If you’re really a hands-on person, the Natural Death Care Project (NDCP), based in Sebastopol, Calif., may be just what you’re looking for.
Advocates of home- or family-directed funerals, NDCP provides consumers with the information they need to care for their departed loved ones themselves. Advice ranges from how to bathe and dress a body to suggestions on keeping the body on a unseen bed of dry ice while the deceased lies in state in his or her own bed.
The NDCP also offers casket-building plans, various publications and information packets for those interested in alternatives to the standard funeral home service. For more information, go to www.naturaldeathcare.org, or call 707-952-6666.
In “Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love” (Upper Access Inc., $29.95), author Lisa Carlson includes everything you need to know about taking care of your loved one’s remains. She addresses home death and home visitations, embalming, body and organ donation, burial, cremation and other practical matters.
Carlson is also executive director of Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA), a national non-profit organization that promotes consumer education in the funeral industry. The association’s Web site emphasizes a cost-effective approach to death. The site explains, among other things, how to build your own casket, where to buy custom caskets and urns from local artisans, and how to contact discount retailers of caskets and urns. Call 802-482-3437, or visit www.funerals.org/famsa.
If you’re not ready to handle all the details yourself, perhaps Richard Lamb’s Funeral Service and Resource Center in Westmont can help. Among other innovations, the service has begun using historic homes for memorial services. Richard Lamb, president of the funeral service and resource center, says families find these surroundings more comfortable and more personal.
Lamb’s facility is more showroom than funeral home. Products and services are openly displayed and discussed. No wakes or services are held there; rather, the family chooses a more appropriate place for a memorial service, such as home, a church, a cemetery chapel or a historic home.
