A Greener Way To Go
By Karen E., gather Blog
Since the human body is made up of from 55-60% water, it would only make sense to me that one of the reasons for drought could be that we have buried our water with our dead for more than 150 years. I have tried to explain this thought to my husband several times, and he thinks I am just plain crazy. You may think that, too. But, from searching and reading on the internet, I am finding out that I am not the only one who may be having these thoughts. There are more and more people looking for ways to be as green in death as they are in life.
Embalming was invented during the Civil War, and ever since the funeral industry has made us believe that their services are necessary. Before that time, we buried our dead in the ground, and if there was a casket, it was a plain pine box, which decomposed along with the body. Now, we fill our dead bodies with formaldehyde, and encase them in expensive caskets and concrete vaults. There is no way for the earth to reclaim the water, and other resources, that make up all those human bodies.
In these days of environmental enlightenment, and talk of recycling, it would seem to me that the ultimate in recycling would be to go back to the natural method of disposing of our loved ones, planting them in the ground to give back to the earth one final time. “Green Graveyards—A Natural Way to Go”, an article on the AARP website, is about a doctor and environmentalist in South Carolina who created a graveyard in a nature preserve where you can be buried in the ground without being embalmed, with a biodegradeable coffin, or without a casket if you wish.
Lisa Carlson, Executive Director of Funeral Ethics Organization on the PBS website for A Family Undertaking, a movie that “explores the growing home-funeral movement by following several families in their most intimate moments as they reclaim the end of life, forgoing a typical mortuary funeral to care for their loved ones at home”, says “…This is the only country where embalming is widespread, although it is becoming more available in other countries due to U.S. influence. Undertakers are taught that the viewing is a critical funeral event, with the sale of a casket a major source of profit. So presentation of the body in an expensive casket is the undertaker’s goal. Muslim and Jewish faiths opt for immediate burial directly in the earth, wrapped only in a cloth shroud…”
Although I am not Muslim or Jewish, I feel like we are going against nature when we use the leakproof caskets and vaults that the funeral homes sell us. With more and more people looking for more environmentally friendly methods of burial for their loved ones, maybe the idea of green graveyards and funerals is the way to go.