West Aussies ditching formal funerals in favour of unconventional memorials like ‘living wakes’

West Australians are increasingly ditching traditional funerals for more personalised memorials, including “living wakes” where the terminally ill can attend their own celebration. Cost-of-living pressures and a growing willingness to talk about death are also encouraging more people to hold an ashes-spreading ceremony for family and friends in place of a formal funeral before cremation. And they’re getting more creative about what to do with their ashes, too. Some are now opting to have them dropped into an active volcano, fired from a cannon or made into a piece of jewellery. The environmentally-conscious are opting for green coffins that burn more efficiently, natural burials at the increasingly popular Pinnaroo Valley Memorial Park and even choosing to have their ashes infused into a living tree. The head of WA’s Metropolitan Cemeteries Board, which oversees the State’s cemeteries and performs cremations, said there had been a shift in the way people were commemorating death. “We’re seeing people moving away from really big funerals to smaller, intimate type funerals and more of a celebration of life than a mourning process,” MCB chief executive Kathlene Oliver said. “We had a lady who was an amazing quilter and when her funeral was held the family converted the chapel, it almost looked like a haberdashery store . . . we’re seeing quite a few of these sort of things where people are really celebrating the person and less of the traditional type of service than we might have seen five years ago. “We’re also seeing a lot more people who are wanting to celebrate post cremation, rather than prior. In the past we would have had a funeral service and the person would be buried or cremated. Now families are wanting to wait until their loved one is cremated and then having a celebration. “They’ll take the ashes and scatter them in a place important to the deceased.” They are also seeing more people ask for ashes to be split — including a recent case where the ashes were divided into 16, she said. “People are wanting to put them in jewellery so they can wear them . . . you can have the ashes turned into diamonds and things like that or manufactured crystals,” she said. She said the the high cost of funerals continued to drive a move away from burials towards cremations. But environmental concerns and people getting more comfortable talking about death and dying were factors, too. “Funerals are expensive . . . I think we’ve probably seen over the years a 40 per cent increase in people choosing cremation and I think that is a cost-based decision,” she said. “But also people don’t want to be taking up a parcel of land. So for some people there’s a perception of the environment friendliness of cremation. We’re seeing a trend towards environmentally friendly choices, so around cremations and around more environmentally-friendly coffins so they burn more efficiently.” Most West Australians — more than 80 per cent — now choose to be cremated. The MCB is forecasting a record number this year of between 12,000 and 13,000. Perth’s growing Hindu and Sikh community has even prompted the MCB to install facilities where family’s can personally send their loved one’s body into the cremator or watch it happen. Last year 154 families requested to “view the charge” and Ms Oliver expects that number to increase to 200 this financial year. For some it is about closure, for others religious significance. Traditional Hindu cremations often involve the deceased’s eldest son lighting the fire. Devotees of Buddhism or Shintoism, on the other hand, may opt to take a fragment of the deceased’s bones after cremation. So far this year the MCB has had 15 families request “bone selection”. Perth friends Cale Donovan and Sam McConkey run Bare, a funeral and cremation provider that operates without a traditional funeral parlour but allows them to be planned online or over the phone. For them it is partly about bringing down the cost and partly about giving the bereaved time and space to make hard decisions without the hard sell. “The biggest two trends are prepaid funerals and simpler funerals,” Mr Donovan said. “That’s not all about making it cheaper, it’s also about wanting to personalise it.” Bare has had requests from people wanting to have their ashes dropped into a volcano — “like an offering to the gods” — or fired out of a cannon. Erin Griffin is a death educator and former funeral director who describes herself as an end of life tour guide. She says there is a “huge hunger” in the community to talk about death and dying. She advocates everyone having a “when I die” box that includes funeral plans. “I think we’re definitely moving away from that traditional manner and people are learning, oh my gosh, you can do that,” she said. “Realising you don’t necessarily need to have a funeral where the body is present, they’re the most expensive, and COVID really showed us you can have memorials, you can be off-site, they can be anywhere. “You don’t have to be in a chapel, standing shoulder to shoulder. You can be in a park in bare feet with children running around. “I’ve also seen an increase in where people have recorded messages and they’ve been played at the memorial.” Since the introduction of voluntary assisted dying she said she has also seen a rise in “living wakes” where people organise and attend their own memorial. If there is a downside to these trends, it might be the loss of history contained in a cemetery. For that reason the MCB has plans to let families voluntarily register their loved one’s final resting place. “With the large number of cremations happening we’re seeing more West Australians choosing to dispose of their loved ones outside the cemetery,” Ms Oliver said. “So, for us, we’re losing a little bit of that social history. In the past we could tell you where every West Australians final resting place was, we can’t do that now. “(In a cemetery) you can read the history of that person, who can see trends of the plague where we’ve seen mass deaths. . .we’ve got that history. We don’t have that now.”