Category: Death Curiosities

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What Exactly Is a ‘Mushroom Suit’?

Eco-Friendly Burial Options Explained.

By Danielle DeGroot

Going green with natural burial options. 

The tragic passing of longtime television heartthrob Luke Perry a few months ago put a spotlight on the subject of green and eco-friendly burial options. It was recently revealed that the late actor was buried in a mushroom suit, a special burial suit designed to aid in the natural process of decomposition, but more detail on that later.

Though it may not be a topic many of us are comfortable talking about – perhaps one we only think about when faced with a loss – knowing what is out there, and understanding eco-friendly burial, is worth some thought.

Why Go Green?

Burial in a casket and cremation are the most common methods of burial, however, these options actually have a significant negative impact on the environment. Burial in a traditional casket made of metal or plastic prevents the natural process of decomposition. These caskets can use chemical-based finishes, toxic plastics, and chemicals, like formaldehyde, that are used for traditional embalming, which is a carcinogen and poses a risk to those who work with it regularly.

Cremation, or a traditional-style casket, is often considered an eco-friendlier option due to the lack of land use. The process of cremation itself requires the burning of natural gas and, in turn, releases harmful greenhouse gases. Additionally, other harmful chemicals such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury, and hydrofluoric acid are released into the air. There is an eco-friendly process for cremation that has been developed, such as bio-cremation or water resolution, which is a process using water, heat, pressure, and potassium hydroxide to accomplish a cremation without toxic or harmful chemicals.

Green burials are burial practices that have a low environmental impact. Leaving a smaller, less harmful footprint on the planet as one’s last act conserves natural resources, preserves the environment, and also benefits the health of those who work in the industry by not using conventional embalming. The Green Burial Council is made up of two nonprofit organizations working together to further the green burial movement, support and develop more sustainable practices, and continue to honor those who have passed with respect for their lives, treating both the earth and the grief and burial process with respect.

A natural burial, in industry terms, specifically means a burial where the body is interred in the ground without the use of a vault, a traditional casket, or any chemicals. The deceased is wrapped in a biodegradable shroud or uses a pine or woven wicker casket. The options continue to grow as cemeteries around the country have begun to offer natural burial grounds.

Natural and eco-friendly burial options have been growing in popularity over the last 20 years or so. Pine, cardboard, bamboo, and willow are all earth-friendly material used to make caskets that leave less of an impact on the environment. Urns have been fashioned out of biodegradable materials, such as seashell shaped urns made from recycled paper and clay, designed to break down once placed in a body of water, and cornstarch, which eventually biodegrades completely. The options continue to grows as interest in environmentally friendly burial grows.

About That Suit

Luke Perry chose to be placed into eternal rest wearing Coeio’s “Infinity Burial Suit”, a burial garment made with totally natural and biodegradable components, including microorganisms and mushrooms with a job to do. The specially designed suit has three goals: to help in the decomposition process, to neutralize toxins from the body, and to transmit nutrients back into plant life, thus completing the process by restarting life. The company plants two trees for every suit and shroud sold, another step in its goal to continue the cycle of life. The suit costs $1,500 and is available for order online.

The average casket cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000, though the price tag can top $10,000. The cost of cremation is about $1,000, and none of those estimates include funeral services. So while a $1,500 price tag seems steep in comparison it is actually on the less pricey side of the choices. 

The choice to be interred in a mushroom suit was not about fashion or headlines, it was a choice an individual made to give back in a unique way. Due to his celebrity status, that choice brings awareness to this delicate subject.

Keeping It Local

We have plenty of options for going green in the afterlife right here in Colorado, and most are locally owned businesses and products. Here is a breakdown of some of the green and natural burial options the Centennial state has to offer.

