Category: After Death Care

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I visited a ‘green cemetery’ in California,

and it made me question everything about American funerals

By Isabella Jibilian

  • A small network of cemeteries across the country are looking to shake up American burial practices and make them eco-friendly by offering “green burials.”
  • Green burial rejects cremation, embalming, and concrete-lined graves to reduce the carbon footprint of death.
  • A national survey found that over half of respondents were interested in exploring green funeral options because of potential environmental and cost-saving benefits.

Cindy Barath is the steward of a 32-acre property in the hills of Mill Valley, California, and all the bodies that come with it.

She spends her days planning ceremonies, receiving the bereaved, and caring for the dead. She’s honest at dinner parties about her job, and when people are surprised to hear that she personally dresses the corpses, she tells them, “Well, they don’t dress themselves.”

I met Cindy Barath on a cool October morning. I was a graduate student hoping to write an article about rocketing property prices putting pressure on the cost of a grave. My tentative headline was: “The cost of living is rising. Is the cost of dying, too?”

I arrived at Fernwood Cemetery looking for a story about real estate. But I found something different, and in my opinion, more interesting: a small movement looking to shake up American burial practices and make them environmentally friendly.

In a traditional American burial, a body is embalmed, then placed in a coffin and laid to rest in a concrete-lined grave. The custom is resource intensive. Each year, it uses 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluid, 20 million board feet of hardwood, and 1.6 million tons of concrete, according to the Green Burial Council.

The “green burial” movement looks to change that.

Barath offered me a tour of the property via her shiny black golf cart. We hop in and she hits the gas. We whip by eucalyptus trees, wood-chip trails, and the mounds of fresh graves.

Barath is not the funeral director I imagined. She has a warm, folksy demeanor, and wears her auburn hair in short curls that are closely cropped to her head. Her wardrobe reminds me of my high school home economics teacher — long, warm sweaters and a chunky gemstone necklace.

We pull up to a spot overlooking the hills, which are patched with light and shadow by the misty clouds overhead. It’s quiet, but if you listen closely, you can hear the distant chatter of recess from an elementary school a few miles away. “Sure beats the office,” said Barath with a chuckle, dismounting from the driver’s seat.

Green burials are generally defined by what they don’t do. They don’t cremate, which burns through gallons of fuel to turn the body to ash. They don’t embalm, which pumps formaldehyde into the body to preserve it. And they don’t line a grave with concrete, which slows decomposition.

But from there, the details vary. Customers can choose biodegradable containers that range from a pine box to a hand-sewn silk shroud. Some cemeteries offer flat stone markers, others record grave locations with a GPS tracking system. Fernwood even offers a mushroom suit, a shroud of fungal spores that aid in decomposition and detoxification.

Beyond Fernwood Cemetery, options abound for the late nature-lover. A Canadian design firm created an urn called “ROOTS,” made from coffee grounds and lime that will germinate a tree. A company called Better Place Forests is conserving hundreds of acres of land in California and Arizona where families can reserve a memorial tree to spread ashes. And an organization called Eternal Reefs can inturn your cremated ash into a concrete “reef ball” that restores ocean habitats.

A new name for an old practice

Although green burial is marketed as an eco-friendly choice, its customs existed long before the environmental movement. A simple burial without the frills of chemicals and concrete is ancient. Green burial is, essentially, a new word for an old practice.

Take Jewish burial traditions, for example.

“Jewish burial traditions and customs have been green for the last 3,000 years,” said Glenn Easton, executive Funeral Director at The Garden of Remembrance Memorial Park in Maryland. “In Israel, they don’t use caskets. They don’t embalm. They don’t use concrete liners. They use a shroud and put people in the ground.”

Easton says his Orthodox Jewish customers are especially green, since they prioritize letting a body decompose quickly. They even have a workaround called “butterdishing” for cemeteries that require concrete liners: they line the sides and top of the grave, and leave the bottom open to the earth.

Green burial isn’t too different from the way we bury the indigent, either. At potter’s fields across the country, governments bury those who are too poor to afford funeral services, or bodies that are unclaimed, in simple graves without coffins, concrete, or chemicals. The only difference: rather than a shroud or pine box, they are often buried in plastic body bags.

Unlike coffee-ground urns and “reefballs,” green burial is old technology. But while it doesn’t contribute much in terms of innovation, it does spark an important conversation. Green burial prompts us to ask why our rituals of death default to using formaldehyde and concrete.

In America, embalming can be traced back to the Civil War. The soldiers who died fighting on the battlefields of North Carolina needed to have their bodies transported back north to be buried. Preservation became a necessity.

Meanwhile, concrete liners can be traced to America’s obsession with the perfect lawn. Funeral directors say that they are useful for landscaping: they prevent the ground above a grave from sinking or collapsing. Many cemeteries require the concrete. It keeps things smooth for their industrial mowers.

The difference is apparent at Fernwood’s Green Cemetery. Rather than neat rows of gravestones and uniformly-trimmed fescue, the cemetery’s green burial sections are dotted with native grasses and shrubs. In parts, the landscape is steeply sloped. A lawnmower would have a tough time.

