As Families Opt for Cremation, Industry Expands Services, Choices

"We haven't been shocked by what we've seen. We expected it," said Nicodemus, who serves on the association board. "It was just a matter of time. That time just got here quicker."

Maryland's numbers are similar to Virginia's. The association estimated the cremation rate in the District at 58 percent in 2007. The rate is expected to surpass 65 percent by 2010.

The trend is leading more funeral homes to install crematories, and cemeteries to set aside land for cremation gardens. While cremation was once considered the alternative to burial, industry experts say that families today are choosing to bury ashes rather than placing them on a mantel or scattering them.

Andrea Schwarz of Herndon's Chestnut Grove Cemetery said that staff members noticed the trend in June 2007, when they buried more cremated remains than caskets.

"There really is a place for cemeteries for the healing process and for families and individuals to have a place to come and reflect," Schwarz said. She remembered talking to a woman who had held onto the ashes of her husband for years. "And it was her 11-year-old daughter who said, 'But where do we go? Where do we go if we want to visit Dad?' "

In the cemetery that stretches behind Fairfax Memorial Funeral Home, two headstones mark the grave of Debbie Nicholas's mother and father. His ashes rest in a box tucked into the earth above her blue casket.

Nicholas, of Chantilly, buried her mother, Rose Fiore, in 2005, knowing the woman did not want to be cremated. But before Joseph Fiore died six months later, he had told his children to do whatever was most convenient. Because he died in Florida and his children were in other states, cremation made the most sense.

"He was a very practical man," Nicholas said. He had left his children an inheritance, she said, and would not have wanted it wasted shipping his body to Virginia. "He would consider that throwing money away."

Fairfax Memorial, which recently installed a second crematory, estimates that cremations make up more than 30 percent of its business and 20 percent of its burials. Owner Mike Doherty said the rise in cremations may be related to an easing of religious restrictions and to a more diverse population. For many Buddhists and Hindus, for example, cremation is the custom. Relatives often choose to push the button that starts the crematory, Doherty said.

Sam Found, who runs funeral homes in Manassas, Culpeper and Fredericksburg, said that cremations represent 40 to 50 percent of his business and that the industry is finally realizing that customers want options in the handling of ashes. Found said cremation starts at about $1,500, but once services and other options are added, it can approach the cost of a traditional burial, anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000.

"We can't sit around in our industry and build caskets like the old days," Found said. "The options are becoming A to Z. Before, it was A to D."

Found was responsible for entrepreneurs Zimmerman and Mervine's first sale back in March. Today, samples of their products are displayed at funeral homes across the region. After seeing one of the products at the funeral home in Fredericksburg, a woman chose a planter to memorialize her daughter, son and grandchild.

"We have people ask all the time, 'What are those about?' " Found said. "We tell them, and some will say it's not for them and some will say, 'What a neat idea.' "

Zimmerman, a stay-at-home dad, and Mervine, who installs tile, say they are regular guys who did not give much thought to the death industry. They never would have considered pursuing a patent for their process, they said, if signs did not point to an emerging market.

"Everything is heading that direction," Mervine said. "Whether it is this idea or something else someone else comes up with, it's going in the direction of cremation."

There are endless possibilities for personalizing memorials when people choose cremation, Zimmerman said. Headstones in cemeteries, he said, are so nondescript, listing the name, a date and perhaps a mention that the deceased was a spouse, child or parent to someone.

"Maybe our generation, mine and yours, is just looking for some way to say we had a wonderful life or we didn't," Zimmerman said. "Maybe people just want to be a little more expressive of how they feel about life."