I think burial is more for the living than the deceased. When my pops passed, he had been in the hospital for a good two and a half months. Him and my cousin had kinda fell out over some game he tried to put her on to and she ain't wanna listen. She lived about two, three blocks from the hospital, and I never, NEVER saw her up there. So when he passed, she was upset that she never made peace with him, and when she heard that my mother had decided to go with cremation, she starts talking slick on the low. I laid it out for her, in no uncertain terms. She only wanted a burial so she could cry and scream and act a fool in front of the casket and show how "distraught" she was. I told her she wasn't fooling no one. Why you ain't do all that crying and hand wringing when he was laid up in the hospital?
I agree that funeral homes is out here making a killing (no pun intended). It's borderline obscene what they do to get these families at their most vulnerable moments.