Changing times

The movement is still in its early days. There are at least 287 cemeteries in the US and Canada that offer green burial services, according to New Hampshire Funeral Resources. And at some of those cemeteries, like Wooster Cemetery in Connecticut, traditional burials vastly outnumber their green counterparts.

The cadre is small, but Ed Bixby, president of the Green Burial Council, which certifies green cemeteries, is hopeful. A national survey found that over half of respondents were interested in exploring green funeral options because of potential environmental and cost-saving benefits.

And Bixby says that end-of-life customs are more changeable than they seem.

Take cremation, for example. In 1975, only 6% of Americans chose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America. Traditional burial with embalming was standard.

Funeral directors considered cremation to be no more than “a flash in the pan,” said Bixby.

But it wasn’t. Cremation was a fraction of the price of traditional burial, and it was adopted widely.

Today, cremation is king. More than half of all Americans choose cremation, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. It surpassed traditional burial as the most popular end-of-life solution back in 2015.

Direct cremation, which forgoes a viewing or other ceremony, can cost as little as $750. But since green burial is less expensive than traditional burial, Bixby believes it could gain traction as the “official third option.”

Traditional burials, with a vault, cost a median of $9,135 in 2019, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. By forgoing embalming ($750), a cement vault ($1495), and opting for a simple shroud or pine box over a wood casket ($3,000), or metal burial casket ($2,500), those choosing green burial can save thousands.

Still, Glenn Easton emphasizes that at his cemetery, “green burials are not influenced or determined by financial decisions.” Instead, “they’re a philosophical preference.”

And Cindy Barath says that the simplicity of a green burial service, and emphasis its emphasis on nature, helps the bereaved. “I try to cut through all the red tape and make it easy and simple. Just help them make this transition. I know if they come in crying and come out laughing, something has taken place.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Taiwanese death rituals have adapted for families living in the US

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Taiwanese people living in the United States face a dilemma when loved ones die. Many families worry that they might not be able to carry out proper rituals in their new homeland.

As a biracial Taiwanese-American archaeologist living in Idaho and studying in Taiwan, I am discovering the many faces of Taiwan’s blended cultural heritage drawn from the mix of peoples that have inhabited the island over millennia.

Indigenous tribes have lived on the island for 6,000 years, practicing their diverse ancient traditions into the modern day. Chinese sailor-farmers arrived during the Ming Dynasty 350 years ago. The Japanese won a naval battle with China and governed Taiwan as a colony from 1895 to 1945. Today, Taiwan is a vibrant democracy, albeit with contested sovereign status. Peoples from every corner of the planet visit, work and live in Taiwan.

Language, religion and food from all these traditions can be encountered in the cities and villages of Taiwan today. Multiple beliefs and customs also contribute to the rituals Taiwanese people conduct to send family members into the afterlife.

Death rituals

Taiwan’s death rituals offer a bridge with the afterlife that stems from multiple spiritual sources. Buddhists, who make up 35% of Taiwan’s population, believe in multiple lives. Through faith and devotion to Buddha and the accumulation of good deeds a person can be freed from the cycle of reincarnation to achieve nirvana or a state of perfect enlightenment.

This belief is fused with elements of the island’s other belief systems including Taoism, Indigenous spirituality and Christianity. Together, they form death customs that showcase Taiwan’s multiculturalism.

In the streets of Taiwan’s metropolises and villages alike, temples, churches and wooden ancestor carvings invite one to contemplate eternity while the odors of nearby food vendors – such as stinky tofu, a local delicacy – tempt people to pause and enjoy earthly delights afterward.

The rituals associated with passing from this life include cemetery burial or traditional cremation practices. The dead are cremated and placed in special urns in Buddhist temples.

Another rite involves burning of what are known as “hell bank notes.” These are specially printed non-legal tender bills that may range from US$10,000 to several billions.

On one side of these notes is an image of the Jade Emperor, the presiding monarch of heaven in Taoism. These bills can be obtained in any temple or even 7-Eleven in Taiwan. The belief is that the spirits of ancestor might return to complain if not given sufficient spending money for the afterlife.

Adapting in America

My Indigenous great-great-grandmother married a Chinese man and her great-grandson – my father – grew up speaking a typical blend of languages for the 1950s: the local dialect, Hokkien, as well as Japanese, Cantonese and Mandarin. Arriving in the U.S. at the age of 23 to study electrical engineering, my father mastered English quickly, married my Euro-American mother, and raised a family in the American West.

Taiwanese people living in America often cannot participate in the rites of mourning and passage conducted back home because they do not have time or money, or recently, pandemic related travel restrictions. So Taiwanese Americans adapt to – and sometimes, accept the loss of – these traditions.

When my Taiwanese grandmother, whom we affectionately called Amah, passed away in 1987, my father was unable to return home for the Buddhist ritual organized by his family. Instead, he adapted the “Tou Qi,” pronounced “tow chee” – usually conducted on the seventh day after death.

In this ritual, it is believed that the spirit of the recently deceased revisits the family for one final farewell.

