Death pays. Here we have a photo of Deputy U.S. Marshals Will Banks, left, and Isaac Prater (sometimes identified as “Captain J.S. Prather” but that’s wrong) flanking the body of Bill “Tulsa Jack” Blake on April 4, 1895. The two lawmen killed Tulsa Jack the previous day in a shootout with the Wild Bunch after they robbed a train. Banks and Prater split the $1,000 bounty that was on Tulsa Jack’s head. Since U.S. marshals were paid $75 a month at the time, that bounty was worth more than half a year’s pay to each of the lawmen. So I guess it was worth putting their lives on the line. That’s part of the business of death.

For as long as people have been dying, other people have been disposing of dead people’s bodies.

At first it was family and friends doing the disposing. Back then everything fell on family and friends — birthing, educating, nursing and ultimately disposing.

As societies became more sophisticated and complex, most of those functions were taken over by specialists. So too did the art and science of preparing and disposing of the dead.

Meet your friendly neighbourhood undertaker/mortician/funeral director. All three terms mean the same thing: Undertaker is mainly British; Mortician is American; and Funeral Director is the new in-word.

The business of disposing of dead people is remarkably fluid. There is a wide assortment of laws and industry standards (of course it’s an industry — dying is big business and it’s a growth industry) covering the process. Surprisingly, few of those laws are national. In most cases, the funeral business is a provincial or state matter with some municipal participation for health and safety reasons.

I’m going to throw a lot of information about the business of death at you. Some of it will shock you, some may amuse you in a macabre sort of way, some may make you cry, but hopefully in the end (and this is all about the end, isn’t it?) it will inform you and give you a better sense of the world we live — and die — in.

In most cases, I will be talking about practices and conditions as they exist in the province of Ontario in the country of Canada because that is where I live. Situations vary elsewhere, but Ontario is a pretty good place from which to look death in the eye.

Now most people in Ontario, Canada, are embalmed before they are buried or cremated — unless their religion forbids it or they are disposed of within 48 hours. After that … you know, bodies decompose, bad smells happen, nasty stuff.

So, embalming: Various natural fluids are forced out of the cadaver as preserving, enhancing fluids are forced in by pressure pumps. Sometimes organs are removed, treated and returned to the body cavity. Other times the organ fluids are just pumped out and replaced by preservatives.

So what happens to the body fluids that have been removed? They get flushed down into the public sewer system. No kidding. The blood of Uncle Arnold (what was all that talk of him contracting the Ebola virus?) goes swishing down the pipes to mix with everything else in the general swill of effluence. If we’re lucky, Uncle Arnold’s liquid remains go to some sort of public treatment facility before they go back into the general water supply.

Not surprisingly, the Ontario government expressed some concern about this practice after the 2000 Walkerton tragedy highlighted the potential weaknesses of our water safety system. The funeral service industry mounted an effective counter campaign — to the extent that the provincial ministry of the environment is now “monitoring” the situation — with far more pressing issues on the government’s plate.

C’mon, seriously. Don’t you think dead people’s blood should be neutralized somehow before it goes into the sewer system? Their extraneous body parts aren’t dumped in the garbage for Thursday pick-up — they’re considered bio-hazards and are handled carefully before being incinerated.

Speaking of incineration, did you know crematoriums are governed under Ontario law by exactly the same regulations as garbage incinerators?

When concerns were raised about this, the Ontario crematoria industry produced results of a Cremation Association of North America (CANA) study that showed a typical high-volume crematory emits half the volume of particles as a fast-food restaurant.

I should hope so. When I was young and poor I lived in a walk-up apartment across Bloor Street from a fried-chicken outlet — until the belching, sediment-laden clouds of greasy stench drove me out.

On another cremation note, a new hazard faced by staff involved in the process is the increasing number of radioactive “seeds” placed in people for medical purposes. Since those “seeds” are in people who already have health issues, a lot of them die and a growing number want to be cremated. In the intense heat of cremation, those radioactive “seeds” can explode, exposing crematory personnel to radioactive poisoning. So don’t be surprised if you’re asked if the dearly deceased has undergone radiation therapy of any kind.

