Though cremations in Hayward, CA are only recently becoming more popular, they’ve been around for thousands of years. But what is a cremation? And why should you choose one for your deceased loved one or your own passing?

The cremation process can be broken down to three main parts: body preparation, the actual cremation, and processing the ashes.

There are a lot of steps that need to take place before a body is cremated. First, a funeral director needs to obtain a cremation authorization document, usually signed by closest surviving family members. The funeral director then goes through a series of checks to ensure proper body identification. Next, the body is processed to remove any items that the family doesn’t want cremated with the body, or things that cannot be cremated with the body like jewelry and medical devices, especially pacemakers.

Once prepared, the body is put inside a cremation casket and checked again for proper identification. A metal identification tag that won’t burn or melt is also placed inside the cremation casket to ensure the remains end up with the right family after cremation.

Cremation chambers are usually heated with fire and built from fire resistant bricks and special masonry compound designed to stand up to extremely high temperatures. The cremation casket holding the body is placed directly into the cremation chamber. At the height of the process, the chamber reaches over 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. It usually takes 2 hours for a body to be reduced to bone fragments and ash, but the time can vary depending on factors such as the size of the body, type of cremation casket, or even the percentage of body fat to lean muscle.

After the incineration, the remains are left to cool inside the chamber for about 30 minutes. They are then processed and checked again for any remaining medical debris and identification. The cooled bone fragments go through a processor that grinds them down into fine ash. This final ash is what is returned to the family for funeral services or interment.

There are many different ways families deal with their loved one’s cremated remains. Some of these include:

• Casting, or tossing the cremated remains into the wind.
• Raking, a process in which the ashes are poured over loose earth and raked into the soil.
• Trenching, or burying the ashes in a shallow grave. Sometimes performed on a beach so the ashes are eventually carried out to sea by the tide.
• Aerial scattering, an expensive option, is when a professional pilot takes the ashes into the air and scatters them from the sky.
• Water scattering, or simply scattering the ashes into a body of water.
• Ringing, a ceremony in which a loved one places the ashes in ring around a tree or home.

Do you have more cremation questions? Deer Creek Funeral Service can help. Pay us a visit at 20630 Redwood Rd Castro Valley, CA 94546, or give us a call at (510) 317-7890 to learn more about our Hayward, CA cremation services.

Though cremations in Walnut Creek, CA have become more popular in recent years, they aren’t a new fad. Historians believe that humans started burning their dead as early as 3000 B.C, as they have discovered pottery shards and urns that service as evidence.

Cremation became more and more popular around Europe and what we now call the Middle East until Homer’s time, around 800 B.C, when it became the most common disposition method. This rise in cremation is assumed to be because of the growing number of dead from both war and disease.

By 395 A.D, cremation and the when the Roman Empire were at their peaks. In fact, ancient Romans stored cremated remains in decorated urns like we do today. However, the early Christians still practiced traditional Jewish body disposition, and therefore disapproved of cremation. This proved to be ancient cremation’s downfall, because when Constantine made Christianity the official Roman religion in 400 A.D, the practice almost disappeared in favor of the traditional Jewish burial.

Cremation drifted out of history until around 1873 when an Italian professor displayed his new cremation chamber model at the Vienna Exposition. His new invention jump-started the cremation revolution on both sides of the Atlantic.

The first modern cremation chamber in the United States was built in Washington, Pennsylvania in 1876 by Dr. Julius LeMoyne, with the second not far behind in Lancaster, PA in 1884. Soon, crematories were being built all across the US, and by the year 1900 there were 20 in operation.

The practice took off even more when, in 1913, Dr. Hugo Erichsen started the Cremation Association of America as a way to spread to word about this modern way of safely and hygienically disposing of bodies. The foundation was originally made up of doctors with concerns about the spread of diseases from whole-body burials to living humans.

This belief and the foundation continued to foster cremation popularity until the 1920s when it was proven that whole body burials, when done properly were just as safe for the public’s health. After that discovery, the Cremation Association of America switched gears and began promoting cremation not as a health choice but as a personal choice. The foundation changed its name to Cremation Association of North America (CANA), in 1975, and is still around today.

Cremation has been becoming more and more popular since the 1980s in America and around the world. This rise is due to a number of factors such as cost, environmental concerns, creativity, religion and more. While traditional burial is still the most commonly seen disposition method, studies show that might not always be the case. According to CANA, there were over 2,100 crematories in use in the US in 2009 performing over 9,000 cremations a year, and the number is still going up.

Deer Creek Funeral Service, located at 20630 Redwood Rd Castro Valley, CA 94546, continues the cremation tradition with Walnut Creek, CA cremations. Give us a call at (510) 317-7890 to learn more.