My father adapted the ritual to a modern U.S. suburban home: He filled our dining room with fruits and cakes, as my Amah was a strict Buddhist vegetarian and enjoyed eating cakes. He put pots of golden chrysanthemums on the table and incense whose smoke is believed to carry one’s thoughts and feelings to the gods.

He then opened every door, window and drawer in our house, as well as car doors, and the tool shed to ensure that our grandmother’s spirit could visit and enjoy the food with us for the last time. He then settled in for an all-night vigil.

After helping Dad with preparations, I returned to my small apartment across town, placed flowers and fruit and a candle on the kitchen table, opened the windows and doors and sat through long dark hours of my own small vigil.

I reflected upon the memory of my grandmother: a petite woman who raised six children during World War II by hiding in the mountains and teaching them to forage for snails, rats and wild yams. Her children survived, got educated, and traveled the world. Her American grandchildren learned how to stir fry in her battle-scarred wok, lugged all the way to the U.S. in a suitcase, and peeked curiously as she performed Buddhist prayers each morning in front of the smiling deity.

My vigil ended with the rising of the sun: the candle burnt out, the flowers drooped, and the fragrance of the incense faded. My grandmother, whose name in translation is “Fairy Spirit,” had eaten her fill, and said her goodbyes.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Bali’s open-air burials endure despite COVID-19 crisis

By Brinkwire

For centuries Bali’s Trunyanese people have left their dead to decompose in the open, the bodies placed in bamboo cages until only the skeletons remain.

It is a ritual they haven’t given up — even as the COVID-19 pandemic upends burial practices worldwide with religious leaders in protective gear, cemetary workers in hazmat suits, and mourners banned or unable to comfort each other because of social-distancing rules.

Across Indonesia funeral workers are now required to wear protective equipment and bodies are laid to rest quickly, all in a bid to prevent the spread of the deadly respiratory disease.

But in Bali local officials claim the novel coronavirus, which has infected at least eight million and killed more than 430,000 globally, has yet to reach the remote north east where the Trunyan live.

“The funeral process remains the same but now we have to wear masks,” explained village head Wayan Arjuna.

Tourists are temporarily banned from visiting for fear of them bringing in the disease, he adds.

“We’re afraid of getting COVID-19,” said Arjuna, but added there was no suggestion of stopping the open-air burial process.

Unlike many in the rest of Hindu-majority Bali, the Trunyanese — who fuse animist beliefs and traditional village customs with their own interpretation of Hinduism — do not bury or cremate their dead.

Instead they let nature take its course as the corpses decay in the open, believing it to be a way to keep a link with the deceased.

“This makes us feel connected to our loved ones,” Arjuna said.

“Like when my grandmother died, I felt like she was close”, he added.

– Skull Island –

It is a short boat ride to their open-air cemetery from tiny Trunyan village, overlooked by volcano Mount Batur and a sprawling Hindu temple carved out of volcanic rock.

There are 11 cages for the corpses — placed close to a fragrant banyan tree that hides the putrid smell of death, locals say.

In one cage, a recently deceased woman could almost have been mistaken for someone sleeping, but her waxy greying complexion revealed the truth.

Nearby, a flesh-less foot poked out of clothing left on the bodies, while a skeletal jaw lay agape in another cage.

“I used to be a little scared working here, but it’s been so long now that I’m used to it,” said veteran guide Wayan Sukarmin, who was spent 20 years showing people the custom on what outsiders have dubbed “Skull Island”.

When AFP visited in February before the World Health Organisation declared a pandemic and travel restrictions were put in place, signs warned visitors to wear appropriate clothing and refrain from using bad language.

Rubber sandals, cigarette packages, toothpaste tubes and pots and pans were scattered around the site, along with baskets filled with coins and crumpled money — all left by mourners for dead relatives to use in the afterlife.

“Locals won’t take anything because it belongs to the dead. That’s our belief,” Sukarmin said.

“I don’t know what the consequences would be if you took something but I believe in karma,” he added.

– Millennia-old custom –

If the cages become full then older corpses are moved to an open ossuary, to make way for new ones.

Then when there is no flesh left, the skulls of the long dead are placed upon a stone altar, until they too crumble back into nature.

Nearby, there is a second cemetery for the unmarried and children, while a third location is for those who died unnatural deaths like murder or passed away from acute illness.

The Bali Aga — or mountain people — who live in these isolated villages, claim to be descendents of the original Balinese and the main temple in Trunyan village dates back to the 10th century according to historical records.

The origin of the custom of open-air burials is subject to debate.

One legend has it that the area’s early inhabitants fought over the prized Banyan tree, so to keep the peace, leaders decided to place the dead there, believing the smell from the corpses would make the spot less attractive.

Another story suggests that the ritual was adopted to avoid angering the rumbling volcano nearby by cremating people.

“There are several versions of the legend so I can’t decide which one is correct,” Arjuna said.

But these open-air burials are now so rooted in the culture that few expect much to change in Trunyan, even as the pandemic ravages the world.

“It’s relatively easier to prevent infections in isolated and faraway places,” said Bali’s virus taskforce chief Dewa Made Indra.

