Cremation:

I was talking to my mother about cremation earlier and a couple of interesting stories came out.

My aunt's good friend died this year, and they recently had a service for him. He had been cremated several months ago, but they hadn't decided what to do with the ashes. The Episcopalian church he went to has a big ashes box in the church. You just put the ashes (still in their container) in this big box standing next to the altar. My aunt's friend's ashes were apparently contained in a cardboard box that could have been sent by UPS. Wouldn't that be a weird delivery to get?

A family at a garage sale in Atlanta decided they wanted to sell everything from their house. Including an urn containing ashes. A couple of garage sale buffs bought the ashes, named them Gracie, and took her around for a while. They finally lost her though.

One of my grandmother's friends died several years ago and was cremated. Cremation is a fairly new thing in the Catholic Church (the Church has allowed cremation of the body since 1963, but only since 1997 has cremation occured before the funeral. The ashes must still be buried in consecrated ground), so many people are still unsure of how to deal with it. At the wake for this woman, the family rented an empty coffin from the funeral home to have in the room for the wake. We aren't sure whether the ashes were inside the coffin or not.