Here's something that surprised me when I first started learning about the funeral industry.
Cremation now accounts for more than 63% of dispositions in the United States. That number has been climbing for decades and it keeps going up. And for a long time, the conventional wisdom in the industry was that this was bad news, that families choosing cremation meant simpler services, less ceremony, and less connection with the funeral home.
A piece in our most recent issue of Funeral & Cremation Solutions Magazine challenged that assumption in a way I found hard to argue with.
Writer and consultant Anna Ciboro makes an argument that I think is worth sitting with. Families choosing cremation, she says, aren't rejecting ceremony or meaning. They're rejecting what they couldn't afford, or what they didn't know existed.
That's a completely different problem. And it has a completely different solution.
The Language Gap Nobody Talks About
Anna cites research from the NFDA showing that 84% of families don't understand what the term "memorial service" means the way funeral professionals use it. Think about that for a second. The industry is offering something families genuinely want, and families aren't choosing it, not because they don't want it, but because nobody explained it in a way that made sense to them.
According to the same research, 62% of families want special music at a service. 59% want photos or video. 53% want a personal eulogy. They're not skipping meaning. They're skipping generic.
What Families Are Actually Looking For
Anna's piece reframes the whole conversation around cremation in a way I found genuinely useful. The families walking through a funeral home's doors after choosing cremation aren't there to get in and get out as quickly as possible. Many of them are there because cremation made it possible for them to be there at all. They couldn't have afforded a traditional burial. Or they wanted flexibility. Or they simply wanted something that felt more like their person.
The research she cites shows that 35% of direct cremation families still want a memorial ceremony afterward. They didn't opt out of honoring someone. They opted out of a process they didn't fully understand or couldn't access.
That's an invitation, not a closed door.
What This Means Beyond the Industry
I'll be honest about where I started. I think I assumed, like a lot of people probably do, that choosing cremation meant families were mostly on their own after that. You make the arrangements, you get the ashes, and then whatever happens next is up to you to figure out. I didn't really understand that a funeral home could still be fully present for a family through that whole process, offering ceremony, coordination, keepsakes, and real support, regardless of how someone chose to be buried.
That assumption was wrong. And if I had it, I'd guess a lot of other people do too.
That's part of why this magazine exists. Not just to serve the professionals in this industry, but to help close the gap between what funeral homes offer and what families know to ask for. Because when families understand what's possible, they get better goodbyes. And the people who made those goodbyes possible get to do the work they actually went into this profession to do.
The Opportunity Inside the Shift
Anna ends her piece with a line worth remembering. Cremation gave you access, she writes. What you do with it tells the story of you, your funeral home, and how you think about life and legacy.
That's not a challenge. That's an invitation. And it's one worth accepting.
This post was inspired by "The Cremation Revenue Problem Isn't Cremation," written by Anna Ciboro, published in the March/April 2026 issue of Funeral & Cremation Solutions Magazine. You can read the full article at fcsmagazine.com.