“There aren’t any reported cases in Trunyan. But if that happens then we’ll handle it with special procedures and I think the villagers will understand.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘Not Priests, Nor Crosses, Nor Bells.’

The Tragic History of How Pandemics Have Disrupted Mourning

By Olivia B. Waxman

On a recent Monday in a New Jersey cemetery, social worker Jane Blumenstein held a laptop with the screen facing a gravesite. A funeral was being held over Zoom, for a woman who died of COVID-19. It was a brilliantly sunny day, so a funeral worker held an umbrella over Blumenstein to shield the laptop from any glare, as synagogue members and family members of the deceased sang and said prayers.

The experience was a “surreal” one for Blumenstein, who is a synagogue liaison at Dorot, a social-services organization that works with the elderly in the New York City area. “I felt really privileged that I could be there and be the person who was allowing this to be transmitted.”

The roughly 20-minute ceremony was one of countless funerals that have taken place over Zoom during the COVID-19 pandemic. As authorities limit the size of gatherings — and hospitals limit visitors in order to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus — loved ones have been unable to gather for traditional mourning rituals in the aftermath of a death, so it has become the norm for those who die to do so without their families by their sides, able to say goodbye only virtually, if at all.

The rising death toll has overwhelmed funeral homes and cemeteries, further limiting what is possible. Across religions and around the world, end-of-life traditions have been rendered impossible: stay-at-home orders have stopped Jewish people from sitting shiva together; overwhelmed funeral services have meant Islam’s ritual washing of the body has been skipped; Catholic priests may have had to settle for drive-through funerals, in which the coffin is blessed in front of just a few immediate family members.

The effects of COVID-19 will be felt for many years to come, but those who have lost loved ones are feeling those effects immediately — and, for many, their pain has been exacerbated by the inability to say goodbye. The horror of these rushed goodbyes may be looked back on as a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. But, as the tragic history of pandemics reveals, it is something that disease has forced human beings to struggle with throughout history.

For example, during a 1713 plague epidemic in Prague, a shortage of burial supplies heightened the pain of rushed burials. The emotional toll is evident in a Yiddish poem written shortly after the outbreak, translated for TIME by Joshua Teplitsky, professor of History at Stony Brook University, who is writing a book about this period. At the sight of the dead being carried away day and night, “all weep and wail!,” the poem says. “Who ever heard of such a thing in all his life?” The poem describes people working around the clock and through the Sabbath to saw planks for coffins and sew shrouds.

In one 1719 book, a rabbi recalls counseling a man who was anxious about burying his plague-stricken father in the local cemetery because of a government requirement to coat the body in a chemical to accelerate decomposition. He asked the rabbi if it would be more respectful to bury his father in a forest far outside of the city. The rabbi told the man to follow the rules, likely thinking that “if the body gets buried in the woods, in a very short time, it will be lost, and if it’s in the cemetery, the rabbi is expecting that when this plague passes, visitors will go pray and pay their respects,” says Teplitsky.

Indeed, Teplitsky found a prayer printed circa 1718-1719 that he believes women may have recited while walking around a cemetery years after the epidemic, asking the dead for forgiveness for the lack of a traditional funeral and burial five years earlier.

Centuries later, during the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, Italians were likewise thrust into a world in which funerals had to take place quickly, without ceremonies or religious rites. According to research by Eugenia Tognotti, an expert in public health and quarantine, and a professor of history of medicine and human sciences at the University of Sassari, Italy, many expressed horror at hurried burials in letters to friends and relatives, which are preserved at the Central State Archive in Rome. “The more common lamentations are: ‘Not priests, nor crosses, nor bells’ and ‘one dies like an animal without the consolation of family and friends,’” Tognotti told TIME. Another woman wrote to a relative in Topsfield, Mass., “Here [in Italy] there is a mortal disease named Spanish flu: the sick die in four or more days, a bucket of lime is thrown over the dead bodies, and then four workers take them to the graves like dogs.”

The horror was similar in the U.S., especially in Philadelphia, an epicenter of the pandemic. Columba Voltz was an 8-year-old daughter of a tailor back then, who said that funeral bells tolled all day long as coffins were carried into a local church for a quick blessing and then carried out a few minutes later, according to Catharine Arnold’s Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History. “I was very scared and depressed. I thought the world was coming to an end,” Voltz recounted.

Inside one such house, Anna Milani’s parents laid her 2-year-old brother Harry to rest with what they had on hand:

There were no embalmers, so my parents covered Harry with ice. There were no coffins, just boxes painted white. My parents put Harry in a box. My mother wanted him dressed in white — it had to be white. So she dressed him in a little white suit and put him in the box. You’d think he was sleeping. We all said a little prayer. The priest came over and blessed him. I remember my mother putting in a white piece of cloth over his face; then they closed the box. They put Harry in a little wagon, drawn by a horse. Only my father and uncle were allowed to go to the cemetery. When they got there, two soldiers lowered Harry into a hole.

