The Centre for Natural Burial

But realistically, if you’re anything like most of us, you’ll avoid anything to do with death until you’re forced to bury a loved one. According to Smith, avoidance is not always a good thing.

“If you do not leave any funeral plan, there is a good chance that your family members may find themselves manipulated into buying fairly expensive goods and services that may well leave them feeling violated,” he writes, while at the same time cautioning readers against prepaying.

Smith is a Winnipeg-based writer and author and his book reflects his western roots. The first half of the book follows the history of a family funeral home operation in Winnipeg, while relating it to the national scene. He writes about how large corporate chains have taken over smaller funeral homes, without letting the public know about the change in ownership or even changing the name of the business, yet hiking prices.

The book is filled with interesting information such as the fact that our idea of the traditional funeral is not traditional at all and has only existed for the past 100 years or so. It also outlines how easily funeral costs can inflate and how to avoid that.

However, the real strength of the book is found in the second half. Here, Smith outlines how to plan your own funeral and to avoid having grieving relatives pay for extras that simply are not needed. He discusses such topics as organ donation, whether or not you should be embalmed, what type of services you may want and whether or not you should be cremated and what arguments may arise from that decision. Most importantly, he stresses the need to discuss your wishes with those who will be arranging your funeral. He cites the example of the man who wished to be cremated but no one knew of that wish until his will was read. Since wills are usually read long after the funeral service is over, his wish never became reality.

“When I started, I joked to my wife that even if I did not get a book out of this, we would at least end up with a funeral plan,” Smith said in a recent interview. “So, in one sense a lot of the research was devoted to exploring and better understanding options that were open to me.”

Smith admits there were things even he had never heard before.

“The whole green burial/natural death movement was completely unknown to me when I started researching this book,” he said. “It will be interesting to see how the funeral industry makes its peace with green funerals. While the initial thrust of the movement is towards simplicity, in the U.S., corporations are already looking at ways to sell expensive shrouds and costly plots in so-called natural burial grounds.”

Even after writing the book, Smith is keeping his options open when it comes to planning his own funeral.

“My funeral plan essentially constitutes a series of options: 1) organ donation; 2) green burial in a municipal cemetery if that is available, 3) cremation and scatter in a designated location. Other people can, and should, make their own choices — preferably after they have read my book.”

Elizabeth Patterson is a writer and musician in Sydney.