Here’s a look at another way of dealing with death on your own terms: the home funeral.
Alison and Doug carried Caroline upstairs to the bathtub, where they washed her skin and hair, dried her limp, 45-pound body with a towel and placed her head on a pillow on the bed in her old room. Alison slipped a white communion dress on Caroline, turned up the air-conditioning and put ice packs by her daughter’s sides. She put pink lipstick on the child’s paling lips, and covered up Caroline’s toes and fingers, which were turning blue at the nails, with the family quilt.
Caroline stayed in her bedroom for 36 hours for her final goodbyes. There was no traditional funeral home service, and no coroner or medical examiner was on hand. Caroline’s death was largely a home affair, with a short cemetery burial that followed.
via Home Funerals Grow As Americans Skip The Mortician For Do-It-Yourself After-Death Care.
A friend of mine who died in Durham a couple of years ago had a home viewing. He also was buried in Raleigh at a “green cemetery” that he had convinced to offer such things.