I made a will.
In it I specificed what I want done with me after I die.
I'm going to be cremated.
I had wanted to go back to the earth from which I came. I wanted to be buried in a cardboard box, unembalmed, and be left to decay, become worm/plant food and thereby rejoin the food chain.
That's not going to be possible. Most states have laws against such things. If you're not buried within 24 hours of death, you have to be embalmed. If you're going to be put on show in a visitation ceremony, you have to be embalmed.
Some cemeteries also require that your casket be placed in a concrete grave liner. You can't be placed directly into the earth, you have to be in a concrete capsule. So, not only are you being pickled with all kinds of toxic fluids, placed in a metal, non-bio degradable casket, you're also getting put in yet another box in the ground. According to a mortician I know, you could literally dig up a person who had been buried in this manner 20 years after their death and expect to find them in much the same condition as when you put them there.
Why? Why aren't we letting nature do it's thing?
Primitive man never buried his dead. People were left to decay where they dropped, literally. Some bright spark figured out that if you put the body into the ground after the person had died the smell wasn't quite so bad, and it also took care of the unsightly rotting corpses littering up the landscape. So began the tradition of burying our dead. We learned along the way that dead bodies are full of nastiness and can spread disease, so we decided that we had to bury them at a certain depth and leave them alone until nature had done it's thing and they were nothing more than bones (a process that takes about 10 years).
Not every country treats it's dead the way the US does. British burials are really quite primitive in comparison. People aren't routinely embalmed, coffins are for the most part made out of wood, and I'd never heard of a concrete grave liner until I came to the US. British visitations consist of a private chapel and only the closest familiy members....I was shocked when I attended my first American visitation service, it was so...public and showy. The deceased was puttied and powdered and placed on show so that people they barely knew in life could file by them in their cadillac of a casket and say "oooh! Doesn't she look good!" Errm......she's dead! She's supposed to look like death warmed over!
So, I'm left wondering why Americans treat their dead the way they do. I understand the need to control and prevent the spread of disease, so in that respect I can see why sometimes embalming is required...but why the grave liner and metal casket? Why not let the earth do it's thing and dispose of human remains mother-nature style?
I'm going to be cremated. I took up enough space on this earth when I was alive; I don't want to take up any more when I'm dead.
Seeing as we're on the subject, has anyone considered organ donation? Gerry-Atrick wrote an article with some good links in it...you can read it here:
Link