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How much thought have you given to who cares for and prepares the dead? Who are those people in society with the black suits and the caring hearts? These are questions that I have asked myself in the past, and in the present have answers for. I have been attending a college of mortuary science for the past year studying to become a funeral director. It is an interesting field, but it is a field that has not changed with society as we advance into the future. Every business is looking for a new spin to keep up with the changes in society, but morticians have been stubborn in excepting a rapidly changing, and mildly A.D.D., populous.

Currently the mortuary field is dominated by family owned funeral firms that have been in operation by the same people for generations. The funeral business is as old as humanity itself, and it has come a long way since the days of the Egyptians and the Greeks. But what the general public sees offered to them today in a funeral service has not changed much since the American Civil War. In American culture a traditional funeral is a night or two of viewing, a chapel service, a committal service, and the casket containing your loved one is dropped in the ground. The people performing these services are "old timers." The stereo-typical black suit, half smile, and firm hand shake of comfort if you will, and they aren't opening up to the changes placed before the funeral service very well.
Cremation is on the rise in the States. It is predicted that by the year 2010 that cremation will be at 43% for all funeral services. In 2000 cremations were only 15% of all funeral services, and in just 10 years it will have made a tremendous jump. Funeral Directors across the nation used to sigh and get careless with cremation cases, but now it is an issue they are being forced to face. Funeral firms are losing money because they don't know how to properly package and memorialize cremation requests.
Society is demanding more out of a funeral. I've been to many seminars during my attendance in mortuary school, and all of them are pushing the concept of value to the "old timers." The key point: Personalization, Personalization, Personalization! People are wanting more value out of a funeral, and funeral directors are having a difficult time adding more bang for the buck to funeral services. Who wants their mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister, child, or any other loved one put in the same box, same burner, same clich service that everyone

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