"We're all just walking each other home."
RAM DASS
What is a Home Funeral?
A home funeral is a community-led death care process that takes place in the days following someone's death. It is considered "community-led" because in most cases, it takes out the role of a traditional funeral director and places the intimate tasks of after-death care into the hands of the friends and families of the departed.
This care can involve washing and anointing the body, celebration and ritual, and extended time with the body of our loved ones in the comfort and intimacy of someone's home.
Why have a Home Funeral?
It helps us slow down
A body can be kept safely be in a home for days following someone's death, and it is your legal right to do so. Having access to more time with your loved one's body can help the community fully honor the wishes of both the dying and the grieving. Grief takes time, and home funerals can give us time to say the goodbye we feel is necessary.
It can aid the grief process
Having additional time, privacy, and hands-on engagement with your loved one's after-death care can support the grief process in myriad ways; creating space for those who are grieving, supporting with closure, facilitating intimacy among the community of friends and family, and transforming one's relationship with death.
It may cost less money
Funeral homes can be wonderfully supportive resources, and, not all funeral homes are created equal. Taking into consideration factors like body disposition and transportation, holding a home funeral may cost you less money if you aren't paying for the services of a funeral home.
"People from all cultures have been caring for their dead regardless of the climate, type of illness, age of deceased, or traumatic circumstance surrounding the death for millennia.The professionalization and commodification of the funeral industry really took off at the beginning of the 20th century. It has become a common belief that individuals are no longer able to care for their own deceased and must hire funeral professionals to provide the care. This is not the case. Regardless of where you live, you have the right to provide much, if not all, of the care necessary. Caring for the body is safe and possible." -The National Home Funeral Alliance
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Is it safe to keep the body at home?Yes. Dead bodies do not pose an increased health risk any more than when they were alive. With appropriate hygiene and cooling techniques, it is perfectly safe to keep a loved one home for several days. Embalming itself poses more than an eight times greater risk to embalmers of contracting myeloid leukemia than the general population. Bodies with infectious diseases are not usually candidates for embalming and are simply kept cool in a professional setting if not at home. (Source: National Home Funeral Alliance.)
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Are home funerals legal?Yes. In every state and province it is legal for families to bring or keep their loved one home until the body is ready for disposition.
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What does a home funeral cost?The average professionally-directed funeral now costs $8,343 (NFDA), without casket, vault, cremation or burial costs included. A home funeral costs the price of ice, if used, copies of the death certificate as desired, gas to transport the body, and a rigid container, such as a cardboard box or pine casket, usually totaling under $200. Burial and cremation costs would be added at whatever the going rate is in your cemetery or facility. (National Home Funeral Alliance.)
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What are the legal requirements in Colorado?Yes. The legal requirements for the body is that is must be embalmed OR refrigerated/put on ice after 24 hours. Contagious or communicable diseases must be reported to local or state health officers by person acting as funeral director