OK, forgive me. I know that headline was sort of cheesy. But when you've spent the past few months working on a documentary on the business of death, you go for the cheap laugh whenever you can.
I've been to casket-manufacturing companies, funeral homes, mortuary science schools and the annual convention of the National Funeral Directors Association. You don't know fun until you've partied with 6,000 funeral professionals.
They were sliver of the more than 130,000 people who work in what's come to be known as the "death care industry" – a $17- billion-a-year business in America. And what's the fastest growing part of it? Cremation.
Every year in America, 2.5 million people die. In 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, 42 percent were cremated, according to the funeral directors association. That's double the rate of just 15 years ago. In some states, largely in the West, the cremation rate tops 70 percent. In Washington, it's 72 percent; in Nevada, almost 74 percent. (The lowest rate of cremation, in case you need a great pick-up line, is Mississippi's, at 15.7 percent.)
(Read More: Funeral Costs Surge 71% in Britain)