  • Roselawn Cemetery in Fort Collins and Evergreen Memorial Park in Evergreen are two of the cemeteries that offer a range of green and natural burial options in Colorado.
  • Crestone Cemetary Natural Burial Ground located in Crestone, Colorado, is the state’s first and only natural burial ground to be Green Burial Council certified.
  • Nature’s Casket out of Longmont creates handcrafted caskets using pine trees killed from pine beetles. Repurposing these trees into blue-stained pine caskets, their products are 100 percent biodegradable and use all non-toxic materials. Though these caskets are only available in Colorado, the company also offers a selection of intricately handcrafted pine urns and provides free shipping on them nationwide. 
  • The Natural Funeral is an independent local funeral home located in Lafayette that specializes in green and natural funeral methods. Using locally produced and naturally made products, they offer a variety of green funeral options, including pine caskets from Nature’s Casket, cardboard caskets, handmade and painted pine urns, and custom crafted painted gourd urns. Living urns, seed pods, and water urns are also offered as are bamboo burial shrouds.
  • Goes Funeral Care in Fort Collins is another local funeral business that works with the Green Burial Council and offers a range of green burial options at either Crestone or Roselawn Cemetery.
  • Seven Stones Chatfield is a botanical gardens cemetery located in Littleton. Seven Stones offers many different burial options and is very different than the somber rows of headstones one might find in a traditional cemetery. An artistic and peaceful place, Seven Stones offers artistic memorials and tributes made individually to honor everyone laid to rest there. Cremation gardens with sculptures and walking paths, waterfalls, and quiet spots to sit and remember. Green burial options are available and growing, with a Meadow of tall grass and natural granite boulder markings. There is even a spot to remember our furry family members with green burial and a pet memorial area. A unique and intriguing place Seven Stones also celebrates life by hosting events such as art, music, and nature festivals throughout the year.

Donate Your Body to Science

For some people, this can be a final act of giving back, perhaps too old or sick to donate organs; some will choose to let their body be used for medical and academic research. This is actually far more common than one might think, and there a plenty of options here in Colorado.

If you are one of those people who may want to give back by letting your body be a research tool, you can do it at no cost. Science Care Colorado has a donor registry where people can sign up and pre-register to become a donor.

Most of the major universities have donor programs, as well, and work with the State Anatomical Board to use these gifts to learn and better serve patients. The University of Colorado School of Medicine at Anschutz Medical Campus holds an annual Donor Memorial Ceremony each spring to remember, honor, and thank those who have given of their bodies in this way. It is a highly emotional event and brings together the community, the families of the deceased, and those who have learned from them.

Former Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs and former Dean of the school of Medicine Richard D. Krugman, MD offers this statement on the donor memorial:

“I have always been impressed that the Anatomical Donor Memorial Service is one of our most emotional events. Just what this service means for students and donors’ families and friends really resonated in a letter I received last week from a woman who wrote, ‘I was the ancient, white-haired lady in the second or third row weeping through most of it.  Not just sadness, but a lot of gratitude, empathy and happiness. It was so well done – the prayers, the Arrhythmias (our student a capella group), the student bagpiper, and the very touching speakers … It was emotional, full of respect and in every way, it meant a great deal of closure for me.'”

Preserving the planet goes far beyond recycling soda cans and not using plastic straws. And all of us, celebrity or not, can make a difference in this unexpected way. Though it is an uncomfortable subject, it is one we will all face at some point, for ourselves and for loved ones.

Have you thought about green and natural burial options? Is there an option or place that you know of here in Colorado that we missed? Please share your thoughts and sentiments with us in the comments below.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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More elderly and fewer children…

who will make final decisions in the future?

By Angela Y. Lee

With an aging, childless future, who’s going to take care of us when we get old? Who’s going to make those end-of-life decisions for us when we can no longer decide for ourselves?

A recent global report from Axios, “The Aging Childless Future,” shows that in the U.S., a fertility rate below the “replacement rate,” according to the Centers for Disease Control, occurs at the same time as the rise in global life expectancy. In 2015, the global life expectancy of about 70 years old will rise to 83 years old in 2100, according to U.N. data.

The report states, “Except in Africa, by 2050 about a quarter of the world population will be 60 or older. At about 900 million now, their numbers will rise to about 3.2 billion in 2100. By 2080, those 65 or older will be 29.1 percent of the global population — and 12.7 percent will be 80 or over, Eurostat reports.

A troubling takeaway from the report is that there simply will not be enough workers to support the elderly, In the U.S., there are fewer than four workers per retired person. In seven European countries, there are three and in Japan, there are two workers per retired person.

The implications of this population shift affect public policy, health care, elder care, end of life decisions, the overall economy and every family in America and across the world.

I understand this firsthand. My mother is 96 years old and has Alzheimer’s. Two months ago she suffered a massive stroke and was in a coma for two weeks. Her heart rate slowed down to the 50s and 60s; her blood pressure dropped to 70/44. Her body was not ingesting the food she was fed through a feeding tube.

My siblings and I decided to remove the tube to make her feel more comfortable. We were preparing for her departure; and the priest (who was a former student of hers) came to administer the Annointing of the Sick. And one of us was always there with her.

Gradually her heartbeat got stronger, her blood pressure started to climb and she was able to breathe without the support of the ventilator.

