By David Sheffield, The Link
My grandmother ended her journey through this life a couple of months ago. She had lived generously and she died well. When the time came to look into funeral arrangements, we found that she had pre-planned, pre-paid, and taken care of all of the details herself. She was an independent gal right to the end.
The funeral home she had chosen was outstanding in their attention to her wishes and our feelings as we grieved her loss. As I observed the process of how we deal with the death of our loved ones, however, it became apparent to me that something as simple and natural as death may have become unnecessarily complicated.
Throughout the history of human existence, many customs and traditions have evolved to honour and remember the deceased. Earlier civilizations ‘buried’ the body above ground by piling a cairn of stones over it and placing flowers on top. Modern funerals involve arranging elaborate flower displays, power point presentations of the life lived, and plates filled with tuna salad sandwiches and pickles for the after-funeral lunch.
In the past family and friends took responsibility for the final care of the deceased, with the practice of viewing or ‘waking’ the body originally taking place in the family home, usually in the parlour. Then, in the 1820s, the first funeral ‘parlour’ opened its doors in our part of the world and death became a business. Today the details of death are typically entrusted to a trained professional who will look after transferring the body, embalming it, arranging it in an attractive casket and delivering it to its final resting place.
This custom of embalming began during the American Civil War as a method of preventing the decay of corpses until they could be interred. While arsenic embalming fluid has been replaced with formaldehyde or a similar preservative, there are unanswered questions about the potential impact of embalming fluid on soil and groundwater health.
While the main concern with burial practices relate to soil contamination and land use, cremation is not necessarily a greener option. Air pollution and use of fossil fuel are the drawbacks there. Stricter emission controls in recent years have resulted in a significant increase in the amount of energy needed to operate incinerators.
I started to question the effect that modern burial has on the environment, wondering whether there were ecologically sound alternatives. That’s how I met Mike Salisbury. Mike’s a Guelph-area landscape architect whose interest in the design of sacred spaces led to his searching for environmentally sympathetic final destinations.
He’s drawn a master plan for a green burial cemetery (see www.earthartist.com) that could be the shape of things to come. It uses “native plants over the grave, with footpaths connecting memorial structures located within the emerging forest.” Mike’s also part of an Ontario group, Green Burial Cooperative, that’s seeking to establish green burial grounds in this province.
Green or woodland burial is becoming a popular choice in the U.K. where embalming never became the rage that it is here. Essentially, green burial facilitates the return of one’s body to the natural cycle after death. It avoids things like embalming, hermetically sealed caskets, concrete vaults and headstones. Instead, low density, low impact burials are carried out simply, in a natural setting where a tree can be planted as a memorial.
“It’s not just about less funeral,” Mike says. A conventional cemetery is a place to bury the dead, but he believes a green burial ground can be so much more. “It‘s a building block that facilitates a range of other things from establishing and protecting natural habitat to offering space for community interaction, while still providing a spiritually fulfilling burial ritual.”
“It’s a whole new paradigm in thinking about cemeteries,” Mike suggests, “but I find most people are favourable to these ideas.” Currently there are five American cemeteries offering green burial options, but none yet in Canada. To learn more about more ecologically sound funeral arrangements, look up www.forestofmemories.org.
While you’re at it, take a look at www.promessafoundation.org, which will fill you in on a Swedish method of turning your remains into compost quickly by freeze-drying them. Susanne Wiigh-Maesak, the scientist who has developed this process, likes the idea of growing a memorial plant in the composted remains. “The plant stands as a symbol of the person, and we understand where the body went,” she says, adding that she “would very much like to become a white rhododendron.”
source - The Link