The same concerns that would have limited attendance at the cemetery when Harry Milani was buried reared their heads more recently during the 2014-2016 epidemic of Ebola, a disease that can be spread through contact with the remains of those it kills. More than 300 cases came from one Sierra Leone funeral, and 60% of Guinea cases came from burial practices, according to the World Health Organization. In Liberia, mass cremations ran counter to traditional burial practices that include close contact with bodies. In Sierra Leone, the dead were put in body bags, sprayed with chlorine and buried in a separate cemetery designated for these victims. As traditional burial practices were curbed in an attempt to stop the spread, the dismay caused by this situation, Tognotti notes, was the same feeling experienced by those Italians of the early 20th century who wrote of the pain of the flu pandemic.

Sometimes, however, victims of epidemics who knew the end was near were actually hoping for a departure from the usual norms of burial and mourning: they wanted their deaths to be used to remind authorities to take these crises seriously.

This idea of the political funeral is particularly associated with the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s. The activist group ACT UP spread the ashes of victims over the White House lawn, and staged political funerals—open-casket processions, such as the one that brought Mark Lowe Fisher’s body to the Republican National Committee’s NYC headquarters ahead of the 1992 presidential election. “I have decided that when I die I want my fellow AIDS activists to execute my wishes for my political funeral,” Fisher wrote, in a statement entitled Bury Me Furiously. “We are not just spiraling statistics; we are people who have lives, who have purpose, who have lovers, friends and families. And we are dying of a disease maintained by a degree of criminal neglect so enormous that it amounts to genocide.”

The inability to give loved ones proper send-offs is often a hidden cost of these pandemics, Tognotti says, and should not be ignored by officials. Even with modern knowledge about disease transmission, awareness of the reasons for public-health guidance doesn’t lessen the desire to participate in rituals. “The emotional strain of not being able to dispose of the dead promptly, and in accordance with cultural and religious customs, has the power to create social distress and unrest and needs to be considered in contemporary pandemic preparedness planning,” she says.

In this pandemic, a new openness about talking about mental health issues could help. For example, New York state launched a hotline so residents can talk to a therapist for free, and some sites host virtual sessions to discuss grief. Mourners can opt for live-streaming and video conferencing and include more people virtually than before.

For others, these virtual gatherings and brief blessings at the cemetery are placeholders. In March, after Alfredo Visioli, 83, was buried in a cemetery near Cremona in northern Italy, with no relatives allowed to attend and a brief blessing from a priest, his grand-daughter Marta Manfredi told Reuters that, “When all this is over, we will give him a real funeral.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The misunderstood funeral tech that’s illegal in 30 states

From mafia propaganda to moral outcry, what’s stopping us from embracing water cremation technology?

By Steph Panecasio

When you die, your body is going to decompose.

It starts from the moment you pass. Your organs begin to shut down. Hair stops growing, skin recedes. Some parts of the body take longer than others, but eventually, as with all things, it all starts to break down.

If you opt for a traditional burial, your remains will spend years nestled within a casket underground, progressing into a deeper state of decomposition. If you opt for a traditional flame-based cremation, you eliminate any further decomposition by burning it to a halt.

But there’s also another alternative — one designed to accelerate the decomposition process through the medium of water. It’s known as alkaline hydrolysis, or water cremation. One part spa, one part chemical blend, a few hours of a swirling soak, and your earthly remains are no longer.

“It’s basic chemistry,” explains Anas Ghadouani, leader of the research group Aquatic Ecology and Ecosystem Studies. “You have organic matter and you add a base to it and it just decomposes. You can write the equation to it. It’s very simple.”

Despite this, alkaline hydrolysis remains one of the most divisive and misunderstood practices in contemporary funeral technology.

The machine

Alkaline hydrolysis is a form of cremation that uses water and chemicals to break down the human body to its bare minimum. Salts, amino acids, peptides. Like flame-based cremation, it produces ash that can be taken home. Unlike flame-based cremation, it’s illegal for use on human bodies in almost 30 states in America.

The concept itself isn’t new. Amos Herbert Hobson of Middlesex, England, patented the first alkaline hydrolysis machine all the way back in 1888. He used it to dispose of animal carcasses.

In the century and a half since, the technology has evolved, and it has the potential to shake up the death industry. 

The process is straightforward. Bodies are placed in a machine containing a chemical mixture of water and alkali. The mixture is then heated and cycled. Over the course of hours, the body is accelerated through its natural decomposition process, resulting in a residual liquid made up of amino acids, peptides, salt, soap and bones — the last of which is broken down into white ash.

Joseph Wilson, now founder and CEO of leading alkaline hydrolysis manufacturer Bio-Response Solutions, helped design the first commercial-use human alkaline hydrolysis unit in 2005.

“I was stunned that there was a way to dispose of tissue without burning,” said Wilson. “You don’t have any external pumps or tanks or chemicals. It’s all there at the machine.”

There are undeniable benefits to this process. In 2011, a study from the University of Groningen compared conventional burial, cremation, alkaline hydrolysis and cryomation and found that alkaline hydrolysis had the lowest overall environmental footprint.

