Costs are rising on so many things and it’s getting harder to afford to live the way we’ve been accustomed to in the past. That’s when we tend to cut out what we consider the luxuries and sometimes life or burial insurance is one of those so-called luxuries. But eliminating that could result in a heartbreaking experience when a loved one dies and there’s no money for the expensive cost of burial.

“It’s really bad,” Lycoming County Coroner Charles Kiessling said of the situation.

“We hear this all the time with the economy being the way it is…People don’t have life insurance, you know, they’re living paycheck to paycheck, and now they’re looking at several thousand dollars to pay for a funeral, just direct cremation. People today are just strapped and they just can’t do it,” he said.

If someone can’t pay then the funeral director calls the coroner’s office to come and take the body. It can then be deemed unclaimed.

“We try not to go the unclaimed route, because then the family gives up their rights to their loved one. By law, the coroner’s office, when someone is unclaimed, we by statute, step in and take care of the deceased,” he said.

Then the bodies are cremated. Since he became coroner in 2000, there have been about 70 bodies that have been unclaimed and their cremains are stored in a building built by Penn College students in a cemetery adjacent to the landfill. A grant helped to cover some of the cost for its construction.

“So basically, it was built with funds that I had from our revenue account. We paid for materials. Everything else was cost free when it comes to taxpayers,” Kiessling said.

“We built that building because we have probably about 70 individuals…that have been unclaimed and are in that building stored in there as their final resting place, which was much cheaper than the county going out buying burial plots and cemetery opening fees and closing fees and all those costs. It just was out of touch for the county to do that for individuals that are unclaimed,” Kiessling said.

Those individuals’ cremains in the building are there because there was no money to pay for funeral expenses.

“So they basically throw up their hands and say, you take care of them. And so by Pennsylvania statute, unclaimed individuals fall under the jurisdiction of the coroner,” he explained.

“Some of them have no family. We have people that are 70, 80, 90 years old that have outlived the rest of their family, so they have no one. And so those are the ones too that we end up cremating and putting into the building over there,” he said.

“We treat them very respectfully and dignified. We have shelving in there, and they have everything. We were actually planning on having, kind of a program just to recognize these unclaimed individuals once the building was open, but then COVID hit, and we couldn’t do anything with COVID to bring folks together. We’d like to do some landscaping around the building to kind of dress it up in the cemetery over there. That’s still on my to do list, but it’s gotten replaced with getting a building for our office,” he added

The coroner’s office tries to offer alternatives for families who cannot afford the cost of burials or cremation. There are medical assistance benefits, around $750 for those who are eligible, but that can only be used at a funeral home that has a medical assistance provider and currently there is only one funeral home in the county that has that.

Another alternative is donating a loved one’s remains to science.

“We look at donating to science, in some cases, if the individual is a suitable candidate for donation to science. That’s a fairly inexpensive, if not free option.,” Kiessling explained.

There are several groups who will take the body which is then sent to a medical school in order to train physicians.

“They go for a few months, and then they’re cremated, and then the cremains come back to the family. So that’s an option for folks to look into, if they can do that and make those arrangements,” he said.

“And then the rest is looking around and price shopping funeral homes. Hopefully we can raise some awareness, and people reach out and maybe talk to funeral directors as they get older and have some pre-arrangements made, and even some folks pay pre-need to the funeral home. It relieves a lot of the stress during a real difficult time if those things are in place previously. Because otherwise, people’s world just turned upside down, (with the) death of a loved one…(and) they don’t have the money, there’s no arrangements made, and it just makes things a lot more difficult for the families,” he said.

Because they are required to take the remains which are unclaimed, the coroner’s office encounters problems with where to store the bodies as families try to work out a solution.

“We can’t hold folks indefinitely, but we try to work with families as long as we can, so they can try to work out options. If they can find a funeral home that would take payments and work something out; if they’re a veteran, obviously, that’s helpful, and there’s veterans benefits that can help,” Kiessling said.

“We help the families kind of explore all the options, but it certainly would be better if people kind of took the bull by the horns and explored some of these things ahead of time, because it just streamlines the process a whole lot and makes it less stressful,” he said.

Kiessling urged anyone who has questions to call his office for more information.