Funerary practices and traditions with a BONES twist

This week's blog prompt fits perfectly with the episode of 'Bones' that aired on Monday.  In fact, it's too perfect for words and I'm practically jumping for joy because it was something I've been thinking about since I watched it.  It brought forth the question of what kind of funerary practice you would want your loved ones to perform after your death. The case that they were working on this week involved a woman who worked as a 'death consultant' at an ecologically friendly, and highly spiritual, funeral home.  As they experience this 'alternative' funerary practice, a debate naturally arises.  While Booth wants to have a traditional catholic burial and Cam wants to be cremated, they brought up a couple of different options as well.  Hodgins described how he wants to be launched into the sun because sun gives us life, so he thinks it would be poetic and appropriate to return him to the sun.  Bones said that she wanted to have a celestial funeral, whereby her body would be broken with a hammer and her remains would be left out to be picked clean by vultures.  However, realizing that a celestial funeral might not be the best 'final message' to her daughter she changed her mind and decided that she wants her ashes to be spread over a volcano instead. 
This got me thinking.  Are funerary practices performed for the dead or the living?  In some cases it's for the dead because it may be believed that they cannot move on unless their burial is performed in a certain way.  That being said, I feel like, more often than not, funerals/memorials are held for the living.  It's letting go.  It's closure.  That's one of the reasons that in Jewish funerals it is traditional for the family to begin filling the grave with dirt.  When my grandparents died, their funerals acted as celebrations of their lives where we who loved them could have a day to reminisce before moving on, however slowly.  After the funerals our family sat shiva and after that week we were expected to be almost okay, able to return to work or school. A month later were expected to be more or less back to normal.  A year later we were supposed to be completely fine.  While it may sound like a reasonable expectation, moving on is not always as easy as you would hope.  In my grandfather's case, he was old.  He had lived a good life.  It was his time.  That made it easier to move on.  But when my grandmother died, she was fairly young.  It was sudden and unexpected. Honestly it's been almost nine years and I'm only just starting to feel okay.  But that just goes to show that situational emotions can be remarkably inconsistent... Especially when you take into consideration my age at the time of their deaths.  I was 12 when my grandmother passed and 18 years old when my grandfather died.  Makes a difference, huh?  Anywho, there are my thoughts for the week :)