I love how well things worked out with Recompose when my mom passed. They were very kind, very compassionate, very practical, and didn't feel greedy or like they were trying to upcharge us--unlike when my dad died and the traditional mortuary guy hated me because I said Dad didn't want an expensive urn (he was a Utah boy who hated fancy things--we ended up getting a lovely wooden urn from Amazon for like $40 instead of the ugly multi-hundred dollar one they were pushing). Recompose was so meaningful and stood in stark contrast to traditional, money-hungry offerings. They played music my mom had very carefully chosen as they put her body in, and that was really important to me because I wanted it to be as much like her wishes as possible. With Recompose, we know how fantastic they were with Mom, and it puts us at ease knowing our deaths are going to be handled ethically and kindly and responsibly by leaders in the movement for better death services. For myself and my partner, we also love the idea of the "Cedar Room," which is a special room where loved ones can interact with the body in an unstructured way before the process starts. There's also the option of a more traditional service room. Either way, you get the ability for people to put things like flowers in with the body, which again is very important to us. I combed through their website and offerings because thoughtfully planning my death is very comforting to me. I want to know what's going to happen. --- Here's the longer story: My partner and I chose Recompose because we wanted: 1) the things we love about a traditional Jewish, pinebox, straight into the ground with no embalming burial, 2) the ecofriendliness of a cemetery managed by a green company, because we don't want our bodies harming the Earth, 3) our remains to be returned to the Earth, which you cannot get with cremation, because even if you bury the cremains, the nutrients are all gone, 4) the ability for some of our remains to be distributed among friends and family, which is what we love about cremation, 5) we couldn't afford the traditional burial which is crazy expensive nowadays, 6) we wanted our bodies to go to actual use for the world, and Recompose lets you donate your remains to land trusts. Our family has 3 preneeds set up with Recompose so we are all set when we die and we know other people won't have to worry about it. My mom always hated cremation (she hated the idea of burning) and hated burial (she hated the idea of being deep underground). She really wanted her body to be able to be used for something and so she wanted her body to be donated to science (and it was a hard decision for her as she hated the fact that it would be cremated when they were done, but it was more important to her that her body be of use). Unfortunately there are actually a lot of steps that need to be taken before death to be donated to science, which my mom did not understand. After she died, we decided to go with Recompose for her too because her main wish was that her body not be wasted. It went towards healing land in Washington which is as close as we were legally allowed to get to keeping her wishes. My sister is going to go visit the land trust where hers went. Also, as I mentioned, she had her memorial service planned very carefully and we had Recompose play the song she said was most important and then we held a separate larger memorial service like she requested in her town. Mom had also said that if the "science place" returned us her ashes, we could scatter them at a state beach with my dad. There was no "science place" but we were able to take a small amount of her compost and scatter it there with my Dad's ashes to honor that wish as well. read more