20. What Can You Do With Cremated Remains? 15 Ideas You Might Not Have Considered.
Jun 09, 2023Season 1Episode 23
G Seller and Co - Andy Eeley & Joe Clarke-Ferridge
The options for cremated remains are not just limited to scattering or an interment. Listen to this episode for some more diverse ideas and suggestions.
The options for cremated remains are not just limited to scattering or an interment. Listen to this episode for some more diverse ideas and suggestions.
Hi, welcome to the latest episode of Lifting The Lid. My name is Andy Eeley, I'm a Senior Funeral Director with G Seller Independent Funeral Directors and we've been serving bereaved families since 1910. And I'm sure you're well aware there's lots and lots of different myths, misconceptions and taboos around the funeral profession and what goes on. So we decided to put this series of podcasts together to try and dispel some of those myths and of course answer any questions that you have. So please do, like, share and subscribe and send those questions, send them to liftingthelid@gseller.co.uk and we will do our absolute best to answer them for you. It genuinely is Our Family Caring For Your Family. So I'm joined today by my co-host Joe again. Hello, Joe, you alright? Hello. Yeah, good afternoon. Brilliant. So we're going to be talking about 15 things that you can do with cremated remains. Now, as we go through this list here, you will realise that we are perhaps more familiar with some than others, but in all honesty, I'd love for someone, a family, to come in and ask about some of the tremendous ideas here. So we're going to kind of, in a fashion, work our way through this list. And we have had some experience, haven't we? So, yeah, let's stop talking. People don't count. Yeah, okay. We'll try and get 15, it might be 14 and a half, but we go for it. So interment in a burial ground, that's that kind of an obvious one, isn't it, really? Yeah. So either a cemetery or churchyard. You get permission to do so especially in a churchyard, if there's still space but yeah, it's very simple, of course, with any of these talk to your Funeral Director but we can organise that with the local authority in some sort of casket, you know whether that's a wooden casket or a cardboard container of some sort. Or biodegradable. Yeah. Or as I had once at a cemetery, the chap loved ice cream, he was interred in the Neapolitan ice cream tub. Absolutely brilliant. So not biodegradable at all? No, absolutely not. Wow. They allowed it, that was the important thing. So, yeah, there is the paper trail there that we have to have, of course. And usually there's a fee, isn't there as well it'd be worth mentioning that. And of course there's loose interment so it doesn't necessarily have to, it's what we call under turf, isn't it? So the hole is prepared and we scatter cremated remains directly into the hole and then cover over. So while you're talking about scattering, of course another one scattering in different places. So whether it's favourite location or burial ground, although I suppose we should say favourite location, I mean, strictly speaking, letter of the law you should only scatter someone when you've got the landowner's permission, or if it's in an authority, such as a cemetery or a churchyard. Absolutely. We don't want this kind of Great Escape type, sneaking people up the trail. It doesn't seem quite appropriate to do that. And it's something we're not supposed to do. Yeah, I mean, favourite location, of course, there can be all sorts of places. I've laid people to rest on their favourite green on a golf course, a favourite location in perhaps a national park, with permission, always get permission. And certainly when we're walking about, sometimes we see people at rest that there's blatantly been no permission. Yeah, I've been walking through Burbage Common and I've seen them there where you're never going to get permission to do. I understand why, but yeah, strictly speaking, trying to stick to somewhere and it's worth recording where someone is scattered, just for the record as well, because people do family trees years down the line, especially if you have decided to go and scatter at Burbage common, which of course we don't endorse, but if you have done that, then no one's ever going to know where they are because you never would have handed any paperwork in for it. So worth just making a note as to where somebody is. So we don't have to go to flight, we can have a tribute, we can have a garden tribute at home, so it can be in your back garden. You can have an urn or perhaps a bench, and we can have a cremated remains section in the leg of a bench, perhaps a vase, a garden type vase. I've had a sundial before. Brilliant. And at home, of course, inside the house. So cremated remains container, decorative urn, decorative urn, lots and lots and lots of different options there, isn't there? Including, of course, photo frames, so you can get specific urns where the cremated remains go in sort of the stand for the frame, but then you got the actual picture frame in front of it, so it's a picture of the loved one there and that can sit on the mantle piece, or on a display