Funeral Industry

Funeral Director -- Stephen Kemp rummaged through a supply closet for a box of staples, being careful not to jostle the blue paper bags of cremated remains on the floor. Stephen Kemp It's not a great spot for ashes, but he ran out of space long ago. In the grand scheme of things, the closet is as good a resting place as any. Kemp, the owner of Haley Funeral Directors, is used to a certain rhythm of life and death.

A funeral home that helps handle veterans awaiting burial at Arlington National Cemetery left corpses in an unrefrigerated garage, in hallways and on makeshift gurneys, according to a former embalmer who has given his photographs and notes to authorities, the Washington Post reported Sunday. "It was disturbing and disrespectful and unethical," said Steven Napper, a retired Maryland trooper who worked at the funeral home for nine months.

They came in droves, generations of families pushing relatives in wheelchairs, holding them and helping them walk -- all while clutching faded obituaries and death certificates. A few brought worn-out family Bibles so they would have lists of names and dates. Pamela Brown was one of hundreds of people who wandered through Burr Oak Cemetery near Alsip, Ill., on Thursday, searching for answers.

Shoppers walking down busy Flatbush Avenue in the New York borough of Brooklyn usually do a double take when they pass a store that opened just last month. Stuck amid the delis and clothing stores is a casket store operated by Van Nuys-based Direct Casket. The store is Direct Casket's second in the Big Apple. It has five in California. Founder and President Ray Silvas acknowledged that the retail stores are still misunderstood by many consumers. "There are a lot of skeptics," he said.

Soured by seeing grief-ridden friends sold "incredibly expensive" funerals for loved ones, Mike McEligot began shopping when cancer seemed about to kill his father. "I didn't want to wait and do it when my family was vulnerable," said the 44-year-old bank branch manager from Costa Mesa. "It's like having to buy a car when your own car has already broken down."

Soured by seeing grief-ridden friends sold "incredibly expensive" funerals for loved ones, Mike McEligot began shopping when cancer seemed about to kill his father. "I didn't want to wait and do it when my family was vulnerable," said the 44-year-old bank branch manager from Costa Mesa. "It's like having to buy a car when your own car has already broken down."

Ryukai Matsushima, the chief monk at Kudokuin Buddhist Temple, glances around the small graveyard a few hundred feet from his office and surveys a jumble of graves crammed into every available square inch. With a rapidly aging population of 125 million packed into territory the size of California, Japan is running out of more than just housing and living space. It's also running out of room for the dead.

As casket showrooms and independent coffin discounters pop up in record numbers, funeral directors are fighting to hang onto their share of California's lucrative $287-million casket industry. They've teamed up with lawmakers in Sacramento concerned about consumer protection and are pushing for legislation that would extend long-standing rules governing funeral homes and casket pricing to the new breed of retailers.

Turn on, tune in, blast off. The cremated remains of '60s icon Timothy Leary were among those rocketed into orbit Monday for the first commercial burial in outer space. The ashes of others aboard a rocket launched from the Canary Islands included those of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, space colony advocate Gerald O'Neill and Simi Valley real estate agent James Spellman, who was the nephew of the late Cardinal Francis Spellman of Los Angeles.