Cremations rise in Western N.C.

People see the practice as ecologically appealing, simpler and less expensive

ASHEVILLE -- James Atkinson plans to keep his wife at home in Asheville, inside a piece of locally crafted pottery, surrounded by mementos of her life.

Fusako Krummel flew around the world to deliver part of her husband to a Tokyo cemetery that the Methodist minister had helped restore to beauty.

Franklin sisters Sasia, 23, and Amber Rae Newman, 19, want the ink of their tattoos made from a tiny bit of their great-grandmother.

The remembrance offered by cremation is just one of the reasons that, as more people live and die in Western North Carolina, fewer bodies are being buried there.

Of the region's residents who died last year, 32 percent were cremated. Those 2,798 bodies cremated in 2006 represent an increase of a third in cremations from five years earlier, according to state records.

Every year but one in that period saw an increase in survivors seeking to cremate their loved ones for financial, spiritual, environmental or other reasons.

The numbers figure to keep climbing because of the philosophies of people such as Atkinson, who prefers cremation "if they can't just lay me out on the top of a ridge top someplace and let the vultures have their way."

"Preserving of the physical body is to me a sentimental thing that's not necessary," he said. "I'm done."

Atkinson turned 41 last month, the same age as his wife, Melissa Lindholm, who lost her battle with cancer Sept. 17 but will remain a presence in the home where her 6- and 2-year-old sons play.

The 5 percent drop in Western North Carolina residents who were buried, to 5,518 in 2006, presents a challenge to cemeteries and the makers and sellers of caskets and grave markers. The figures don't take into account those who are buried after cremation.

For funeral homes across the region, though, the trend toward more cremations has presented a chance to expand services.

In January 2006, Anders-Rice Funeral Home moved a 26,000-pound brick-lined crematorium into its Patton Avenue building.

The departed are incinerated there in a process that takes three to four hours.

Ceremonies still held

Even if the ashes aren't buried, choosing cremation doesn't mean avoiding a ceremony. Some survivors hold a funeral before, some afterward.

"Some families are asking, too, to accompany their loved one to their crematorium," co-owner and manager Tommy Rice said.

The funeral home lets families watch the body enter the chamber or press the button that starts the process.

Family members in some religions, including Hinduism, may take part in a ritual beside the crematorium, Rice said. Others wait for the process to run its course.

Eight years after immigrating, Fusako Krummel remains divided "one foot in Japan, one foot, psychologically, in Asheville," she says.

The man she married and followed to the United States, though, remains literally in both places at once.

The Rev. John Krummel rests for eternity surrounded by both his family and his fellow Christian missionaries. Half of his ashes are buried in Illinois, the other half in Japan, where he lived more than half his life. The cemetery's dilapidated gravestones for missionaries were replaced after he lobbied their owners.

The Japanese have cremated their dead for thousands of years, so Fusako Krummel takes it for granted.

"Cremation seems, too, much cleaner and more practical," she said.

Now it's catching on in the United States. Where cremation followed 6 percent of U.S. deaths in 1975, it disposed of 32 percent of those who died in 2005, according to the Cremation Association of North America, which projects that figure will climb to 57 percent by 2025.