The low temperature also means pacemakers and joint replacements can remain inside the body. In flame-based cremation, these are extracted to prevent a reaction — pacemakers, especially, are incredibly volatile when subjected to extreme heat.

Yet despite the fact that flame-based cremation subjects the remains to intense fire, alkaline hydrolysis is seen as the more graphic option for potential funerals, when both are just as valid. Legal roadblocks and cultural concerns have plagued water cremation since its inception.

And there’s a simple reason for that: Alkaline hydrolysis has a reputation shaped by years of misrepresentation. Nobody wants to feel like they’re disrespecting their loved ones.

Media, morals and the mafia

Most people’s first experience of alkaline hydrolysis is through popular culture.

In the second episode of Breaking Bad, audiences sees drug dealer Jesse Pinkman dissolve a dead body in his apartment’s bathtub using hydrofluoric acid he’d sourced from his high school’s chemical stores. He returns the next day only to find the acid had eaten through the bathtub itself and floorboards beneath, before finally falling through to the floor below.

Despite the effective cinematics, Breaking Bad is far from realistic. Hydrofluoric acid, while highly corrosive, doesn’t have the capacity to completely liquefy remains overnight — it’s at the wrong end of the pH scale. It certainly doesn’t have the capacity to eat through a bath and the floor.

Even if it could, the science doesn’t check out — Mythbusters proved it.

Whether it’s a question of gulping down Soylent Green or shunting bodies into acid barrels, television and film haven’t been kind to the practice of alkaline hydrolysis.

Outside of television, urban legends have tarred alkaline hydrolysis with further negativity. In 2011, researchers had to debunk claims the Sicilian mafia disposed of human remains in a process called lupara bianca, or white shotgun. Just like in Breaking Bad, the mafia supposedly used acid — an entirely different, cruder chemical process.

Mafia urban legends and shows like Breaking Bad create a sense of violence surrounding water cremation that simply doesn’t hold up. Water cremation, at its core, is no more than the acceleration of a natural process.

The reality: As with almost all aspects of the death industry, there is a level of respect and dignity. You don’t see what happens in the retort of a flame-based cremator, but you won’t see what happens inside an alkaline hydrolysis machine either.

Waste not

What remains to be dealt with, however, is what comes out the other side. Ashes are one thing — you can pop them on the mantle in a decorative urn, sprinkle them at sea or even have them launched into space — but what about the residual liquid?

One of the biggest roadblocks to the acceptance of alkaline hydrolysis technology is the issue of wastewater. Because of its association with death, the liquid is perceived as too unsanitary to be processed normally. Say it goes through the same recycling plants that supply residential areas, the idea of drinking the essence of a dead body sounds abhorrent. It’s hard enough swallowing the idea of recycled sewage water. Remains? Inconceivable.

But technology already exists to tackle almost any kind of wastewater.

Sewage water is filtered for reuse in municipal treatment plants. Organic material is broken down in anaerobic digesters, which convert the material into methane or “biogas.” Specially designed ultrafiltration systems can even tackle aqueous nuclear waste.

“Any liquid waste that we have, we can deal with,” says Ghadouani.

Yet in Australia, residual liquid from water cremation isn’t permitted to be treated via the municipal water treatment facilities or digesters. More worryingly, there’s a disconnect here — and it’s one that, for the most part, is behind the closed doors of the funeral industry.

“One of the most common things the public doesn’t know,” says leading US thanatologist and death educator Cole Imperi, “is that when someone is embalmed, all the blood that comes out of your body, where does that go? It goes down the drain.”

In fact, almost all the human waste that comes from hospitals and funeral homes as a result of the embalming process is permitted to be processed through these official channels.

“So if you’re allowing byproducts from funeral homes to go into the municipal water system for treatment, why are you discriminating against one particular disposition method?” Imperi asks. “It’s an interesting kind of cognitive dissonance.”

Thanatologist Cole Imperi beside one of Bio-Response Solutions’ alkaline hydrolysis machines.

Nevertheless, in the few states that allow alkaline hydrolysis — for animals — practicing venues must provide their own wastewater filtration treatments and submit them for regular testing. It’s expensive and demanding. Venues are scarce.

Jonathan Hopkins, owner and operator of Resting Pets Cremations in New South Wales, Australia, is an alkaline hydrolysis advocate. He and his late wife opened their practice after the pain of a family pet’s death opened their eyes to the process as a cremation alternative. 

“My wife was always an animal lover and she just had a really bad experience with the [cremation] company that was serving this area,” he said. “So we approached the local council for a pet cremation system.” They landed on alkaline hydrolysis.

To ensure the wastewater passed council and environmental regulations, Hopkins created his own treatment system. He began by increasing the machine’s existing filtration capacity, with any overflow going into a separate tank. Here, microorganisms remove any remaining bacteria — much like a septic system.

“With our system, they can see what chemicals are going in, and they can see the effluent coming out. They can test it, they know where it’s going,” he said.

Reframing the narrative

Some will always struggle with the concept of alkaline hydrolysis. Certain cultures or religions might always register a stronger connection to conventional burial and cremation methods.

