Inhumation or cremation?
The manner of disposing of the body is the choice of each family, according to their beliefs and their wishes. It’s good to know that whatever your choice, inhumation or cremation, the funeral service may be held at a church or the funeral home, with the body or cremated remains present.
There is a variation to traditional inhumation, burial with a casket in a cemetery, as was historically practiced in Québec. It is inhumation in a mausoleum, which is a kind of indoor cemetery. The casket is put into a crypt, a space in a wall, which is then sealed and covered with a marble plaque with an inscription of the deceased. In mausoleums, there are family chapels that can hold several caskets.
The practice of cremation in Europe goes back to the Bronze Age. Sometime around 1300 BC, there was a radical change in practices, and people went from burying to cremating bodies. This continued until the third century AD. Most Protestant denominations acknowledged cremation in the late 1800s, but the Catholic Church did not authorize the practice until 1963 and it was only in 1983 that it permitted the ashes of the deceased to be present at funeral services. Today in Canada, as in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, the majority now opts for cremation.
What does cremation consist of?
Cremation is a procedure that consists of reducing the body of a deceased person to ash and bone fragments under intense heat. The body is placed in a casket or an appropriate container and then put into the crematorium. At Memoria, we encourage you to rent instead of purchasing a casket for the viewing. In that case, the body will then be placed in a crematory container. There is never any doubt about the identity of the deceased: each furnace holds only one body at a time and the name of the deceased person is recorded in three different places. Cremation, which takes approximately two hours, occurs at a temperature varying from 1050 to 1400°C. In such heat, the container, the clothing and the body disintegrate and only bone fragments remain, which are ground up once they have cooled.
Finally, the ashes are given to the family. They can choose an urn to keep, or they may decide to bury it or place it in a columbarium. That term comes from the Latin word for dove (columba) and originally referred to the place where doves and pigeons were housed. Funerary columbariums have individual and family niches that are grouped together in much the same way as a dovecote. Loved ones of the deceased may also ask for a small quantity of ashes that will be put into a reliquary to keep at home.
At Memoria, in addition to a standard selection of urns, we have a choice of original and limited edition urns..