Just how many of us want to be cremated? About half. In 2002, 47% of all disposed bodies were cremated (again, a CANA survey) and that percentage is projected to be about 55% by the end of 2010. So that means at least half of us currently want to be incinerated. I know I do.

Here’s what’s involved.

The incineration machine is called a cremator. It heats to between 800 and 1,000 degrees C. The process takes 120-150 minutes. But the job’s not done yet. A machine called the cremulator then pulverizes the remains into a powder.

This is a very important process. I know, because whoever pulverized my father’s cremated remains did a hack job: There were still bone bits in the ashes. A little more professionalism, please.

Okay, the incineration is done. Now you want to store the ashes. The Cremation Association of North America (our friends at CANA again) has set the capacity for a standard adult cremation urn at 200 cubic inches.

That’s because the general equation for body mass to ash volume is this: One pound of body equals one cubic inch of cremated, pulverized ash. So the standard North American cremation urn will hold the remains of anyone up to about 200 pounds. If you, like me, weigh more than 200 pounds, be sure to specify you want the XL urn.

What does a cremation urn cost? Well you could spend thousands or you you buy a very nice one for $75-150 on eBay.

That;s right — eBay.

(As a completely irrelevant aside, eBay is called eBay because Canada was there first. Company founder Pierre Omidyar tried to register the domain name echobay.com to reflect the name of his computer consulting firm, Echo Bay Technology Group. The rights were already held by a Northwest Terriitories mining company called Echo Bay Gold. As a sorry second, eBay.com was born.)

You can buy — or bid for — almost anything death-related you want on eBay. Services and products from pre-paid burial plans to pet cremation urns are available under the categories of funeral & cemetery and cremation.

Apart from the full-size adult urns, you can also buy keychain urns on eBay with a vial to hold a small portion of your loved one’s ashes for $7 US.

To finish up with cremation, let’s look at transporting the ashes. Say your mother died in Toronto and you want to take her ashes back to Calgary (where all you rich folks live). It’s easier to take her as carry-on luggage than as checked baggage.

Some airlines do not even allow cremated remains to be transported as checked luggage, but you can always take Mom as carry-on. She has to go through the security X-ray machine — and the urn has to be made of a material that will not block the X-ray vision. So the lighter the better — wood or plastic, not metal or lead-based porcelain embedded with precious stones.

But enough about cremation.

Let’s look at funeral rites and burial.

I was telling my son Andy some of this stuff earlier and he, in turn, told me where the whole thing about “six feet under” came from. Apparently that is how far down you have to bury a body before wild animals can no longer smell it and try to dig up the corpse. Trial and error, I guess. (Andy is almost always right about these things, by the way.)

In ancient Rome, you were buried or cremated (depending on the style of the time) if you could afford it. If you were poor, an unloved slave, or one of the tens of thousands of victims of the arena, your body was dumped in a pit just outside the walls of the city. Those pits, called puticuli, were left uncovered until they were full of dead bodies — 600 to 800 corpses is the best guess. Then the pit was covered over and a new one was dug. No wonder Rome kept getting plagued by epidemics. One night at dinner, the emperor Vespasian looked down to see his favourite dog had brought him a present — a human hand gnawed off one of the corpses from the puticuli.

Let’s get down to dollars and cents. How much does it cost to die and be buried?

According to a survey by the National Funeral Directors Association, a “mid-range” adult, full-service funeral in 1998 cost an average of $5,020 U.S. That’s for transportation, embalming and other preparation, viewing and funeral facilities, and an 18-gauge steel casket (the industry’s preferred term, although coffin is more accurate) with velvet interior.

Cemetery and headstone or cremation charges are on top of that.

AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, estimated a year later that the average cost of a full funeral (including plot, flowers, catering and everything else) was about $10,000.

So today, a decade later, the cost has to be exponentially higher.

Just how profitable is the funeral business?

Who do you believe? Take the cost of a coffin (or casket, as the funeral industry prefers, although that is not technically correct).

I’ve seen critics’ estimates of a 600% markup on coffins. But the funeral industry says the average profit on a casket sale is 12.5%.

Well, it’s probably somewhere in between. Like everything else, the fancier the coffin, the bigger the profit. Some are 600% and some are 12.5%. But the average, sure as hell, is neither.

