The online way of death

Log on, click, buy a cremation -- hassle-free funerals are here, thanks to the Net.

By Eve Tahmincioglu

Apr 28, 2003 | When Karen Mitchell's grandfather had a stroke and began hospice services at home in February, she realized the family had to start thinking about arrangements for his impending death. "I thought, 'Jeez, what are we going to do with the body.'"

Mitchell, 32, who lived next door to her grandparents in Hooksett, N.H., knew her grandfather's wishes were to be cremated, but she didn't know where to begin.

The thought of going to a funeral home "creeped" her out even though she's no stranger to dead bodies, given she's a nurse in the intensive care unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "The whole environment at funeral homes with so much grief, not knowing whose grief I'm going to run into," she said. "To make matters worse, I'm the type when I'm nervous I start to laugh and crack jokes."

And then it hit her. A year earlier when she went online to find an urn for the ashes of her beloved dog, Sampson, she came across a Web site that sold not only pet urns online but an array of cremation services for people. At the time she thought it was strange that a firm would offer such services via the Internet but she was curious and ended up spending an hour and a half perusing the urns and reading through the site run by the Cremation Society of New Hampshire.

Mitchell returned to the site in February and ended up planning and buying her grandfather Cecil Kurz's entire cremation online.

Mitchell is the type of consumer who makes some funeral directors nervous. With their elaborate funeral homes and their propensity to glad-handing, it is not surprising that the entrenched funeral industry bristles at virtual shopping carts and faceless consumers. But experts who follow the industry say consumers who buy everything from books to insurance online are starting to think, "Why not funerals?"

A growing number of funeral home operators are posting their price lists on Web sites and offering services for sale online. The option is perfect for those who want to avoid funeral parlors lined with grieving people, heavyset undertakers in dark suits and cadavers.

The choice, however, is not yet a click away in every town. Funeral directors, in large part, are not rushing to add virtual retail to their funereal repertoires. Many aren't anxious to put their coveted price lists online for the entire world to see. Such a move would inevitably lead to online comparison shopping by consumers, opening up a new gateway into a notoriously secretive industry long seen, whether rightly or wrongly, as eager to take advantage of people at their most vulnerable. (The average cost of a funeral these days is well over $5,000, not including burial.)

There's also some pushback against the idea from a more philosophical standpoint. Undertakers and even some consumer advocates are worried that online funerals might trivialize the gravity of death. Mourners, they say, may benefit from interaction with a mortician or a visit to the crematorium so as to better accept death. Distancing oneself from the grim details, via the Internet, may not be psychologically healthy.

Bottom-line, though, consumers today are convenience and no-hassle oriented in every aspect of life. Why not death?

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