2322 Ash Questions

Not long ago, I was at an event up north and one of the motivational speakers there named Tim Richardson told me about a banner he'd seen. It was at a place where deceased loved ones were turned into ashes. A crematorium.

Tim said the banner they had hanging on the front of the building seemed wrong somehow. Wrong in the first place because it just didn't seem dignified to hang a banner on the front of a institution that ushers the remains of folks to eternal rest. And even wronger because the banner said, "We do cremations right." 

Really? Have we reached the time in our national decline from all things mannerly and appropriate that we wax hyperbolic and competitive about the services we render in the funeral industry? 

We do cremations right? 

Has there been a spate of cremations done wrong that the ordinary cremation consumer has been subjected to? "Yeah, I took in my granny and boy oh boy did they mess her up. Not even close to complete incineration. And the urn had obviously been purchased on sale at K-Mart." 

I suppose it's possible. A crematorium I once visited had a fancy machine that automatically sifted the cremated ashes to take out lumps of bone and other bits like tooth fillings and such. It was called, of all things, a cremulator, which for some reason sounded like a machine I operated when I was a teenager working at Dairy Queen.

So it's possible some less than right crematorium didn't employ a cremulator and the one that does cremations right does. "We were so disappointed in what that inferior place did with Aunt Madge. The ashes were a little chunky... 

"So we took her into the place that does cremations right. And had her re-cremated."

America, ya gotta love it.