Video: Natural home funerals becoming more common

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REDMOND, Wash. - When a loved one dies, a funeral home is the normal routine for many families.

But there is a movement gaining strength in this area to leave the deceased and the funeral preparations at home.

When Pamela Howley lost her teenage daughter Daron to cancer, she couldn't bear the thought of handing her off to a stranger.

"It just didn't seem right that you would have to let someone come in and take them away," she said.

Howley sought out help and got it from Char Barrett, a home funeral guide.

Barrett conducts workshops for people seeking a more personal way to grieve. She takes students through the steps of preparing their loved ones for burial the natural way, with no funeral home, no embalming fluid, and no strangers.

While she instructs the students how to bathe and dress the departed, she demonstrates how children can decorate a bio-degradable casket in the next room.

The concept is to re-involve the family in a process that was abandoned in the last century.

The vast majority of people in Seattle's historic cemeteries were prepared for funeral in their own homes, often by their own families. Somewhere along the way that tradition was lost.

"And that is when I maintain, that as a country, we lost connection with grief because we lost connection with our loved one's body," Barrett said.

Home funerals are described as a final, loving, hands-on tribute to a family member - a way to care for them in death as they did in life. Believers say it's an uplifting, empowering experience to help send off their loved one their way - in their home, surrounded by their people.

"It gave us, you that, kind of bonding time to let her go," Howley said.