Author: STEPHANIE EARLS stephanie.earls@gazette.com

The discovery of more than 115 decaying bodies at Return to Nature, a Penrose funeral home that provided flame cremations but primarily marketed itself as a “green” burial business, has inspired questions about a niche of the modern funeral industry whose practices date back to the dawn of grief and ritual. Colorado law requires bodies…

On a bitterly cold and stormy morning this month, about 60 people who’d never met James Cook, Johnny Hollingshed, Sharon Jackson or Loren Grigsby huddled under and around a pavilion at Pikes Peak National Cemetery in Colorado Springs to witness the quartet’s final salute. All any of the attendees knew about the four veterans being…

Up the breezeway stairs, over the spilled, spewed remnants of someone else’s bad decisions and a skinny guy sitting cross-legged on the balcony who doesn’t open his eyes as you pass, is the motel room the Sheppard family is grateful to have on this bitterly cold mid-January day. The space inside is warm, chartreuse-walled and…