But our human instinct to process death isn’t incompatible with water cremation. We could use residual liquid from the hydrolysis process to help nurture the earth. A gardener, for example, could live on in the plants and flowers they once nurtured.

Conceptually, it’s not out of the question. “If the liquid waste stream were to be applied to soil as a fertilizer, there could be a role for this as a soil improver.” explains Michael Short, a senior research fellow of the Future Industries Institute at the University of South Australia.

On a larger scale, this could even benefit the wider agricultural industry.

“The wastewater stream [would be] a relatively high strength organic waste solution,” Short says. “Soils in some Australian regions are generally low in natural organic matter, so adding organics from such waste streams could help to improve overall soil quality and soil carbon stocks.”

It may sound strange on first pass, but why not? If it gives someone peace of mind that our loved ones will “live on,” the transmutation of alkaline hydrolysis liquid to fertilizer may just be the PR dream the technology has been waiting for.

Alkaline hydrolysis may not be accepted anytime soon. It may take years of building up a more positive association. Maybe even decades.

It all comes down to whether states and countries are willing to test the waters.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Indian Capital’s Crematoriums Overwhelmed With Virus Dead

The Associated Press

When Raj Singh’s 70-year-old mother died from the coronavirus in India’s capital, he took comfort in the prospect of a proper cremation, the funeral rite that Hindus believe releases the soul from the cycle of rebirth.

But instead of chanting sacred Vedic hymns and sprinkling holy water from the Ganges River, all Singh could do was place his mother’s wrapped corpse on a wooden pyre and along with a handful of relatives watch it burn.

“I never thought I would watch my mother go like this,” he said.

Like elsewhere in the world, the novel coronavirus has made honoring the dead in New Delhi a hurried affair, largely devoid of the rituals that give it meaning for mourners. Cemeteries and crematoriums are overwhelmed, so there isn’t much time for ceremony, and even if there were, the government limits the number of people allowed at funerals and those in attendance must maintain distance and wear masks.

“The whole grieving process has been interrupted,” said Pappu, who goes by only one name and lights the funeral pyres at Nigambodh Ghat, New Delhi’s biggest crematorium.

New Delhi has officially reported close to 1,100 deaths from the coronavirus, but cemeteries and crematoriums in the city say the actual number is several hundred higher. Hospital morgues are beyond capacity, and with summer temperatures reaching 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Farenheit) some bodies are being kept on thick ice slabs.

“In the beginning, I used to carry only one body. Now, helpers at the morgue will stack as many bodies as they can fit in my van,” said Bhijendra Dhigya, who drives a hearse from one New Delhi hospital to the crematorium.

The spike in deaths in New Delhi comes amid a broader virus surge throughout India, where authorities are reporting some 10,000 new infections each day and more than 300 deaths. Nevertheless, India lifted most of the remaining restrictions from its 10-week lockdown on June 8, the same day it recorded what at the time was its highest single-day death toll from the virus.

On Friday, India’s nationwide caseload overtook Britain to became the fourth highest in the world with 297,535 confirmed cases and 8,498 deaths, according to the Health Ministry. But that is just the known cases. Like elsewhere in the world, the actual number of infections is thought to be far higher for a number of reasons including limited testing.

New Delhi’s health centers are under immense strain and the state government’s deputy chief minister, Manish Sisodia, said this week that a state health department model has projected a worst case scenario in which the number of infections in the capital — already at nearly 35,000 — could reach 550,000 by the end of July.

In the worst case scenario, Sisodia said New Delhi would need 80,000 hospital beds, far more than the roughly 9,000 hospital beds currently available for virus patients. The state government is considering taking hotels and sports stadiums to use as field hospitals.

The capital’s Nigambodh Ghat crematorium has handled more than 500 coronavirus cremations since the beginning of the outbreak. When some of its gas-fueled incinerators broke down, there was no one willing to repair them, so the staff reverted to traditional wooden pyres.

Even with working hours extended, there has been no time for individual cremation ceremonies and exhaustive rituals with incense, garlands of marigold and chanting.

The crematorium is now largely quiet except for the distinct snap and crackle of the burning wood and the din of sirens from ambulances bringing more bodies.

The virus has upended Muslim burial rituals in the city as well.

Islamic burials normally involve a simple ceremony. Before the body is laid to rest, it is washed. Those attending the funeral are allowed to have a look at the face of the dead and a prayer is performed, followed by a sermon from a cleric. Then close family members help place the body in a grave.

Now bodies arrive at New Delhi’s largest Muslim cemetery in hearses manned by crews in hazmat suits. Bodies aren’t washed and mourners can’t view them. There are no sermons.

The cemetery has already seen more than 200 burials of COVID-19 victims and with bodies steadily arriving, the grounds are filling fast.

On a recent day at the burial of a 22-year-old man who died of the virus, a backhoe dug a grave as four relatives said a speedy prayer. The body was then lowered into the grave by ropes.

Mohammad Shameem, a gravedigger who now oversees the burials, shook his head in disapproval as the backhoe quickly carved out another grave.

