Qualicum News. Parksville, B.C.
They say such nice things about people at their funerals.
Makes me sad to realize I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.
– Garrison Keillor
We humans do a lot of stupid things in a lot of stupid ways but few can match the way we let ourselves be treated after we croak. I’m talking about our terrestrial sendoff. Can you think of any other ritual as bizarre and illogical as the conventional burial experience?
If I was going to have a traditional burial here’s what I could look forward to. My carcass would be splayed out jay-naked on a slab in front of one or more total strangers who would bleed me, disembowel me and pump me full of noxious chemicals to keep me fresh. Then they would dress me in my best suit and tie, pimp me out with rouge and face powder to make me look natural. Then I would go on display in a strange room where a lugubrious greeter would show in my friends who want to pay their respects as well as my enemies who want to make sure that I’m dead.
I will be, the while, ensconced in a luxurious casket of impeccably hand-crafted wood lined with plush satin and festooned with beautiful brass accoutrements. Eventually my box and I will be lowered into a hole in the ground and covered with dirt. The whole operation will take less than a week and cost my heirs and assigns more than the price of a new car.
Now how dumb is that?
Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about this grisly scenario because when my bell tolls I’m going up in smoke. But apparently even cremation is not the warm and fuzzy eco-friendly alternative I always assumed it was.
Turns out that where I live, there are absolutely no requirements for emission controls on crematoria.
Great. Can’t even check out of this place without making one last ugly contribution to global warming.
Still, if I can just hang on long enough, I might be able to avail myself of a third alternative. It’s called Green Burial and it’s coming - eventually — to a boneyard near you. People who elect to have a green burial do not get embalmed. Nor do they get entombed in a concrete vault or even a wooden casket. Bodies are wrapped in shrouds and placed in unpretentious economical coffins designed to degrade quickly and naturally in the ground.
You don’t have to mortgage the house to pay for a marble memorial either. Green burial graveyards are left in a natural state, unencumbered with tombstones or memorial markers. Instead, a common memorial appears at the entrance listing everyone who’s interred there. Rather than a half-ton of chiseled granite listing your check-in and check-out date over some cheesy poetry, you get a tree or a shrub planted over you.
Now how refreshing is that?
That’s the good news. The bad news is there aren’t any green burials going on in Canada. They’re big in Britain and growing in popularity in the U.S., but so far they are not happening here.
That may be about to change. The spokesman for a graveyard in Victoria, B.C. has announced that next year, they will be opening a half-acre of their property exclusively for green burials.
It’s Royal Oak Burial Park if you want to get your name in.
The company claims it will be the first green burial site on all of Vancouver Island, but that’s not technically true. Many native tribes including the Coast Salish disposed of their dead by placing them on platforms in trees. It’s a tradition that endured for hundreds of years.
Now THAT’S recycling.
Incoming white settlers pooh-poohed such barbaric rituals, of course. They dismantled and burned the platforms and insisted the natives adopt our enlightened ways.
But it’s best to tread lightly on other folk’s traditions. I’m reminded of the story of the redneck in a cemetery putting flowers on a friend’s grave when he notices a Chinese man leaving a bowl of rice on another plot.
“When do you expect your friend to come by and eat that rice?” he sneered.
The Chinese smiled politely and said, “Probably about the time your friend shows up to smell the flowers.”