text: As a funeral director and a Catholic, I (we) have always been told to explain to the Catholic family we are serving that although the church allows cremation, the cremains (ashes) must be buried or placed in a niche.  You can only imagine some of the comments WE get when explaining the church's preference (demand, would be more appropriate).  Just to give an example of how silly this is at times, we had gentleman that died last year and his family chose cremation.  Now--he was married twice, with both wives preceding him in death; his wishes were to have half of his ashes buried next to his first wife and the remaining half placed in the niche with his second wife; sounds easy, doesn't it? Well...not at the Catholic cemetery...can't split the ashes, church doesn't allow it.  I felt at least his family was following his wishes and they were not just casting their father's ashes aside.  Suffice it to say...I think some ashes ended up in the flowers of his first wife's grave...