HONOLULU - Some want to be remembered with lavish services, others want their remains launched into space. Bob Prater envisioned his passing in simpler terms: A funeral at home.

Very few Americans opt for funerals in their homes -- there's no firm number of how many, exactly -- but interest is growing as consumers yearn for a more personal way to bid their loved ones adieu, and are frustrated by sometimes high-priced, cookie-cutter services.

"The primary focus is bringing the family into the whole thing," said Jerri Lyons, who is considered one of the pioneers of the home funeral movement. "It's making death intimate again."

Lyons' business, Home and Family Funerals, helps families coordinate services for their deceased. Her nonprofit organization, Final Passages, uses workshops and other methods -- including a recent workshop in Honolulu -- to spread the word about what she calls "one of the best-kept secrets in our country."

On a near-perfect Saturday when people crowd Waikiki's beaches, a handful of middle-age women cluster in a small room on a suburban block to talk about death and quiet home services.

Reasons for choosing to have a service at home are varied: from environmentalists who oppose embalming to Muslims whose faith dictates a simple service. Whatever the motivation, Lyons said there are benefits.

"It's a time when people should be allowed to let the whole process unfold in a natural way," she said. "It's a very healing experience."

Some families may just want a few extra hours at home with their deceased. Others may do everything from getting dry ice to preserve the body to building a casket.

Amy Prater, 38, of Denver, said she was skeptical when her father, who had pancreatic cancer, told her he wanted a home funeral. He died three years ago, and Prater now says she couldn't imagine doing it any other way.

"I thought it was going to be so weird, it was going to be so scary," she said. "But it wasn't. It was really comforting."

Bob Prater died at home in Sebastopol at 64. His family bathed and dressed him and laid him in bed, where he stayed for four days until the memorial service.

A local carpenter built a simple pine coffin, and the family had a party in which they painted it. The night after he died, relatives gathered in the same room as the body, and watched a film about great conductors that Bob Prater, a musician, had wanted to watch.

"It really felt like he was still there with us," Amy Prater said.

Funerals in the home were commonplace before the Civil War and the introduction of embalming, which preserved soldiers' bodies making long journeys home. Hospitals eventually displaced homes as the main place where people died, and funeral homes became popular by the early 20th century.

"The landscape of death changes with these two institutions that sort of provide ritual specialists to take care of the dying body," said Gary Laderman, a religion professor at Emory University and author of "Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Industry in 20th Century America." Families, Laderman said, "were willing to give up the responsibility of disposing the dead."

The high cost of funerals also can be a factor in deciding to have one at home.

Traditional U.S. funerals average $5,000 to $6,000, according to the Funeral Consumers Alliance; Lyons can help arrange a service, including cremation and a $35 coffin, for under $1,000.

Laws vary widely from state to state, but it's legal for families to handle a body on their own in most places. Five states -- Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska and New York -- require funeral directors to be involved in some way.

Funeral directors say the increased interest in home funerals is part of a larger trend to personalize last rites.

"Consumers are changing the idea of this typical 'have it at a church and have it at a funeral home' and we're trying to accommodate them every way that we can," said Kurt Soffe, who runs two Utah funeral homes and serves as spokesman of the National Funeral Directors Association.

That includes putting cremains on a rocket and launching it into space, making the cremains a part of a fireworks show, or having funerals with a theme that focuses on a hobby of the deceased -- be it golfing or gambling.

Some people even have the carbon extracted from their loved one's cremated remains and transformed into a diamond.

Soffe said he doesn't envision home services ever accounting for more than one-tenth of the market. Families, he said, will continue turning to professionals for help.

"Most families aren't in any kind of condition to make those arrangements themselves," he said.

On the Net:

Final Passages: http://www.finalpassages.org