The doctors’ prognosis was bleak — our mother would inevitably get pneumonia, or some infection. We had discussed and all agreed that we would not want to prolong her suffering. So no resuscitation, no reattaching to the ventilator and no antibiotics.

What about the feeding tube? One option was not to reintroduce nutrients through the feeding tube and essentially let her waste away. The other option was to reintroduce nutrients and wait for some infection to happen (which according to the doctors was just a matter of time). Starving mother to death might be a more humane decision, but it was immediately rejected by my sister who is a Buddhist. She thought our mother wanted to live and we should honor her wish and give her a chance.

Mother did not have a living will. We were all trying to make a decision on her behalf — based on what we thought she wanted, based on what we thought was best and on what we personally would like to happen if we were in her situation.

Our mother had on occasions before the stroke complained that she was bored and life was not worth living. But that didn’t necessarily mean that she wanted to die. Her complaint could be her way of telling us that she wanted us to visit more often.

Families all across the globe are faced with similar scenarios. In a future where perhaps children are not there to facilitate these decisions, how will these life and death decisions be decided and by whom? Leaving these decisions to chance, or to administrators, health-care workers and other strangers is a frightening possibility.

Everyone should have a living will — in order to depart this world with dignity, free from prolonged pain and suffering. However, an end-of-life decision made as young and healthy people may not be the same end-of-life decision when older, weaker and perhaps unable to communicate.

Research in affect forecasting — or  the ability to accurately predict future emotions– has consistently shown that people are reliably inaccurate in predicting how they would feel in different situations

In one study, younger participants with a mean age of 25.5 years and older adults with a mean age of 74.3 years have been shown to make different predictions about how they would feel if they win or lose money.

Older adults reported feeling less negative than younger adults when they lost money. Who is to say that end-of-life decisions made when we are young are the right decisions for us when we are old?

My own research has shown that when people are cognitively depleted or physically tired, they feel more vulnerable and are more likely to engage in self-protection. Across different studies, depleted participants reported being less likely to engage in risky behaviors such as having unprotected sex and more likely to engage in risk-reduction behaviors such as getting tested for kidney diseases and chlamydia.

When people are not able to think properly or reason logically, they revert to relying on instincts. And the survival or self-preservation instinct is a very strong instinct. So if we are trying to make an important end-of-life decision for ourselves when we can still think properly by anticipating what we would want when we could no longer think properly, we may be off the mark.

If our mother’s will to live is what enabled her to come out of the coma and get off the ventilator, then withholding nutrients and let her waste away is equivalent to murdering her.

Many people have a will,  a legal document that specifies the distribution of one’s assets after death. People change their will as circumstances change and they re-decide who should inherit how much of their assets.

People should also have a living will, a document that allows people to state their wishes for end-of-life medical care, in the event they become unable to express their decision. Health-care providers are usually the ones to suggest or remind patients to have a living will.

But more than just having a living will may be the best practice. Given the frequency of poor performance on affect forecasting and given that perspectives and sentiments often change as we age, perhaps perhaps there needs to be a system in place to prompt regularly revisiting the terms of the living will.

Our mother is in a hospice/rehab facility. She takes pleasure in the daily visits and phone calls of her five children. We are doing our best.

Everyone needs to learn more about end-of-life experiences in order to make better end-of-life decisions for ourselves and for our loved ones.

Perhaps there can be a public policy on not just who has the legal authority to make end-of-life decisions, but also with guidance on how to make these decisions.

In the not too distant future, for people who are childless, these decisions are best not left to chance.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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5 strange causes of death in the medieval period

Tasked today with confirming and certifying deaths resulting from unnatural or unknown causes, coroners were officially introduced in England in 1194, primarily for the purpose of collecting taxes. But their early records of deaths that occurred in unusual or suspicious circumstances offer an incredible insight into daily life, attitudes and living conditions in the Middle Ages that we would not otherwise be privy to…

Here, Janine Bryant from the University of Birmingham, who has researched medieval coroners’ rolls of three English counties – Warwickshire, London and Bedfordshire – reveals some of the most intriguing causes of death… 

1 Animals

Animals were responsible for numerous deaths in the medieval period.At Sherborne, Warwickshire in October 1394, a pig belonging to William Waller bit Robert Baron on the left elbow, causing his immediate death. Similarly, in London in May 1322 a sow wandered into a shop and mortally bit the head of one-month-old Johanna, daughter of Bernard de Irlaunde, who had been left alone in her cradle “at length”.

