BANGOR (AP) – More Mainers are opting for cremation, and costs associated with death and changing traditions are major reasons for the increase.

“It’s already in my will,” said Roni Saul, 56, of Prospect Harbor. “The idea of spending thousands of dollars to ‘protect’ a body I no longer need is ludicrous to me.” After her mother’s death a year ago, Saul followed the older woman’s wishes to be cremated. It is a trend that has rising steadily for several years in Maine.

The Cremation Association of North America says the cremation rate was at 50 percent in 2003, giving Maine the tenth highest rate in the country. That’s also well above the national average of just under 30 percent. By 2010, Maine will cremate about 65 percent of its dead, according to the Chicago-based cremation association’s projections. The national average by that time is predicted to be 36 percent.

“Cremation is very acceptable now. It’s not as much of an oddity,” said Jack Springer, executive director of the Cremation Association of North America. “For many people, there has become this sort of romance with cremation. Water, mountains, forest, people like the idea of having their remains be a part of that.”

That was true in the case of Brenda Hoskins’ father, who told his children when he became ill with cancer in 2001 he wanted to be cremated. His instructions were to spread half of his remains off Wadsworth Cove in Castine, where he had lived, and half at Roach Pond, near Moosehead Lake, where the family had owned a camp.

“There is something very comforting in knowing that there are now two places where I can go ‘visit’ my father,” Hoskins, 44, of Castine, told the Bangor Daily News. “He was never content to just sit still and be in one place while he was alive. There is no reason to think he could have tolerated that in the forever.”

Funeral costs also play into people’s choice to be cremated. The most basic funeral costs a minimum of $2,000, according to estimates from Maine funeral homes. A direct cremation runs about $900, said to Mark Riposta, who runs Direct Cremation of Maine in Belfast.

One company produces diamonds out of human ashes, giving survivors yet another option for remembering their loved ones. Elaine Higgins, 54, who originally is from Bangor but now lives in New York, had part of her father’s ashes made into a sparkling jewel, which she plans to have set in a ring so that “every time I look at my hand I can be reminded of him.”

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