Q: According to Oregon law, when does a body have to be embalmed?
A: When the person died of a contagious or communicable disease.
Q: Are Home Funerals legal?
A: Families in Oregon can legally care for their own dead.
Q: What is the fee, if any, for a member of the clergy to conducting services.
A: Generally, the standard honorarium is $200.
Q: Do I have to buy a casket from the funeral home?
A: The funeral home has to accept the casket you want to use, and cannot charge you a handling fee or service charge if you provide your own.
Resources
Organizations
Funeral Consumers Alliance: A Federation of Nonprofit Consumer Information Societies protecting a consumer's right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral since 1963.
Final Passages: An educational non-profit program dedicated to a natural approach of home and family funerals.
Crossings: A resource center for after-death care alternatives.
The Centre for Natural Burial: The Centre for Natural Burial provides comprehensive resources supporting the development of natural burial and detailed information about natural burial in your area.
Green Burial Council: The Green Burial Council is an independent, nonprofit organization founded to encourage ethical and environmentally sustainable deathcare practices, and to use the burial process as a means of facilitating the acquisition, restoration and stewardship of natural areas.
The Dougy Center: The Dougy Center provides a safe and supportive place for children, teens, young adults and their families who are grieving a death to share their stories. We do this through education, training and peer support groups.
Books
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
~ Grandma Moses
It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth, and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, that we will begin to live each day to the fullest; as if it was the only one we had.
