By Todd Aaron Jensen

There is one truth above all others – Nobody gets out of this world alive. Another truth is that, depending on how one chooses to be eulogized and memorialized, shuffling off this mortal coil can be an expense that is rivaled only by the homes and cars purchased whilst we were still vertical.

In today’s world, according to the “Wall Street Journal,” the funeral industry is a $15-billion-dollar-a-year business in which a traditional funeral and burial can easily run between $7,000 and $10,500. That cost can also rapidly increase, well into the five-digit zone, depending on a variety of factors including the type of funeral service desired, the style of casket, the selection of cemetery property and receptions that can rival those of weddings.

However, according to Thomas Lynch, one of the nation’s preeminent mortuary experts and the author of the award-winning book, “The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade,” while a funeral can be a huge expense, the value of a funeral is inestimable

“By getting the dead where they need to go – the grave, the tomb, the fire, the sea, to Heaven, or wherever – the living get where they need to be – to the edge of a life they will be living without the departed,” says Lynch, who has served the community of Milford, Michigan as a funeral director since 1974. “A funeral serves the living by caring for the dead. That is the essential purpose.”

When it comes to making funeral arrangements, Lynch cautions grieving families about going overboard in honoring their dead, a trend he traces to the 1963 publication of Jessica Mitford’s seminal book, “The American Way of Death,” which dealt with what Lynch calls “the oddments of the mortuary and the math of caskets.”

For forty years, Lynch has witnessed survivors laying down credit cards and digging deeply into their savings to secure every last ruffled accoutrement, fancy bell, and glitzy whistle in what he says is usually a subconscious effort to buy one last moment of intimacy, respect, or reparation with the departed. “Flowers, choirs, bagpipes – they’re all accessories,” Lynch intones. “They’re a comfort sometimes, or a diversion, but they’re not essential.”

Lynch says that every funeral celebrates a life having been lived – a life that was a story – with a beginning, middle and end. He goes on to say that the basic narrative of the funeral – the story’s final act – is pretty much the same with every family: Someone dies, someone cares that someone has died, those who loved that person need someone to broker the way they want that person to be remembered and to deal with the pragmatic and hygienic reality of handling a deceased body and coordinating what is euphemistically known in the funeral industry as “the final disposition of remains.”

He opines that will not be changing dramatically anytime soon, since the mortality rate for humans continues to hover around 100 percent. “The simplest advice I’ve got when it comes to death and disposition: Don’t overspend on the accessories and don’t under-participate in the essentials.”

Stunned by grief, typically in some degree of shock, and often a mélange of conflicted emotions, survivors are easy prey for a business motivated by corporate quarterly projections and financial bottom lines.

“To the death-care industry, it’s just business, like any other business,” says Chris Bentley, 59, author of “It’s Not About the Funeral: What You Need to Know Before You Go.” This is a trend that has increased in recent decades as a significant percentage of the country’s 23,000 commercial cemeteries and funeral homes – once family-owned, mom-and-pop ventures with deep and enduring community ties – have been purchased by five enormous, publicly traded companies with an aggregate market capitalization of nearly $17 billion dollars.

“Once upon a time, the funeral director and his family lived above the funeral home and knew everyone in town by name,” says Mark Harris, author of “Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial.” “Today, it’s unclear if the people at the top of these corporations know anything about death and dying, except that maybe it will one day happen to them, too.”

Though the demand for the services of the funeral industry is stable, the market growth is lower than anticipated, according to industry reports. In 2009, the major funeral corporations reported earnings drops of between 10 and 38 percent over the previous year’s earnings, according to “Financial Times.” This is largely due to the spreading acceptance of cremation as a final disposition. Cremations can be a fraction of the cost of a traditional burial and, with a double-digit rise since the 1980s, today represent nearly one-third of the death-care market. The National Funeral Directors Association also anticipates the cremation rate to rise to 60 percent by 2020.

Lisa Carlson, the executive director of Funeral Ethics Organization and co-author of “Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death,” believes that the tide may be shifting ever so slightly in favor of consumers as funeral homes in most states are freezing their prices. That, according to Carlson, has a lot to do with who is making funeral arrangements – baby boomers!

“Baby boomers are a much savvier generation than their parents,” says Carlson. “They shop more intelligently and plan ahead with more sensitivity to culture, society, and environment. The baby boomers are the information generation. The generation that blended families in a new way, demanded the right to home school and home birth, made us recycle, tried alternative medicines, and they’re taking charge of this critical life event, too. Things are changing. We’re seeing more home funerals, more green burials and a rapidly increasing cremation rate.”

