Burial

This is just a bunch of random thoughts on after-death.

Our family believes in cremation; we have three generations of urns in a mausoleum (which I've never visited, and have no intention of).  When my sister died, she stipulated in her will that she wanted her ashes scattered on this one mountain in the North Cascades.  We discovered after she died that it was accessible only via a three-day rigorous hike -- so we said fuck that.  We scattered her ashes on a glacier, on a day hike within sight of the mountain she wanted.

When my dad died he wanted his ashes in the mausoleum, but there was too much ash to fit in the urn we bought, so my sister scattered the leftovers off the deck of his house.  She asked me to help but I didn't see much point.  When she handed me the ashes she said "Here's daddy" but I had to correct her.  Daddy was gone.  These ashes could have been from anybody/anything.  It most definitely was not "him" in any meaningful sense.

In the years since then, I have come to understand, a little bit, about burial, about having a place to go to grieve a departed loved one.  With our ashes scattered to the winds there is no locus.

My friend Nick is Italian, his family is big on cemeteries and burial.  His grandmother went EVERY DAY for many years to the grave of his grandfather, wailing, weeping, pounding the ground.  Nick and his mother visit his dad's grave every Sunday.

That makes more sense to me now.

It's not "daddy" but it represents who they were and gives you a place to grieve.

My parents got both. They were cremated, and the ashes were buried, so we have (small) graves to visit if we want.

Montez says I can cremate her and put her ashes in a mayo jar, and keep her on the coffee table. I protested that that would cramp my style when I was looking for a new girlfriend. She didn't seem to care.

My father was cremated and his urn placed in a sealed niche at the cemetery.  A few days later, my mother died. She did not want to be cremated. We had my father's urn removed from the niche and buried with her.

I don't visit graves or go to funerals, so the location is not important to me.

I told my wife that when I croak, I want to be cremated and have my ashes placed in a Tupperware container which is to be left out on a counter in the kitchen. Then people visiting may lift a corner of the container and say, "What the hell is this?" I will spend eternity chortling, especially at those who stick a finger in for a taste (hopefully before they are told what it is, but with some of my friends...).

There's an episode of Six Feet Under, the show about a family that owns a funeral home, where Nate's wife Lisa dies.  She wanted to be buried "naturally," just wrapped in a shroud and placed in the dirt.  Oddly this option is illegal in California (and probably most other states), so Nate the funeral director has to break all kinds of laws to fulfill her last wishes.

Seems like the logical choice to me too.

I always believed the urge for mummification, for embalming, for sturdy resist-the-elements caskets dates back to pre-medical days when death and coma were indistinguishable and sometimes "the dead" had a resurrection.  People hoped (against hope) that their loved one would "come to" and find his body preserved and ready to resume living.

Permanent disposal of a body requires a greater level of certainty, an acknowledgment that the person isn't coming back.

Huh.  Did you know the difference between a coffin and a casket?  A casket is rectangular, while a coffin has tapers at the feet and head.  I did not know that.

"Green burial" gravesite marker.

"Green cremation" is illegal in 43 states.

Quote :

Alkaline hydrolysis as a method of final disposition of human remains is currently legal in seven states,[9] including Florida, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon.[10] The process was legal in New Hampshire for several years but amid opposition by religious lobby groups it was banned in 2008[11] and a proposal to legalize it was rejected in 2013.[12][13] In Minnesota, Mayo Clinic uses an alkaline hydrolysis process to dispose of donated bodies.[1] UCLA uses the process to dispose of donor bodies.[14]

NoCoPilot wrote:

"Green cremation" is illegal in 43 states.

There is too much money involved in the disposition of bodies for us to expect anything else.

Yeah no shit.  It cost I think $1200 to have my dad cremated, and another $300 for a temporary cardboard "urn" until his final urn arrived from Amazon.  It looked a lot like a Chinese take-out box. What a racket.

Which was doubly a shame because my parents were lifelong members of the People's Memorial Association which promised them cheap fast cremations.  Unfortunately my dad died on like a Thursday, and PMA couldn't come pick up the body until Tuesday, and there were no suitable refrigeration facilities on the island.

I was watching some documentary recently, forget which, and it was mentioned (and shown) that in this one culture (I think it was in Tibet) the custom is to leave the body outside for scavengers to pick clean.  Burial is impractical, and returning the elements to the environment is revered.  Letting buzzards and insects do the job is the most efficient way.

Seems oddly out of touch with most traditions though.