Cows appear to have been somewhat difficult to manage in the Middle Ages, and caused several deaths, including that of Henry Fremon at Amington, Warwickshire in July 1365. He was leading a calf next to water when it tossed him in and he drowned.

2 Drowning

People of all ages fell into wells, pits, ditches and rivers, and the coroners’ rolls of Warwickshire, London and Bedfordshire all record that drowning was responsible for the largest percentage of accidental deaths.

In August 1389 at Coventry, Johanna, daughter of John Appulton, was drawing water when she fell into the well. The incident was witnessed by a servant who ran to her aid, but while helping her fell in also. This was overheard by a third person who also went to their aid – he too fell in, and all three subsequently drowned.

3 Violence

While there are some regional and gender differences, approximately half of the entries in the medieval coroners’ rolls record violent deaths that occurred both within and outside of the home.

One domestic incident occurred at Houghton Regis, Bedfordshire in August 1276, when John Clarice was lying in bed with his wife, Joan, at the hour of midnight. “Madness took possession of him, and Joan, thinking he was seized by death, took a small scythe and cut his throat. She also took a bill-hook and struck him on the right side of the head so that his brain flowed forth and he immediately died”. Joan fled, seeking sanctuary in the local church, and later abjured the realm [swore an oath to leave the country forever].

Others deaths occurred in more mysterious circumstances: in Alvecote, Warwickshire in April 1366, Matilda, the daughter of John de Sheyle, was crossing some woods when she discovered an unknown teenage boy who had been feloniously killed and was found to have multiple wounds.

The rolls record that deaths frequently arose from disputes, and thus many seem to have been unpremeditated acts. The weapon often appeared to have been whatever was at hand, such as the case of Thomas de Routhe who died at Coventry in May 1355 after he was hit on the head with a stone.

4 Falls

There are many accounts of people who fell to their death, and they did so in a variety of ways: at Coventry in January 1389, Agnes Scryvein stood on a stool to cut down a wall candle. She fell off, landed on the stand for a yarn-winder, and ailed for two hours before eventually dying of her injuries.

At Aston, Warwickshire in October 1387, Richard Dousyng fell when a branch of the tree he had climbed broke. He landed on the ground, breaking his back, and died shortly after.

A London case occurred in January 1325 at around midnight when “John Toly rose naked from his bed and stood at a window 30 feet high to relieve himself towards the High Street. He accidentally fell headlong to the pavement, crushing his neck and other members, and thereupon died about cock-crow”.

5 Fun

The coroners’ rolls show that the Middle Ages weren’t all doom and gloom, and that people did actually have fun – although it occasionally ended in disaster.

At Elstow, Bedfordshire in May 1276, Osbert le Wuayl, “who was drunk and disgustingly over-fed” was returning home. “When he arrived at his house he had the falling sickness, fell upon a stone on the right side of his head, breaking the whole of his head and died by misadventure”. He was discovered the following morning when Agnes Ade of Elstow opened his door.

In Bramcote, Warwickshire in August 1366, John Beauchamp and John Cook were wrestling “without any malice or considered ill-will”. In the course of their game John Cook was tossed to the ground and died the following day from the injuries he sustained.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘Death doulas’ assist people before and after death

Death doula Christy Marek talks with Mark Quinlan at Our Lady of Peace in St. Paul, Minn. on Friday, May 10, 2019. They discussed the specifics of funeral planning and the nuances of the end of life. She has followed him from the hospital to a transitional care unit, and now to the hospice.

By BOB SHAW

In the dimly lit room, Mark Quinlan struggles to be heard.

His voice box has been silenced by his thyroid cancer. He tries to whisper, but the hum of his oxygen machine drowns out the sound. The voice of the bone-thin 67-year-old barely carries to the edge of his hospice bed.

But Christy Marek is listening.

Marek, an end-of-life assistant called a death doula, leans forward to catch every word. She asks him about funerals, the afterlife and memories of happier times.

“Do you want last rites?” she asks.

The whisper: “I suppose.”

She has been with him for months, in a hospital, transitional care unit and a hospice. Every step of the way, she has guided him through a dark and scary wilderness.

In many cases, death doulas are redefining how people approach death. They are breaking away from traditional generic funerals, and pioneering approaches to grieving, memory and death.

“Death is being reimagined at this moment,” said Anne Murphy, owner of the death-consultation business A Thousand Hands.

In the past, doulas were women working as midwives to help the process of birth. “Death doula” is a term for people who help with the other end of life. They also call themselves celebrants or soul midwives.

“They all do the same thing — companioning for people dying,” said Jane Whitlock, a St. Paul death doula.

