The Centre for Natural Burial

Michigan State University
People often are surprised to learn that Michigan law does not require embalming as long as the remains are buried or cremated within 48 hours. And home funerals are allowed, but require that a licensed funeral director and doctor sign the death certificate.

By Bruce Dorries
Heard any good jokes about burial lately? How about: “What did Beethoven do for Halloween …?”
“He decomposed.”
Or this comic observation: “Psychological surveys that rank people’s fears list public speaking, snakes and death at the top. That means most of us would rather die from a poisonous snakebite than deliver a eulogy.”
More seriously, heard […]

One of Clark County’s oldest cemeteries is reviving a pioneer-era style of burial, in the hopes of appealing to modern environmental sensibilities.
By Erik Robinson, The Seattle Times Company
The Columbian
FERN PRAIRIE — One of Clark County’s oldest cemeteries is reviving a pioneer-era style of burial, in the hopes of appealing to modern environmental sensibilities.
Near the shadow […]

Arthur Black, Seaway NewsI could never bear to be buried with people to whom I had not been introduced.
Unfortunately, most of us don’t get to choose all of our next-door neighbours in the Great Hereafter, but we do have some say in how we present ourselves to them. Which is why I found myself […]

Eco-Friendly Burials Help Rebuild East Coast Reefs
CBS News
(AP) If you want to help the Chesapeake Bay in the afterlife, or forever be part of the memories from Baltimore’s historic Memorial Stadium, a Georgia company has a burial option you may want to consider.

By MATT SEDENSKY
Beyond the convention center filled with glistening hearses, beyond the rows of perfectly arranged caskets and bottles of embalming fluid, funeral directors await perhaps their greatest windfall ever: The death of the baby boom generation.
For thousands of professionals gathered here at the National Funeral Directors Association convention, the current economic slump does nothing […]

By Robert King • The Indianapolis Star • November 14, 2008
When people stop by the booth Nathan Butler sets up to promote his funeral home, peo­ple routinely tell him they aren’t interested in the trappings of a modern burial.
“They say ‘Put me in a sheet and put me in a ditch,’” Butler said.
For many potential […]

Bluntmoney.com
My husband and I just finished watching the entire Six Feet Under TV series last week via Netflix. I really enjoyed watching it, but of course you can’t watch 5 years’ worth of a show about death without thinking about death now and then. The show brought back memories of my mother’s death, and our […]

Liz Collin, WCCO
The move to go green has gone well beyond reduce, reuse and recycle. It now includes a final resting place. In her 62 years, Nancy Manahan has had some time to figure out how she wants to live, but lately she’s focused on what happens when she dies.
Manahan lost her sister-in-law to breast […]

By Boonville Daily News
Ozark Avalon Church has taken initial steps to create a natural burial cemetery by filing paperwork with the Cooper County Recorder’s office. The paperwork was filed on Oct. 31, the time of Samhain, the Wiccan holiday honoring the dead. Pictured, Rev. Rose Wise stands near the entrance of the proposed burial areas, […]