a calming feeling. One of solace that runs deep inside of a person’s consciousness. A feeling of assuredness that they will leave a mark that won’t be removed or forgotten. A headstone or a marker that isn’t just an engraving of letters and numbers… but something that tells a little bit about the story of their life spent. At a place where their loved ones can come in private to pay their respects long after they are gone.

Maybe these feelings don’t get commonly communicated by a deeply aged person, or by a younger deathly ill or injured individual who is certain to pass away. But pastors and caregivers often say that the desire of being remembered is commonly mentioned.

Maybe the trend will reverse and these aspects of life will become more and more important to those left behind… or maybe not.

I guess it all depends.