So instead of buying any plot at all, the family chose cremation - and buried Anne's remains on top of her mother's casket. Anne's family, like a growing number of Americans, needed another burial option, and cremation made it possible. That's one reason cremation rates are on the rise nationally and in this region. In Pennsylvania, the rate doubled in the last decade and is expected to nearly double again by 2010. Cremation is being used increasingly as American society becomes more mobile.
Fewer families own family plots or know where they want to be buried.
At the beginning of this century, young couples bought cemetery plots early in their marriages - and needed them to bury children who died in infancy. But those patterns changed, and the emerging generation no longer has a family plot. They may not even have family nearby. Today, the cargo holds of jets taking off from Florida's airports are loaded with human remains - bodies of the elderly being shipped home for burial in the northern cities of their youth. The Fort Lauderdale airport ships more bodies than any other in the world, according to Jim Caudill, of the Fred Hunter funeral home in Florida.