"This is the same generation that reinvented natural birth in the delivery room," says Carlson of Funeral and Memorial Societies of America. "I think we will see more boomers changing the way funerals are handled and see more people having at-home funerals."

As Arnold Goodman, a Minnesota rabbi, wrote in his 1970s book "A Plain Pine Box," the practice of surrendering our dead to funeral homes has taken us far from the intimate experience of death that was once a part of living. "Customs of the past, which required families to wash and prepare their dead ones for burial or cremation, for the construction of the casket and shroud, the choice of which families and friends would assume responsibility for preparing the dead for burial, for making arrangements with -- and for -- the family for fabricating coffins and burial garments, have all but disappeared."

When Stacy Black and Jeff Esley's father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, they decided that his funeral should be in keeping with the way he lived life, and not take place in the decorous anonymity of a funeral home.

Esley, who is a master woodworker, built his father a casket modeled after one he'd seen in the old western movies his father loved. Black made the satin lining for the casket; an aunt made the pillow. It was a way of keeping their father's death in the family. Black says, "It was something truly from the heart." Since then, Esley has received calls about making caskets for other people.

New traditions are arising all across the country. Ramsey Creek Reserve offers burial sites for biodegradable caskets, and forbids gravestones or plastic flowers in a burial that costs about half the cost of a traditional funeral home burial. The Funeral Consumers Alliance directs visitors to organizations that supply all the components of a make-it-yourself casket.

Or, for those for whom "individualizing" death means expression, not austerity or environmentalism, there's Whitelight Casket Co. in Texas. Whitelight has created "Art Caskets" that feature religious and ethnic themes, scenic landscapes, vocational and lifestyle images and symbols of patriotic pride and nationality. Designs include a rosary, breast cancer and AIDS awareness ribbons, an ocean beach, New York, the flag of Ireland, Our Lady of Guadalupe, clouds, the Last Supper and a lighthouse.

Sanders says that the movement toward independent casket dealerships is just a matter of fairness. He says that in his years in the funeral business, he saw too many families struggle to try to buy their beloved a decent funeral. When he retired, he wanted to do something to counter the industry that had fed his family for many years.

"People should have a choice," he says. "I don't know how funeral home directors sleep at night knowing they are ripping off people the way they are."

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