The National Doulagivers Institute reports that its training has quadrupled in two years. President Suzanne O’Brien said she has now trained 402 certified doulas in a six-month course. The cost is $997, Twin Cities Pioneer Press reported.

“I just got back from a month of training in Thailand,” O’Brien said in April. “This is needed around the world.”

Doulas-to-be are drawn to a job that that pays up to $100 an hour in Minnesota. The trainers are proliferating, with names like Doulagivers, Lifespan Doulas, Soul Passages and the National End of Life Doula Alliance.

The traveling doula schools are arriving in Minnesota.

One session starting May 31 offers a three-day program by the International End of Life Doula Association for $750. Or you could get training from the Conscious Dying Institute, which is offering three-day classes starting June 22 and September 26, for $2,995 and $1,895, respectively.

The inconsistency makes some uncomfortable.

“I look at the programs where you get certified after a weekend. It is not doing the people you work with justice,” Marek said.

“It is frankly a little bit messy.”

Doulas sometimes overlap the services of a hospice — causing some friction.

“Hospices frankly do not know what to do with the end-of-life doula role,” Marek said.

Susan Marschalk, director of the Minnesota Network of Hospice and Palliative Care, said they do not compete but must learn to work together.

“Doulas are newer, and there is some trepidation about them,” Marschalk said. She said hospices provide medical care and emotional support for dying people.

Doulas are flexible, hired by the hour. They can be employed before or after the dying process begins, helping with funerals and commemorations.

The training for death doulas is sketchy.

It’s a new vocation, with no regulations or standards. With no training whatsoever, anyone can start working as a death doula.

Sometimes they are hired months before a death, and work for months afterward. Some are called at the last minute and may help only in a person’s final hours.

“This is so new. We are all finding our way,” said Marek, of Lakeville, owner of Tending Life at the Threshold.

Being a doula is not a full-time career — yet.

“Right now there are no full-time death doulas,” said doula Whitlock. But she predicts that as baby boomers age, the demand will increase along with the number of deaths.

Doulas seeking full-time work sometimes branch out into related areas — paperwork, aging in place, consulting, or doula services for pets.

“Dying people want to put things in order,” she said. She helped a woman arrange for her ashes to be dropped into the Mississippi River from a pedestrian bridge.

Death doulas encourage doing whatever is meaningful — which can often mean breaking the rules.

For example, one dying man recently requested a wedding and an end-of-life celebration — in the same service. He was engaged, said doula Murphy, and saw the dual-purpose ceremony as meaningful.

What was meaningful at Susan Showalter’s funeral was utterly original.

Showalter, 71, of St. Paul, died in December of diabetes complications. End-of-life adviser Murphy suggested a home vigil, displaying the body for visitors to see.

About 175 mourners were served white wine and Doritos — Showalter’s happy-hour treat.

Respecting an ancient ceremony, they washed the body with washcloths and pans of water. They anointed her with oil, dabbing it on her face and hands.

The group spontaneously sprinkled rose petals to make a pathway between the body and the funeral-home van.

Once the body was gone, they shaped the petals on a table into an outline of her body. Where her feet had been, someone placed hockey socks — which she wore when her feet were cold.

The personal touches enriched the process, said her husband, David.

“This allowed us to be in charge,” he said. “We were participants, not just observers.”

“I swear at least 20 people thanked me for such a wonderful way to say goodbye.”

At other times, death doulas help celebrate the lives of the deceased — before and after they die.

On May 10, Marek hovered at the bedside of cancer victim Quinlan in Our Lady of Peace hospice in St. Paul.

She reminded him of the impact he had on his students, from 40 years of teaching at Centennial High School in Circle Pines.

One of them — Chris Roskowinski — flew from his home in Sherman Oaks, California, when he learned that Quinlan was dying.

The night before, he was taken to the opening-night play at the high school, which he had helped direct until the cancer left him incapacitated. The cast and the audience honored Quinlan — which made the occasion both happy and sad.

“Tell me, did that make it easier for you?” Marek asked. “Harder?”

After a pause, a raspy whisper rose from the bed: “Easier.” The word seemed to hang in the air.

At his bedside, Roskowinski could barely hear Quinlan speak, but nodded appreciatively.

“She can be his voice,” he said.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The ghost in the machine – what will happen to online you after death?