Harris agrees, saying that boomers are moving away from the funeral and burial traditions their parents and grandparents embraced. “The American way of death (has been) expensive, alienating, and bad for the planet,” says Harris. “That’s beginning to change, largely because we’re getting smarter. So much of what we know about this part of our lives is just plain wrong.”

Carlson concurs: “We teach our kids about money, religion, politics, and maybe sex, but we’ve done a terrible job on dying and funerals.”

What many funeral consumers may not be aware of is that a funeral home and some of the services they offer are not legally mandatory. For example, in most states, bodies do not need to be embalmed. That said, if there is a desire to have an open-casket, most funeral homes do (and have the right to) have a policy that embalming (or as it is called in the industry, “arterial preparation”) takes place. That is also true of a vault for ground burial. While there is no legal requirement for one, a cemetery can require it so that their grounds do not sink as a metal or wood casket deteriorates.

While most funeral homes and cremation services provide an incredible level of expertise and professionalism when it comes to dealing with the dearly departed, a family could, if they choose to, handle many of the services that the funeral home offers. In most cases, the proper legal disposition of human remains is the only requirement after a death occurs. Everything else is just choice, show, ceremony and ritual.

The law allows grieving families to care for their dead, just as their ancestors have for many generations. In the vast majority of states, families can wash and dress the dead, purchase or build a casket, conduct a funeral in their own home, work with the county to file the proper paperwork to secure a death certificate and burial or cremation permit and then transport their loved ones to the crematory or cemetery themselves. While this is a highly cost-effective alternative, the fact is that most Americans today would not be comfortable with this and would prefer to rely on the services of a professional funeral director.

Carlson does however point out that the “do-it-yourself” funeral may work for some and that families can connect with Funeral Consumers Alliance (www.funerals.org) to explore the range of options that exist in their particular area, including all local, regional, and national death-related laws and requirements.

For those who prefer to have their loved one’s affairs handled professionally, Bentley encourages smart shopping as the number-one step. “Ask a number of companies about their direct cremation package, which is a virtually identical service from one place to the other. That way, you’re comparing apples to apples, price-wise,” Bentley says.

When a family member dies, hundreds of questions must be answered in a very short period of time. For that reason, discussing one’s wishes for their funeral and final resting place with their family is one of the kindest and smartest things a person can do. Some people even have the foresight to purchase cemetery property and set aside funds specifically for their funeral and burial arrangements.

While this is an excellent idea, experts interviewed for this story uniformly discouraged pre-paying for funerals. With life expectancy rates higher and more baby boomers relocating, remarrying, or simply changing their minds about things, it is important to note that most cemeteries do not buy back property and trying to privately sell cemetery space can be very difficult.

As for pre-financing a funeral, Harris says the best thing to do is to establish a Totten Trust, an interest-gaining savings account to which you name a beneficiary who will use the account balance to pay for your post-mortem sendoff. “The Totten Trust is portable,” says Harris, “meaning that it can be applied to any funeral home (if you’re using one) and can cover expenses for a non-funeral home sendoff, too.”

While funeral homes, churches and cemeteries are still the norm, baby boomers are beginning to look into alternatives for funeral venues including rented halls, country clubs and private residences. When it comes to a memorial service (with no remains or only cremated remains present) the choices are even greater and often chosen because the place was of importance to the deceased. Thus, it is becoming very common to have final curtains drawn on beaches and in parks, as well as in favorite bars or restaurants.

“The word funeral comes from the Latin, funus. That doesn’t mean ‘fun for us,’” Bentley says with a smile, “but rather, to fade away or release, to let go. Funerals provide closure for survivors and a transition ritual for the deceased. A lot of times, a funeral is the last time members of a family or friends will ever gather in one place, and that’s important.”

It is important because it is a chance for those who knew that person to accept the death, find closure and to reflect on the legacy the person left – to the world, or to them personally. It is an opportunity to share a story, a memory and a thought of what that person said or did that has outlived them.

Legendary comedian and filmmaker Woody Allen, who has said he’s not afraid of dying but just doesn’t want to be there when it happens, has also said he doesn’t want to gain immortality through his work, but rather by not dying. Alas, he, as all of us, will not accomplish his wish, so we best be prepared for the inevitable.

Todd Jensen is a regular contributor to numerous national and regional magazines including “Life After 50.”