The Last Word On Nothing

When I die, I want to be gently curled into the fetal position and put into one of those biodegradable pods from which a tree of my choice will grow. (I’m thinking weeping willow, for the drama of its wild hair, or maybe something ancient and delicious-smelling like a magnolia.)

Or dress me in a mushroom suit that feeds the soil and plant me in the woods. Really, this is a thing. 

Don’t preserve me or put makeup on me or dye my skin to prompt people’s lies: They did such a nice job, she looks so natural; keep away with the creepy mouth formers and eye caps that prop up a sunken face. I don’t need a big polished coffin lined with silk, or a concrete urn to keep the worms out. I don’t need anything at all.

According to this resource, which seems in synch with others I’ve come across, common burial in the West uses over 6 billion tons of concrete, enough wood to build millions of homes, and 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde each year. Exact figures vary, but safe to say the death industry in the U.S., at least, is a toxic resource hog.

Embalming seems to me the most egregious aspect of how we treat our dead. The practice–which is accepted, even expected, in most major religions (the Jewish and Muslim faiths being blessed exceptions)–arose in the West around the Civil War so dead soldiers could be shipped home without decomposing. At first arsenic and mercury were used as preservatives—which meant super-toxic stuff seeping into the environment. Later came variants of formaldehyde, which at least breaks down in water and soil.

(I must give credit to the ancient Egyptians for their non-toxic approach, sucking out the dead’s blood and organs–the brain came out through the nose, if I recall my favorite ewww-inducing historic facts correctly–and then filling the body cavity with natural materials to keep decomp at bay. Of course, for the elite there came those multi-roomed tombs filled with furniture, jewels, and other items for the afterlife…not exactly worm food.)

There are consequences of Western burials above ground, too: Graveyards tend to be grassy yards—low-diversity environments–that require mowing and fertilizing. One silver lining: A graveyard may offer citizens a park-like experience in an urban area otherwise lacking in green space. Better a cemetery than an Arby’s parking lot, I always say.

The funeral industry should be gearing up for a long, flush stretch. By midcentury, some 16 percent of people worldwide will be 65 years old and older, up from 9 percent today, according to population projections. In the West, city cemeteries in particular are already stuffed to the gills, while many of those on coasts are eroding away as seas devours shorelines. (See my own article about this phenomenon here.) Meanwhile, our toxin-pumped, horizontal, one-person-per-plot burials continue apace in our most people-packed places.

The Netherlands, among others, has reduced the need for the land grab by renting grave sites for 10 to 20 years, then reusing them when the lease is up. Term limits for graves in Hong Kong is six years; unclaimed remains are cremated and added to a communal plot.

Note that cremation, which might seem a healthy solution, isn’t harmless. A body releases CO2 when burned, plus heavy metals (including mercury if you have old dental fillings), and crematoriums use fuel to speed up the process. But compared with the energy it takes just to manufacture and transport a coffin, for example, a fiery end is still a healthier choice. Some crematoriums are also capturing useable energy as they burn the dead. And finally comes perhaps the “greenest” cremation method of all, like something from The Godfather: Place the deceased in a bath of water and potassium hydroxide and heat to about 350 degrees F. The body dissolves into a sterile liquid and bone fragments in just a couple of hours–hard to beat if a small footprint is your goal…or if you just want to get rid of a body posthaste.

If fire and dissolution don’t mesh with your vision of the afterdeath, it’s nice to know that old ideas like straight-into-the-earth burials—even space-saving upright burials–may be options.

Simple, natural. It just makes sense to me. When I was a kid, we’d go to graveyards and do “rubbings”—putting paper atop tombstones and scratching with a crayon to pick up the inscriptions. It was art of a sort, and I think gave us a sense, at a young age, of life’s impermanence versus that of the rock commemorating it. Deep down, it occurred to me that in death, too, we should be impermanent. Why work so hard to stick around? Getting back to nature as fast as possible, feeding animals, plants, and microbes, has always seemed like the right thing to do.

And so, when I’ve given all I can as a living being, I want to give myself to the soil (or the sea, but that’s another story). What could be more spiritual than becoming the seed for something else, especially something that’s leafy and flowering and beautiful?

Wherever I land, I hope there will be dappled sunlight, native wildlife, and a soft breeze. Once I’m settled in, feel free to come sit awhile. I’d imagine much good thinking can be done after a death, under a tree.

Claude Monet, Weeping Willow