Each day we create a wealth of online data, especially on social media

By Susan Brown

Few of us plan our legacy for when we’ve died and how we’ll live on in the lives of others. At Marie Curie our nurses help terminally-ill people to create memories for their loved ones. One nurse helped create a mixed music playlist to help a spouse sleep when their loved one is no longer lying next to them. Others helped to record ­stories, write letters or ­capture ­photographs. These are all very intimate and physical legacies, but as technology advances and we are increasingly living more of our lives online, it’s time to think about what people’s digital legacies will be.

In an increasingly digital world, we’ve shared online mourning when a celebrity dies, we’ve grieved when people we met online have died, and we’ve also been touched by stories of people online that we didn’t know.

Most of us have digital assets and online accounts. We need to think about what will happen to them when we die and if we want to leave a digital legacy online.

The Law Society advises that ­people should leave instructions about what should happen to their social media and online accounts after their death. The Digital Legacy Association has materials on its website to help people consider and leave a digital will.

There’s been a recent trend of video blogging, where people tell their stories to be shared after their death. Facebook has a feature to allow accounts to be memorialised so you can set a legacy contact to manage your account. Other technologies, such as Afterbook, enable you to ­create a home for memories, stories and photos.

It’s important to think about what you want to leave behind, and how you want to be remembered online. It’s also important to consider who owns any data left behind, how accessible and enduring that data will be, and how it will be protected.

In my lifetime we’ve seen incredible advances in technology. We’ve moved from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray. We’ve gone from no mobile phones to basic Nokia 3210s to the iPhone. ­Likewise, the way we interact online has changed. The first social media site was launched in 1997. Two years later, the first blogging sites were established and in the early 2000s we saw sites such as Myspace and Bebo which have either been replaced or lost the popularity they once had.

Are we naïve to think that any of the current websites and software will still be available and as commonly used in the next 20, 50 or 100 years? It’s impossible to accurately predict what the world will look like then.

Unless data is transferred across platforms, carefully planned online legacies may not be accessible to ­others in the future.

Even if they are, memorialising a Facebook page doesn’t ensure that what we want to be left behind will be seen. There’s a whole wealth of data on my social media to sift through, data that it’s likely no one will want to access in the future.

In comparison though, my ­grandfather was a plane navigator in the Second World War. I know this because he’s told me his stories, I’ve seen the photographs and held his medals in my hand. Although he is still alive, his memory will live on and will be passed down generations.

It’s interesting that physical ­artefacts could stand the test of time more than digital artefacts. There’s a common perception that when something is online, it will last ­forever, but that might not be the case.

These are all concepts explored in prominent psychologist Elaine ­Kasket’s new book, All the Ghosts in the Machine. Elaine highlights that while privacy is a fundamental human right, it is not a right for the dead. There is no legislation that ­protects people’s privacy when they’re gone. A digital will can ensure that only certain people can access someone’s data, but that might have serious implications, especially if a loved one finds information in an online account that the person ­never intended to share and is no longer there to explain. That’s part of a ­digital legacy too, and can cause real pain to those left behind. What can that do to the grieving process of the bereaved?

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Campaign aims to get people to better prepare for death

Initiative comes as survey suggests talking about dying is still an uncomfortable subject

Bella Vivat, a visitor at The Departure Lounge inside Lewisham shopping centre in London.

By

It comes to us all in the end. But despite the inevitability of death, few of us feel comfortable talking about it and most have made no plans for how we would like our final moments to play out, according to research.

Now, leading experts from the Academy of Medical Sciences are launching a campaign aimed at making death a more acceptable topic of conversation.

Prof Dame Lesley Fallowfield, a cancer psychologist at the University of Sussex, is urging people to draw up death plans, much like they prepare for the birth of a baby.

“We have birth plans where people record what they’d prefer to happen,” she said. “We all know that events sometimes supersede your wishes, but we can think it through and make it the best it can possibly be. Making a death plan shouldn’t be seen as a macabre thing to do.”

Fallowfield said failure to plan and talk about death meant many people do not spend their final weeks and hours as they would have chosen and families are frequently left with regrets.

A poll by the academy, conducted by Ipsos Mori and published this week, found that six in 10 people feel they know little or nothing about the final hours of life, with many people getting information about dying from documentaries or soaps rather than conversations with medical professionals.

One third of the nearly 1,000 people who participated in face-to-face interviews declined to answer questions about death and dying, suggesting that many feel uncomfortable talking about the subject. “Challenging this taboo is at the heart of the academy’s national campaign,” said Prof Sir Robert Lechler, the academy’s president.

To jump-start the conversation, the academy has opened a pop-up installation, The Departure Lounge, at Lewisham shopping centre in south-east London, aimed at engaging people with the topic. Occupying what was previously a mobile phone shop, it features a large pile of suitcases emblazoned with messages and questions about the final journey we all face.

