Not once in the collective 76 years since our parents died have my brother and I visited their graves. Though we loved and admired them both much, neither of us can relate to a plot of ground and a carved stone. We prefer to remember them in more tangible ways. The plants our father nurtured and the sports he taught us, our mother’s down-home cooking and beautiful handicraft.In thinking about what I might want when my time comes, a traditional funeral and in-ground burial is not my choice, even though some members of my family might find it comforting. I would rather the many thousands of US dollars such a finale can cost go directly to my heirs or a cause I support, and I would rather my body be used to better the world, say, through donation to a medical school.
When the school is through with me, my remains can be cremated and my ashes interred in an artificial reef that sooner or later will teem with wildlife.
If and when those who survive me desire it, a memorial service would be nice, one filled with music I loved, words I lived by, endearing memories and laughter — lots of it — fueled by my many foibles.
ILLUSTRATION: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
That said, I know some of these ideas are repugnant to many people, who find great solace in the traditional rituals of visitations and wakes, floral displays, funeral services, burials and grave sites maintained in perpetuity.
For example, my husband, who is from a small Minnesota town, points out that every deceased member of his family has been cared for by the same local family-owned funeral parlor in a most respectful and personal way and that that tradition in and of itself has been a great comfort to the survivors.
PRACTICES ARE CHANGING
While I have no doubt that what the industry calls a traditional funeral will survive long after I am gone, I also know that times and practices are changing. Growing numbers of people are not leaving their deaths for others to deal with and are choosing among options some that were commonplace long ago.
Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it.
As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home. Just as most families discuss weddings, home buying, college and other major life issues, so should they discuss funerals. Avoiding the topic won’t stave off death, but it will make the funeral more difficult, and likely more expensive, for survivors.”
Survivors, in a state of grief and, perhaps, shock, often have to decide quickly how to treat their deceased loved ones. In such high-stress moments, they are very vulnerable to sales pitches by funeral parlors or entreaties from more distant relatives, which can result in expenses and rituals that the deceased would never have wanted and the survivors, in more rational moments, would never have approved.
Planning while you can still think clearly can spare your survivors much anguish and expense.
Six years after her husband died, a 70-year-old Manhattan woman started to think about her final resting place when a cousin offered to sell her a burial plot he no longer wanted at the going rate of US$15,000.
“Most of my family members were cremated, but I don’t want to be scattered to the winds,” the woman said in an interview. “It would be nice to be somewhere that the kids could visit.”
But “this is not something I can talk about with them,” she continued, adding, “I’m supposed to live forever.”
Jan Jeffrey of Brooklyn made things easy for her family. Having orchestrated her care through two-and-a-half years of a terminal illness, when she knew her days were numbered, she chose to orchestrate how she would be treated when she died — a private burial followed a while later by a memorial service at church for which she selected the minister, greeters, music, hymns and readings.
On the jacket of Grave Matters by Mark Harris, Lisa Carlson, author of Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love wrote, “Educated consumers are taking back control of the funeral experience, saving thousands of dollars with options that are more personal, meaningful and environmentally friendly.”
Harris’ book, subtitled A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial, provides a detailed description, complete with consumer resource guides and costs, of these six “burial” options practiced in the US:
— A traditional funeral, complete with embalming, coffin, vault and burial in a cemetery.
— Cremation.
— Burial at sea.
— Ashes incorporated in a memorial reef.
— A home funeral; burial in a backyard.
— Burial in a nature preserve, popularly called a “green burial.”
ECOLOGICALLY APPEALING OPTIONS
Many newer — and revived — options are ecologically more appealing than what occurs in a traditional funeral and interment in a groomed cemetery. Embalming, for example, which most funeral directors insist on with an open coffin or if there is a delay of several days before burial, involves replacing body fluids with formaldehyde, a carcinogen that eventually leaches into the environment when the buried body decays.
Every year, Harris wrote, 3 million liters of formaldehyde are injected into embalmed bodies. A far less harmful alternative, especially with just a private viewing or none at all, is to have the funeral home refrigerate the body. For a home funeral, dry ice can be used.
Cremation, now the fate of 30 percent of dead Americans, is fast catching up to whole-body burials and is expected to outnumber them by 2030. American Indians practiced it to release the person’s spirit to the afterworld. Cremated remains need not be buried. They can be stored indefinitely in an urn or scattered, as law permits, on land or in water.
Or they can become part of a reef ball, a giant perforated ball of concrete that is sunk in salt water to create or become part of an already established artificial reef. These memorial reefs, now mostly off the Southeastern coast, are gradually being developed farther north, with future locations expected on the West Coast and in the New York region.
While few of us have estates large enough to house backyard graves, the concept of burials intended to support environmental preservation and restoration is catching on.
These green burials began in 1998 near Westminster, South Carolina, when Billy Campbell established the Ramsey Creek Preserve, 12 hectares of heavily forested woods that now house more than 70 minimally marked grave sites. There is no embalming or vaults, just biodegradable materials and bodies that replenish the earth. Some of the low-cost burial fees are used for conservation and education. Information about green burials: www.memorialecosystems.com.
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