“That’s not how burials should happen,” he said.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Different faiths, same pain: How to grieve a death in the coronavirus pandemic

A funeral director calls relatives of a COVID-19 victim for a virtual viewing before cremation on May 22, 2020 in New York City.

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Editor’s note: Every religion has its death rites, communal practices developed over millennia to honor the dead and console the living. Some of these rituals are unique to one faith, but more are shared – a reminder there’s a common path toward healing. Yet COVID-19 is forcing many people to grieve in isolation. We asked three faith leaders and religion scholars for their counsel on mourning during the pandemic.

Honoring the dead and comforting mourners

Rabbi David A. Schuck

Jewish mourning rituals follow the principles of “k’vod hamet,” honoring the deceased, and “nichum aveilim,” comforting mourners.

K’vod hamet includes sitting and praying with the body, ritual washing and burial within two days of death. At a Jewish funeral, family and friends take turns filling the grave with earth – a final act of love. Focus then turns to the family, who return to their home to observe shiva, seven days of intense mourning in which the community provides meals, prayer and comfort.

With these communal rituals inaccessible during the coronavirus pandemic, the trauma of losing loved ones is profound. For synagogues in the center of this pandemic, there’s collective trauma, too. I live in New York, and each week my congregants receive several death notices of longtime friends, but have no avenue to grieve together.

I’m broadcasting funerals online and coordinating shiva visits through Zoom, but technology will never approximate the comfort of a home full of people. During shiva, our community holds us in our grief until we discover ways to move forward alone again.

A family sits for a remote Zoom shiva, the traditional Jewish time of mourning, New Canaan, Connecticut, April 11, 2020.

The first funeral I officiated during the coronavirus pandemic was for a woman who would have wanted blaring trumpets to announce her death and throngs of admirers to come pay tribute. Instead, four people bid her farewell. As I grabbed earth with my fingers and dropped it onto her casket, I whispered an apology for how the world stole the dignity of her final moments.

Finding solace in the psalms of lament

Prof. Gina Hens-Piazza

In normal circumstances, the death of a loved one taxes the heart and mind with a paralyzing numbness. And, in normal circumstances, the traditional rituals of the Catholic faith – the vigil, funeral mass and graveside committal service – give mourners an occasion to honor the memory of the deceased and provide comfort.

A pandemic is not normal circumstances. The absence of these traditional practices compounds the rawness of grief.

In a recent interview with the American Catholic magazine Commonweal, Pope Francis suggested that this is a time “for inventing, for creativity” within the Church, urging Christians to find new ways to express their faith during lockdown.

A necessarily small funeral at a church outside Toulouse, France, during the coronavirus lockdown, April 2020.

I find examples of this creativity in how U.S. Catholic communities are using technology to accommodate gatherings of friends and family for consoling prayer, recitation of the rosary, online memorials and notes of remembrance. Some Catholic parishes have developed ministries of listening and consolation, with volunteers calling the bereaved or visiting online to offer support.

People are also commemorating their dead loved ones at home, lighting candles in their memory or playing their favorite hymns.

And while memorial liturgies have been postponed, families may find some comforting expressions of loss more immediately in biblical texts. The “psalms of lament” – especially Psalms 91, 121 and 130 – are prayers for help in surviving times of great pain. Such recitations provide words to narrate a pain and suffering so devastating it seems to eclipse words.

Healing begins after the homegoing

The Rev. Dr. Rodney Sadler Jr.

For African Americans of the Baptist faith, death is a communal experience. It is in this coming together of family and friends and associates and neighbors that the healing begins.

As the Rev. Dr. Peter Wherry writes in his book “Preaching Funerals,” black Baptists often call funerals “homegoing services,” denoting the fact that the believer once transitioning is in a better state than when here…they have “gone home to live with [the] Lord.”

When someone transitions, despite the clear suffering attendant to a loss, we celebrate their life. This occasions sayings like “trouble don’t last always,” or “we will see X again.”

Though well worn, these cliches seek to comfort the mourning that their loved one is not really dead, but lives on with God.

Since homegoing services can bring together family from across the world, they usually take place a week or more after death to ensure everyone may participate. There is typically a viewing for people to pay their last respects before the service, and afterwards there is usually a parade to the cemetery. Burial comes with its own mini-service.

Mourners after the funeral of the Baptist pastor James Flowers, a victim of COVID-19, at a cemetery in Landover, Maryland, April 13, 2020.

Following that is the repast – a meal expected to feed the guests and to allow for fellowship, storytelling, reuniting with distant loved ones and meeting those known only by name. This, though quite reverent, is also festive. It facilitates the resolution needed to progress after a loss.

I have presided at many such services, though not during the coronavirus pandemic. One piece of advice I would offer to those who mourn now is this: In the coming months, stay in close contact with those who also mourn. Call someone whenever you feel longing for the departed – share a sorrow, a song, a funny anecdote or a recollection of their quirks.

Share your grief. When you feel the urge to cry, let it out. Emotions are best handled not with reason, but by allowing yourself the freedom to feel them fully. And remember, the nadir of your grief is not a curse – it is an indication of how deeply you loved.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!