Her husband, Donald Mitchem, had died of a heart attack at age 42, and on that day in 2005, Ms. Paris was just beginning what would become a worldwide journey to scatter his cremated remains. Since then, Donald's ashes have been placed in two dozen locations, including the Coliseum in Rome, outside Ernest Hemingway's house in Cuba and under the Christmas tree at New York's Rockefeller Center.
More Americans these days are scattering loved ones' ashes widely, with great purpose and often without permission—an act known in the funeral industry as a "wildcat scattering." It's a reflection of both the marked rise in cremation and the growing desire by people to find their own ways to ritualize grief.
via online.wsj.com
Funerals are expensive, sometimes the costliest item of probating an estate. The "wildcatting" of cremation ashes are both a means to control costs as well as to personalize the memorialization of a loved one.
Thanks again to Attorney Matthew Berger for the heads up on this article.