On the first day of its month-long residency, it prompted mixed reactions from shoppers.

Michelle Charlesworth, 35, from Lewisham, said that as a result of her visit she was planning to write down what she would like to happen when she dies. “It takes that responsibility off your loved ones,” she said. “It sounds like a small thing, but I’d want to be in a really nice pair of pyjamas. I’d probably want to be cremated or buried in them too, actually.”

The Departure Lounge has prompted some to make plans for their death.

Bella Vivat, who works in palliative care research at UCL, said visiting had convinced her to draw up an advanced directive, a legal document in which a person specifies what actions should be taken for their health if they are no longer able to make decisions for themselves. “We live our lives as though we’re not going to die,” she said. “I’m going to go away today and do that.”

Bambii Nzinga, 24, an actor and screenwriter, who is working as a host at the installation, said she initially took on the job because she thought it might provide interesting writing material. Then her four-year-old son started asking her about death. “I was so prepared for the birds and the bees conversation,” she said. “But when he asked me if I was going to die, I didn’t know what to say.”

On the spur of the moment she told him she was never going to die, but has since revised her answer. “Children are happy to talk about death, it’s us that put the fear in them,” she said.

Some wandered into the lounge under the impression that a suitcase sale was underway and looked baffled after reading signs such as “everybody’s got to die of something”. “I’m not ready for death,” one unsuspecting shopper exclaimed making a quick exit.

Smaller versions of the lounge will be appearing at 30 other locations across the UK over the summer.

Fallowfield said that while death was normally sad, failing to talk about the inevitable can make the experience more traumatic for both the person who is dying and their relatives afterwards. “It’s quite awful when you see families who’ve never talked about it having these hollow conversations and feigned smiles about a future that’s never going to be realised,” she said. “When you see families who have openly acknowledged death, they often share sad and tearful moments, but also laugh and comfort each other.”

The poll found that people were around as likely to get information about death from documentaries (20%) or films, dramas and soaps (16%) as they are from medical professionals (22%). The distressing or even glamourised portrayals of death in films and television meant that people may be getting a unrealistic picture of what lies ahead.

“In films you often get dying words – someone gasping out things like ‘Please tell Jim I love him’, which sort of makes me laugh,” said Fallowfield. “I’ve never seen that happen.”

Instead, she said, people normally “quietly drift away”. “They start to lose consciousness, their breathing may become laboured,” she said. “It’s really important to hold their hand and continue talking to them. That makes you feel good too. It doesn’t necessarily have to be horribly traumatic.”

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Life after death

Americans are embracing new ways to leave their remains

Green burials can save consumers money, and have nurtured a market for biodegradable urns and coffins.

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What do you want to happen to your remains after you die?

For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans have been taboo.

That is changing. As a scholar of funeral and cemetery law at Wake Forest University, I’ve discovered that Americans are becoming more willing to have a conversation about their own mortality and what comes next and embrace new funeral and burial practices.

Baby boomers are insisting upon more control over their funeral and disposition so that their choices after death match their values in life. And businesses are following suit, offering new ways to memorialize and dispose of the dead.

While some options such as Tibetan sky burial — leaving human remains to be picked clean by vultures — and “Viking” burial via flaming boat — familiar to “Game of Thrones” fans — remain off limits in the U.S., laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.

‘American Way of Death’

In 1963, English journalist and activist Jessica Mitford published “The American Way of Death,” in which she described the leading method of disposing of human remains in the United States, still in use today.

She wrote that human remains are temporarily preserved by replacing blood with a formaldehyde-based embalming fluid shortly after death, placed in a decorative wood or metal casket, displayed to family and friends at the funeral home and buried within a concrete or steel vault in a grave, perpetually dedicated and marked with a tombstone.

Mitford called this “absolutely weird” and argued that it had been invented by the American funeral industry, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century. As she wrote in The Atlantic:

“Foreigners are astonished to learn that almost all Americans are embalmed and publicly displayed after death. The practice is unheard of outside the United States and Canada.”

Nearly all Americans who died from the 1930s, when embalming became well-established, through the 1990s were disposed of in this manner.

And it’s neither cheap or good for the environment. The median cost of a funeral and burial, including a vault to enclose the casket, was $8,508 in 2014. Including the cost of the burial plot, the fee for opening and closing the grave and the tombstone easily brings the total cost to $11,000 or more.

