Home funerals can be more personal and less expensive. Nathaniel Roe’s family buried him near a favorite path in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

By KATIE ZEZIMA


PETERBOROUGH, New Hampshire - When Nathaniel Roe, 92, died at his 18th-century farmhouse here the morning of June 6, his family did not call a funeral home to handle the arrangements.

Instead, his children, like a growing number of people throughout the United States, decided to care for their father in death as they had in the last months of his life. They washed his body, dressed him in his favorite tweed jacket and red tie and laid him on a bed so family members could privately say their last goodbyes.

The next day, Mr. Roe was placed in a pine coffin made by his son. He was buried on his farm in a grove off a walking path he traversed each day.

“It just seemed like the natural, loving way to do things,” said Jennifer Roe- Ward, Mr. Roe’s granddaughter. “It let him have his dignity.”

Advocates say the number of home funerals has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals “where home births were 30 years ago,” according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Maine.

The cost savings can be substantial, all the more important in an economic downturn. The average American funeral costs about $6,000 for the services of a funeral home, in addition to the costs of cremation or burial. A home funeral can be as inexpensive as the cost of pine for a coffin (for a backyard burial) or a few hundred dollars for cremation or several hundred dollars for cemetery costs. The Roes spent $250.

Baby boomers who are handling arrangements for the first time are looking for a more intimate experience.

“It’s organic and informal, and it’s on our terms,” said Nancy Manahan of Minneapolis, Minnesota, who helped care for her sister-in-law, Diane Manahan, after she died of cancer in 2001, and was a co-author of a book, “Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully.” “It’s not having strangers intruding into the privacy of the family. It’s not outsourcing the dying process to professionals.”

There are at least 45 organizations or individuals nationwide that help families with the process, compared with only two in 2002, said Joshua Slocum, director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit group.

Mr. Lakin, a woodworker, makes coffins specifically for home funerals. Ranging in price from $480 to $1,200, they double as bookcases, entertainment centers and coffee tables until they need to be used.

He became interested in home funerals after his father died 30 years ago and he felt there was a “disconnect” during the funeral process.

His coffins are sold to people like Ginny Landry, 77, who wants a home funeral one day but is content to use her coffin to showcase the quilts she makes. “It’s very comforting to me, knowing I have it there so my children won’t have to make a decision as to where I’m going to go,” Ms. Landry said.

As she battled cancer, Diane Manahan also requested a home funeral. Her family did not know then how much it would help them with their grief. “There’s something about touching, watching, sitting with a body that lets you know the person is no longer there,” Nancy Manahan said. “We didn’t even realize how emotionally meaningful those rituals are, doing it ourselves, until we did it.”