cabinet. Yeah, absolutely. That's brilliant. And jewellery, I mean, that rolls quite nicely onto jewellery. Wanting to keep your loved one with you. So we can offer all sorts of small kind of lockets, aren't they? And you open and put a little bit cremated remains in there, seal up and keep them with you. We've got a showroom for jewellery, of course, so if people want to come and see them, we can actually show them with different items. I mean, there's jewellery in there, but there's also candle holders, tea light holders, things like that. So another option, should people want to transfer a small amount of cremated remains into them, of course, you can't get a whole person's created remains in these things, but a token amount, I think. The showroom also, we have glass pieces in there. Glassware, so it can be a sculpture or perhaps a paper weight. And jewellery, of course, that can be made out of glass. As well. So the cremated remains is made into glass or diamonds. There's all sorts of different things that we can do for jewellery. Of course, if you've got your own kind of item of jewellery that you just want to keep your loved one or piece of your loved one with you, there's nothing to say. You can have a pill container or something like that. Why not? Absolutely. Memory bears as well. I mean, this is something, so usually a little pocket in the back of the memory bear, and then, of course, you can kind of cuddle with your loved one, I guess, in that respect. Yeah. Really horribly, of course, but quite often with children's cremated remains, memory bears can be quite a nice thing. They can be made as well from your loved ones clothing, so that the whole piece can be absolutely personalised. Some great examples of that. Absolutely brilliant. I can see the look you just give me, because I just looked at the next one the list. Different. Yeah. Firework. Firework, yeah, absolutely. So it's an option. You can be turned into a firework and rocketed up. Brilliant. Never had any experience in it, but it's not the same with tattoos as well. There's another option there that we can have. As I said at the beginning, if this is something I'm not familiar with, I'd love for someone to come in and we find exactly what you do and how you go about doing it. These things are possible. I mean, living in the landlocked Midlands, burial at sea, you can take your cremated remains and be sort of interred in the sea there. Yeah. So there's certain rules around that, isn't there? They have to be in certain locations. If we were to do an actual burial of a cremated remains casket, it has to be a certain weight, it has to have certain holes drilled in it. It has to be so far away from the shore. From the shore. That's the word. Cremated remains of course, scattering. You can in theory, do that off your own back, couldn't you? I guess, yeah. So next one, spitfire aircraft. Yeah. So we've actually researched this a little bit. This is an option. So you can go and spend the day and travell in a spitfire and scatter your loved ones cremated remains from the spitfire, which for someone perhaps military historian or someone into military aircraft, that's a phenomenal. It'd be great. Yeah, absolutely brilliant. Brilliant experience all around that one. I think I've mentioned the glass pieces there. Space, so cremated remains can go into space. And I've actually seen a company here, I think it's kind of like a weather balloon, and you have a receptacle underneath and it's filmed as well, so it's a great idea. And the weather balloon goes up to the edge of space and then you can press a button down on the earth and it opens the canister. And the cremated remains are spread like that. Unbelievable, isn't it? Yeah, it's a great idea. Especially where you start from interment in a burial ground or cemetery and then you've got something diverse as having them sent into space is mad, isn't it? It's brilliant. Yeah. It's fantastic idea, really. I have no idea how much something like that would cost. I imagine that's quite substantial. Final one now. I think we've got 15. I think this will make it 15. Yeah. Okay. So this is a bio urn, isn't it? Potentially, yeah. Planted, planted cremated remains mixed with... I'm not into planting flowers, so we're planted with some kind of compost and tree grows from there. Absolutely brilliant. And of course, in a similar sort of fashion, you can have, grow a rose bush around, perhaps where you scatter cremated remains as well, if it's in your garden or something on those sort of lines. Yeah. Something we need to be careful of, though. Cremated remains can have an effect on the environment, so yeah, we can't really stress enough. I know we sort of had a bit of a joke about what we can do, but it's really important that we have permission from the relevant people to make this happen and we're not affecting the natural environment around us. Agreed. Brilliant. Thank you, Joe. Great, thank you. I think that draws this episode of lifting the lid to a close. If you genuinely, seriously do like, share and subscribe, and if you have any questions, please email them to liftingthelid@gseller.co.uk thank you and we'll see you next time.