“I Told You I Was Sick”

Ever since I saw a TV ad about the possibility of turning my carcass into something worthwhile—like a diamond—after I have “shuffled off this mortal coil” as Will Shakespeare so delicately put it, I have been interested in gaining a profit from my worn-out body. After all, I once sold a carcass of a Chevy to a scrap dealer for a $100, why not get a teeny-weeny piece of carbon for a junked human body?

Besides, over the years I have been humored by epitaphs discovered on tombstones. My favorite is the epitaph on B.P.Roberts’ grave in Key West, Florida, who evidently lost an argument with his doctor: “I Told You I Was Sick!” Remember “The Fat One” Jackie Gleason in “The Honeymooners” and his other TV and Hollywood shows? His trademark exit was always “Away We Go!” That classic line is on his tombstone.

I have been keeping a file on the disposal of human bodies for years. I think it started after reading Aldous Huxley’s futuristic novel “Brave New World” published in 1932. Henry and his mistress Lenina are flying in his personal gyro to a restaurant in A.F. 632 (After Ford) when he flies over the local crematorium. The plane bounces up on the hot gases and then falls quickly as in a switchback on a highway. Henry says, “Do you know what that switchback was? It was some human being finally and definitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was—a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon…” In the novel all citizens were cremated and their ashes were used to supplement asphalt in road-building.

A New Way of Throwing Someone to the Fishes

Churches and the funeral industry seem to be losing control over the disposal of bodies, with families burying loved ones in virgin tree lots and vegetable gardens in pine boxes and winding sheets to ensure quick decomposition. Others have their ashes blown over the landscape in colorful fireworks displays. Several families have paid thousands of dollars to have the ashes of their relatives blasted into orbit by powerful rockets. Free enterprise is creating tremendous competition for the funeral industry, which long had a monopoly on one-half of death-and-taxes because of Christian philosophy.

New disposal businesses are exploding around the country. Prestige Memorials will mix your loved one’s ashes in oils and will paint you a landscape starting at $800. How about a hand-blown glass paperweight containing your husband’s ashes? Life Gem will make you a diamond out of your spouse’s ashes which can be placed in a pendant or charm bracelet. (I thought of Zsa Zsa Gabor and her eight husbands. What a terrific charm bracelet!) Eternal Reefs will mix ashes with concrete and drop your husband off to a coral reef. A concrete ball or rock will run you up to $5,000 including delivery and dumping to create fish habitat in the ocean. An outfit called Memories in Stones is incorporating ashes into concrete garden and backyard benches. I guess some vengeful spouses may have the triumphal pleasure of sitting on their partners.

Space Services, Inc. made many bucks putting the “cremains” of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of “Star Trek”, into an orbit around the earth. I hope his ashes don’t knock a shuttle out of the sky during a flight. A hunter had his ashes inserted into bullets and then fired at game by friends. How about a balloon company called Eternal Ascent? For a price they will put your ashes into a balloon which will go up five miles and then explode! It will spread your ash over a large area.

Cremation urns on the mantelpiece are becoming too traditional. Ashes are now being included in teddy bears you can cuddle during the night, in walking canes which you can take a stroll with, and in wind chimes which can prompt your memory of a loved one.

Or you may wish to use a process called alkaline hydrolysis that dissolves bodies in lye in a cylinder. It results in brownish, syrupy stuff which can be flushed down a normal house drain. It eliminates toxic emissions formed in cremating and certainly takes of less space in a cemetery. Keeping a jar of brownish stuff on the mantel just doesn’t seem to be too appealing.

Dust unto Dust

Mark Harris has written a most revealing book about the funeral industry titled “Grave Matters: A Journey Through The Modern Funeral Industry To A Natural Way Of Burial.” In the preface Harris uses a quote from Edward Abbey, a writer and environmentalist who was buried by friends in his sleeping bag under a pile of rocks in an Arizona desert in 1989: “After the moment of death…we should get the hell out of the way, with our bodies decently planted in the earth to nourish other forms of life—weeds, flowers, shrubs, trees, which support other forms of life, which support the ongoing pageant—the lives of our children. That seems good enough to me.”

This idea is reinforced by naturalist and author Aldo Leopold in the same preface: “Dust unto dust is a desiccated version of the Round River concept…A rock decays and forms soil. In the soil grows an oak, which bears an acorn, which feeds a squirrel, which feeds an Indian, who ultimately lays him down to his last sleep in the great tomb of man—to grow another oak.”

Harris has written quite an evenhanded book but he is careful to point out that the American graveyard is not a very natural environment, although we often use as or call them parks, lawns, fields, and greens. He estimates that the average ten-acre cemetery contains the following materials: enough wood used in coffins to build more than 40 houses, 900 tons of casket steel, and 20,000 tons of vault concrete. But along with these rather tame materials there is enough formaldehyde used in embalming to fill a swimming pool.

But the main chemical legacy left to us who live around cemeteries is arsenic, a toxin used in preserving bodies since before the Civil War. There didn’t seem to be any standard. Mixtures contained ounces to many pounds of arsenic. Harris indicated that research conducted by John Konefes of the University of Northern Iowa at a dozen Civil War cemeteries in Iowa proved that groundwater tested positive for arsenic, and that it was at levels above proposed drinking standards. Konefes said, “Exposed to water seeping through the grave, some of the arsenic in an embalmed body will leach out and it has to go somewhere.”

Another researcher conducted research at a small 1820 cemetery and concluded that zinc, lead, mercury, and arsenic, all components used in early embalming, are still found in the cemetery and in lower groundwaters.

Going “Green” And “Organic” In Death

Archaeologists have discovered evidence of cremation going back thousands of years. Greeks, Romans, and Scandanavians used the method for celebration and disposal. The Vikings placed their dead heros in ships, set them on fire, set the sails and let them fly into the sunset. The Vikings helped spread the custom to Anglo-Saxon England where deaths were celebrated by “bone” fires. Yes, that’s where the word “bonfire” comes from.

Going “Green” is a popular political idea today, but New Guinea tribes called Fore buried their dead around and in sacred forests, realizing that that the bodies fueled growth. Parts of New Guinea are still filled with pockets of sacred original forests. This reminds one of how our illiterate Indians taught the Pilgrims and the Puritans to increase corn production by placing a fish under the seed.

The early Hebrews buried their dead in natural vaults or ground so it also became the Christian practice. Christians thought cremation was a pagan practice because burning “desecrated” the body. (I guess they didn’t think “a’mouldering in the grave” did anything!) The Christian King Charlemagne made cremation a crime punishable by death in 789. Although the Catholic Church officially banned cremation in 1886, the practice caught on anyway. Now 30 percent of Americans are cremated, but we are way behind other countries: Japan, 98%; India, +90%; Switzerland,75%; Great Britain 70%; China, 47%.

Natural burial “green” cemeteries are catching on in this country. Only unembalmed bodies in biodegradable coffins without cement liners can be buried in them. Six states currently have green cemeteries.

But the most practical method so far is the Dukinfield Cemetery and Crematorium Service in Manchester, England. They are in the process of adding pipes, heat exchangers, hot water tanks, and radiators from their crematorium to provide heat and hot water to the facility from burning bodies. The local environment officer said, “We are conscious that it might be a sensitive matter. [But] basically, it’s just heat which will otherwise be lost.”

Amen.