What do latter-day saints believe is the proper way to care for the dead?

I was asked this question today by a friend, and so I wanted to write a longer answer here.

Latter-day saints believe in the resurrection of all humans. Some will be resurrected earlier than others, but everybody is going to get resurrected. Resurrection for latter-day saints means that our spirits will reunite with a perfect version of a prime body, approximately age 25-35 or so. The exception to this is that little children will be resurrected as little children. They will have the opportunity of growing up with a physical body. We know almost nothing about that doctrine except that it is so. Someday my brother and sister in law will see their little girl Elsie again, and they will get to actually hold her and physically be with her. There is no definitive doctrine about what happens to the unborn. We don't know if their spirits go back in line, waiting to come to earth, or if they count as full "humans" or what. We also don't know if there is variation, and if so, where is the exact line marking when the fetus is or is not a human. The fact that we don't know is what causes us to be extra cautious.

My personal opinion is that this knowledge is kept hidden from us on purpose. We are accountable for what we know. I think that God is protecting our agency by keeping this hidden. In a way, it is a kin of mercy to not know.

Latter-day saints believe that our bodies are sacred. They are a key part of the plan of salvation. They are sacred because they house our spirits. A body and a spirit together form a "soul." When the spirit is gone, the body is just matter. The spirit goes to the spirit world. It doesn't hang out around the location the decaying physical matter that was its body. Most of the time there is a veil drawn between the spirit world and the physical world. Spirits can sometimes see us, and we can sometimes see spirits. But it's not common, and it's usually for a reason - ie not random.

Places/times when the veil between the living is especially thin: at momentous life moments like birth and death, in the temple, and sometimes during prayer.

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I have personally had experiences where the veil was very thin for me. For example, when I was at BYU I wanted more than anything to trace my Czech ancestors back to their original villages so that I (and my descendants) would have a way to submit their names to do proxy temple ordinance work for them. I had no way of finding the records. All of my searching felt really fruitless. I actually wrote a long journal-type post about it before, detailing how the week that Czech records became available on Familysearch I tried in this very tedious, hacky way to see if the places referred to one or two of the village names which I knew. I was lucky to have even those names, and to know my ancestors were from Moravia. I didn't have a clue where. Anyway, there were many, many hundreds (not an exaggeration) of hours trying to search, trying to read, trying to learn how to learn about what I wanted to know. I felt massive amounts of frustration. We moved to Texas, about an hour away from where my Czech ancestors lived. We spend many more hours in cemeteries there, trying to find them.

I must have been praying a lot all throughout this process, but I remember a specific time when I got on my knees and prayed in our house in Katy. I had been ironing Danny's shirts. I was so overwhelmed with frustration and dissatisfaction. I prayed that I would someday be able to find my ancestors. I was immediately overwhelmed with what can only be described as an other-worldly experience. It was not from me at all. I had been feeling extremely gloomy and despairing. But suddenly I felt as though the room were full of my Czech ancestors. That they were all right there, that they were very pleased and excited about what I was doing. That they didn't want me to give up. That they knew I would find them. There were more than I could count. It was as though I was only just barely allowed to know the impact that "finding them" would actually mean, numbers-wise. This experience was life altering for me. Maybe it's silly to share it.
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Human bodies are sacred because of what they hold and because of what they allow us to accomplish/become. We would not be able to achieve exaltation without them.

Living human bodies should always be treated with respect and a degree of reverence. Period. I was going to go off on another tangent about human sexuality and its sacredness but it seems so self-evident that I decided to leave it alone.

Dead human bodies should be treated with respect and a degree of reverence as well, but only because we, the ones remaining, need it. Our respect and reverence to dead bodies is not for the deceased's sake.

"Respect and reverence" means vastly different things to different people. Some latter-day saints, for example in Japan, perceive it more respectful and clean to cremate their dead. That is okay. In some places, the cost of burial is prohibitive, so cremation is also okay. In some places, burial is not possible or even legal.

I come from a western culture. My traceable ancestors were all Europeans who believed in the Bible. There's definitely a Biblical justification for burial which has probably been twisted to be tied to doctrine or other beliefs in Christianity. But like, not all Christians even believe that all people will be resurrected, so...

If resurrection is universal, of course burial can't have an effect on it. People who lived thousands (or millions) of years ago have no trace of their bodies left on earth. Or they've been absorbed and reabsorbed multiple times. No, how we treat our dead must logically only be about the effects on the living. We treat our dead with love and reverence, and that can mean different things in different cultures.

I have no idea where I will be buried. I suppose I would like to be buried next to Danny, but nothing else really matters. I will be buried in my ceremonial temple clothes, which are kinda strange looking but that is the tradition for faithful saints, and that's fine.

How should the bodies of dead fetuses be treated? I don't have one simple answer to that. I know that anti-abortion politicians try to push for burials for aborted babies because they believe it will have an impact on decreasing the number of abortions. I don't think it's the greatest way to spend taxpayer's money, and I also don't think it will be that likely to have the expected outcome. But I'm also not against it outright. I can sympathize with the desire to do "whatever it takes" to prevent elective abortions.

The idea of performing a funeral for all miscarriages, including fertilized eggs, is completely ludicrous.

If I were to have a miscarriage, what would I do with the fetus? I have thought about that before a few times, but having never experienced a miscarriage, it is hard to say for certain. I have had some really heavy periods that were massively uncomfortable. I suppose it would depend a lot if there was anything that could undeniably be identified as a body. I guess most likely it would either end up in a pad or the toilet. I suppose I would probably fish it out and put it in a jar and then we would cremate it. But...perhaps I'm totally wrong and I would simply flush it. I don't know. It would be a joint decision, which is why my gut reaction would be to save it. It's unlikely Danny would be home while it happened, though I suppose he might be. If I had to have a non-elective abortion for some reason, I think we would likely choose to have the remains of our unborn child cremated. We may or may not have a headstone. The idea of an urn with the ashes is kind of gross to me. But I can see why people do that.

There is very little reason to believe I will ever have a miscarriage or a non-elective abortion, fortunately. When my parents die, I will respect their wishes and see that they are buried as they directed in their will or elsewhere. I am unlikely to have to bury a child. If I had to bury Danny, I would definitely want a grave where I could sit and feel close to him. But that is really depressing to think about.

This article from 1972 is still relevant, if you want further reading about cremation from a latter-day saint perspective. Some wildly weird stories in it.