Big lifetime milestones like birthday parties, getting engaged, weddings and baby gender reveals are all blown out of proportion nowadays, why not the last big party be when you die.
Somber, traditional funerals with the body present are starting to be replaced with memorial services like golf-course cocktail send-offs, backyard potluck memorials…without a body.
There's all kinds of new ways to memorialize your loved ones. The days of dressing in black and attending a funeral service might be a goner.
National Museum of Funeral History (located in Houston) President and curator of exhibits Genevieve Keeney said there's many ways to celebrate the lives of loved ones and keep their memory and legacy alive.
"It's a time that everyone can come together and really reflect on that person and just spend that time, that quality time and celebrate who they were to all of us," said Keeney.
She said funerals have transformed into celebrations of life.
"I never want to say funerals will ever be a thing of the past because a funeral is a custom, it's a tradition. How we conduct those funerals is what's going to start changing," said Keeney.
In Washington, bodies can be composted. Cremains can be turned into diamonds, even art.
Kenney said they’re working with an artist who will take the cremated remains of your loved ones and turn them into a portrait of that person. The Icons in Ash exhibition will open up in the Fall.