This method also consumes a great deal of natural resources. Each year, we bury 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid, 115 million tons of steel, 2.3 billion tons of concrete and enough wood to build 4.6 million single-family homes.

Mitford’s book influenced generations of Americans, beginning with the baby boomers, to question this type of funeral and burial. As a result, demand for alternatives such as home funerals and green burials have increased significantly. The most common reasons cited are a desire to connect with and honor their loved ones in a more meaningful way, and interest in lower-cost, less environmentally damaging choices.

Rise of cremation

The most radical change to how Americans handle their remains has been the rising popularity of cremation by fire. Cremation is less expensive than burial and, although it consumes fossil fuels, is widely perceived to be better for the environment than burial in a casket and vault.

Although cremation became legal in a handful of states in the 1870s and 1880s, its usage in the U.S. remained in single digits for another century. After steadily rising since the 1980s, cremation was the disposition method of choice for nearly half of all deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Cremation is most popular in urban areas, where the cost of burial can be quite high, in states with a lot of people born in other ones and among those who do not identify with a particular religious faith.

Residents of western states like Nevada, Washington and Oregon opt for cremation the most, with rates as high as 76 percent. Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky have the lowest rates, at less than a quarter of all burials. The National Funeral Directors Association projects that by 2030 the nationwide cremation rate will reach 71 percent.

Cremation’s dramatic rise is part of a huge shift in American funerary practices away from burial and the ritual of embalming the dead, which is not required by law in any state but which most funeral homes require in order to have a visitation. In 2017, a survey of the personal preferences of Americans aged 40 and over found that more than half preferred cremation. Only 14 percent of those respondents said they would like to have a full funeral service with viewing and visitation prior to cremation, down from 27 percent as recently as 2015.

Part of the reason for that shift is cost. In 2014, the median cost of a funeral with viewing and cremation was $6,078. In contrast, a “direct cremation,” which does not include embalming or a viewing, can typically be purchased for $700 to $1,200.

Cremated remains can be buried in a cemetery or stored in an urn on the mantle, but businesses also offer a bewildering range of options for incorporating ashes into objects like glass paperweights, jewelry and even vinyl records.

And while 40 percent of respondents to the 2017 survey associate a cremation with a memorial service, Americans are increasingly holding those services at religious institutions and nontraditional locations like parks, museums and even at home.

Going green

Another trend is finding greener alternatives to both the traditional burial and cremation.

The 2017 survey found that 54 percent of respondents were interested in green options. Compare this with a 2007 survey of those aged 50 or higher by AARP which found that only 21 percent were interested in a more environmentally friendly burial.

One example of this is a new method of disposing of human remains called alkaline hydrolysis, which involves using water and a salt-based solution to dissolve human remains. Often referred as “water cremation,” it’s preferred by many as a greener alternative to cremation by fire, which consumes fossil fuels. Most funeral homes that offer both methods of cremation charge the same price.

The alkaline hydrolysis process results in a sterile liquid and bone fragments that are reduced to “ash” and returned to the family. Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the process, funeral directors that have adopted it generally report that families prefer it to cremation by fire. California recently became the 15th state to legalize it.

Going home

A rising number of families are also interested in so-called “home funerals,” in which the remains are cleaned and prepared for disposition at home by the family, religious community or friends. Home funerals are followed by cremation, or burial in a family cemetery, a traditional cemetery or a green cemetery.

Assisted by funeral directors or educated by home funeral guides, families that choose home funerals are returning to a set of practices that predate the modern funeral industry.

Proponents say that caring for remains at home is a better way of honoring the relationship between the living and the dead. Home funerals are also seen as more environmentally friendly since remains are temporarily preserved through the use of dry ice rather than formaldehyde-based embalming fluid.

The Green Burial Council says rejecting embalming is one way to go green. Another is to choose to have remains interred or cremated in a fabric shroud or biodegradable casket rather than a casket made from nonsustainable hardwoods or metal. The council promotes standards for green funeral products and certifies green funeral homes and burial grounds. More than 300 providers are currently certified in 41 states and six Canadian provinces.

For example, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the historic New York cemetery made famous by Washington Irving, is a certified “hybrid” cemetery because it has reserved a portion of its grounds for green burials: no embalming, no vaults and no caskets unless they are biodegradable — the body often goes straight into the ground with just a simple wrapping.

Clearly Americans are pushing the “traditional” boundaries of how to memorialize their loved ones and dispose of their remains. While I wouldn’t hold out hope that Americans will be able to choose Viking- or Tibetan-style burials anytime soon, you never know.