NC favors cremation over burials for first time ever. It’s not just about the money.

When Phillip Dechene died at 60, his wife Latrelle had his body cremated — a first for her family. But his ashes came in an impersonal plastic bag, so she chose a more intimate resting place for her cherished husband: his box for Remington shotgun shells.

Dechene hunted avidly, always landing his limit on deer. So Latrelle packed some empty shells and his favorite camouflage shirt inside the box along with their wedding picture. She tucked all that under the bed so she could reach down and give it a pat.

Once her grandson reached under the bed to touch the box, explaining, “I just wanted to talk to grandpa.”

For the first time in 2020, more people in North Carolina chose cremation over full-body burial. This fits a national shift that occurred in 2015, according to data from a funeral directors trade group.

The rate of cremation hit 51% statewide last year, triple what it was 20 years ago, a News & Observer analysis of state death certificate records shows. By 2030, 70% of Americans will cremate their loved ones, the National Funeral Directors Association predicts.

Cost and convenience are the most obvious factors pushing people away from traditional burials, said Henry Davis, manager of the Cremation Society of the Carolinas.

A funeral complete with burial in the Triangle can cost in the thousands of dollars, while some basic cremation services can be found for about $1,000. As of 2019, the median cost of a funeral nationally was $7,640 and the median cost of a funeral with cremation was $5,150, says the national funeral directors group.

But beyond the savings, families are opting for cremation because it offers flexibility and growing options for personal touches. Families are memorializing loved ones with what was traditional burial flair rather than parking their remains on a closet shelf.

While cremations on average are less expensive than burials, things can get pricier depending on what follows.

Raleigh’s Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, the oldest in North Carolina, offers families the chance to have loved ones scattered on an artificial reef off the coast of Florida for a fee that starts at $595. “It looks like the lost city of Atlantis,” said Jodie Dupree, market director.

Brown-Wynne says it can also arrange for ashes to be launched by rocket into orbit around the Earth for $4,995, or for $12,500, dropped onto the surface of the Moon. But an afterlife in outer space is extremely rare. People more often select destinations closer to home.

“Once upon a time grieving families were handed the deceased ashes and left,” Dupree said. ”Now, you can do 10 different things with Mom’s ashes.” he said.

Dupree recalls a woman who had her husband’s ashes turned into a cubic zirconium ring.

Attitudes are Shifting

While the majority cremates in North Carolina, the practice varies widely by both geography and race. Birthplace counts, too.

The state’s urban counties are fueling the trend. Durham, Orange, Wake, Forsyth, Guilford and Mecklenburg counties all top 54% for cremations, while Sampson, Bladen and Robeson all hover below 30%.

Many urban families are transplants, Dupree said. They don’t have family plots in a Raleigh or Charlotte cemetery.

Statistics bear out this truth. Non-native residents of North Carolina cremate at a rate of 68%, far higher than natives, death certificate records show. Moving a body back to New York or New Jersey takes a financial and emotional toll. With cremation, a family buys itself time. There is no deadline for deciding about ashes, and they are portable.

But as cremation gains more acceptance on average, it remains less popular among Black North Carolinians — only 34% selected the option in 2020. A majority of whites residents chose cremation since 2017, and Hispanic residents cremate at roughly the same rate.

Black citizens have historically run 10 to 20% percentage points lower in the cremation category in North Carolina, according to the death data. The Cremation Association of North America has noted that traditional funerals are extremely important rituals in the African American community.

Attitudes among Black families in the Triangle are shifting, however, said Raleigh funeral director David Prince, who noted that Lea Funeral Home on Poole Road added a crematorium in only the last few years.

People now see that families can still have traditional celebrations of life with singing, group prayer and shared meals afterward -- rituals not historically paired with cremation.

At Brown-Wynne, funerals in advance of cremation have been highly personalized affairs for more than a decade, offering touches that range from festive to profound.

N.C. State University graduates, for instance, can request a cremation service decked out in Wolfpack memorabilia.

Families can also scatter flowers over a loved one’s body or push the button that starts cremation.

‘Why put him on a bookshelf?’

Signs of this transition in North Carolina aren’t always obvious, but they are in plain sight once you know where to look.

At Oakwood Cemetery near downtown Raleigh, director Robin Simonton passed rows of grave stones dating back a century and stopped to point out a park bench made of granite.

“There’s a person in there,” she said, motioning to the bench’s hollow leg.

All around Oakwood, benches hold remains. Robert Thomas Greene Jr. is interred inside one of them, which is inscribed with this selection from Hamlet: “This above all else, to thine one self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not be then false to any man.”

Oakwood includes a section with nothing but cremation memorials, where remains get buried every week. Couples rest inside two-foot squares, their ashes buried only two feet deep. A nearby six-foot-tall columbarium has space for 144.

“We have buried people in their favorite tackle box. I’m still waiting for someone to be buried in a purse,” Simonton said.

Oakwood’s possibly most extravagant cremation story belongs to Michael John Gressman, who died of brain cancer at 32.

An avid runner and triathlete, some of Gressman’s remains rest with his glossy black gravestone, which reads, “Get up, show up, don’t embarrass yourself.”

But his mother, Donna, took the rest of his ashes home. Anytime she takes a trip, she said, some of Michael comes along. For the last decade, she has sprinkled her son around the globe.

“He’s in the back wall of a confessional in Italy,” Donna Gressman said. “I was going around the Vatican and I found a hole and I shoved him in there. He’s been to Sweden. He’s been to Russia. Oh God, we’ve been so many places. We did the whole Mediterranean. He is in so many churches.”

Lastly, she keeps a small bag of Michael inside her golf bag at home in Brunswick County. When he fails to bring her luck, she zips his pocket closed.

“What good was it going to do putting him in the ground, where he can’t go anywhere?” she asked. “He was bigger than life. Why put him on a bookshelf?”

Beyond the country churchyard

At Brown-Wynne, Dupree refers to a “lost generation” — people who chose cremation without a burial option.

Scattering ashes can cost nothing. But for the multitudes who were dropped over favorite fields, into oceans or out of airplanes, there is no permanent marker of their time on Earth.

Cremation gives families time to decide whether or when to inter. That flexibility isn’t always positive, Simonton, the Oakwood director, acknowledged.

He gets calls from people who somehow end up as the family depository for ashes. They’ll say, “I’ve got four people and I don’t know what to do with them,” he said.

Having time to consider where to put a deceased’s ashes can let a family consider a fitting end. Even if death is sudden, decisions can wait.

Mourners have options. Trinity Baptist Church on Six Forks Road has no cemetery. But it is home to a brick columbarium with niches for funeral urns, a fountain at its center and dozens of names on plaques.

In a glass-front structure serving the same purpose at Raleigh Memorial Garden, a highway patrolman’s ashes are on display next to his badge.

Latrelle Dechene waited several years before she moved her late husband’s shotgun shell box from under her bed. In time she decided to seek a more permanent home for his ashes.

Latrelle went to Oakwood and asked about the requirements for burial. Were there any rules? Would she need a special urn? There weren’t, and she wouldn’t.

So Phillip Latrelle’s remains now lie in the cemetery’s northern corner, still tucked inside that box. She visits often, placing flowers below his stone and laying oyster shells on the top of the stone.

Phillip came from Delaware, and nobody loved shellfish more.

“I thought he’d like that,” she said. “It was a part of him.”

This story was originally published June 25, 2021 at 6:00 AM.