One thing to keep in mind is that you should never be surprised by a funeral bill. In Canada, all funeral providers are required by law to supply a written price list of the services and products they supply.

You do have some help paying that tab (if the deceased contributed to the Canada Pension Fund). The CPP will kick in up to $2,500 in survivor benefits depending on how much and how long the deceased (in his or her pre-deceased state) contributed.

And just who is that nice person handing you the funeral bill? He or she is a trained professional, probably a graduate of one of Ontario’s two funeral service programmes, and a provincially licensed mortician.

Ontario has one English-language funeral service education programme at Humber College in Toronto and one French-language programme at College Boreal in Sudbury. I haven’t looked into College Boreal, but I know the Humber programme is considered top-notch internationally.

Both programmes are two years. The first year is classroom studies in courses like Human Anatomy and Physiology, Embalming Lab (yep, it’s what you think), Moral & Ethical Issues in Health, Restorative Art, Psychology of Grief and Small Business Management.

The second year is an internship with an approved (I don’t know what the right phrase is … all funeral homes are approved, all would say they’re reputable) funeral home — including participation in at least 50 embalmings — plus monthly correspondence assignments through Humber.

In the end, students must pass a series of examinations, both written and practical — which, in this case, means doing a full embalming on your own in front of a senior examiner, who will step in and properly embalm the deceased if you screw up.

(By the way, all bodies that are dealt with by students in the embalming lab or in examination are there with the permission of their families or the relevant authorities. The students work in teams of four in the lab with a supervising instructor — or two — so those bodies are probably more intensively prepared for burial than any others. Many of the corpses the students deal with are the result of suicide or calamitous accident, so they are already dealing with worst-case scenarios before they are pros.)

Humber accepts about 130 funeral service students every year. Two years later about 60-80% (depending on the year) make it.

And one of those people is ultimately your funeral director — the person who will guide you through the labyrinth of laws, cultural customs and practical considerations that surround every death, at exactly the time you are least prepared to deal with crisis.

The ones I’ve dealt with (and I, sad to say, have dealt with a number) have been pretty good, but you have to remember it’s a business. Just because a funeral director suggests something, you don’t have to accept it. It’s your funeral and you call the shots. Trust me. They’ve had at least two years training to accommodate you. They will, and you’ll feel better — more the driver and less the passenger.

The most important thing to remember is that you are not going to make up for four or five decades of bad karma with the deceased by throwing money at strangers. Bury (or burn — my preference) your dead and make peace with their spirits later, at your own pace and time.

Gawd, enough of this. I’m scratching my head to see if there are any other tidbits I should share with you about the business of death. I can’t think of any, so I’ll tell you a joke.

Here’s a real, honest-to-goodness funeral director’s joke (guaranteed to offend blondes, funeral directors and anyone who has ever buried or cremated a loved one.) I’ll tell you a real, honest-to goodness CIA joke (told to me by a real, honest-to-goodness CIA field officer) some other time. But first, the Blonde Funeral Director joke:

A man who just died is delivered to a local mortuary wearing an expensive, expertly tailored black suit.

The Blonde Funeral Director asks the deceased’s wife how she would like the body dressed. She points out that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing

The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit. She gives the Blonde Funeral Director a blank check and says, “I don’t care what it costs, but please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing.”

The widow returns the next day for the wake. To her delight, she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly.

She says to the Blonde Funeral Director, “Whatever this cost, I’m very satisfied. You did an excellent job and I’m very grateful. How much did you spend?”

To her astonishment, the Blonde Funeral Director presents her with the blank check.

“There’s no charge,” she says.

“No, really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue suit!” the widow says.

“Honestly, ma’am,” the Blonde Funeral Director says, “it cost nothing. You see, a deceased gentleman of about your husband’s size was brought in shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive blue suit. I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit instead, and she said it made no difference as long as he looked nice.”

“So I just switched the heads.”

The great thing about this joke is that it fits the classic Blonde Joke formula but it is not transferable to any field other than funeral direction. Tell it to a funeral director and he or she (if not blond or blonde) will laugh his or her head off (not literally) … because they know it has a ring of almost-could-happen absurd truth to it.