COURTESY OF ALISON KIRK
FAMILY
UNDERTAKING
HUFFINGTON
03.03.13
loved ones when they died. His dad died
in 2008 of multiple myeloma, a cancer of
the plasma cells, and, 13 years before that,
his mother died of an aortic dissection.
New York is one of the few states that
requires a funeral director to be present or to sign off on nearly every part
of after-death care. Medical examiners
and coroners have to turn over bodies
to funeral directors, and the law says
an undertaker has to personally
oversee each funeral. (The other
Caroline’s
states with similarly restrictive
parents
commlaws are Connecticut, Illinois,
issioned a
Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan,
gravestone
based on
Nebraska and New Jersey).
her dancing
For his father, Bentley says the
glass
figurine.
process was unnecessarily intrusive. He wanted a cremation,
which would usually require a
death certificate, transport of the
body and a cremation fee in most
one’s spouse and children.”
states, but he had to meet with
Because his mother was airhis hospice nurse, the town clerk
lifted to a hospital in Vermont to
and the local funeral director to
have her heart condition treated,
arrange all the paperwork necessary. The Bentley says he had a much easier time
total cost: $940. He reluctantly obliged.
with her. She died in the hospital, and
“One doesn’t wish to think about
he was able to take her body — stored in
things like cost and comparison shopa box — from the morgue to his car. He
ping at the time of a loved one’s death,”
drove her to a chapel for a prearranged
says Bentley. “At the same time, I do not
viewing, then to a crematorium near
believe, and my father before his passthe Vermont-New York border (it would
ing did not believe, that some stranger
have been illegal to transport the body in
should be entitled to walk off with a
New York state). He returned home for a
week’s wages or more in return for a few
memorial at his house with her ashes. It
hours of work at the expense of the loved all happened within a day.