Category: Death Curiosities

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This is what it’s like to be a death doula

The founder of Going With Grace, Alua Arthur, shares how she found her way into death work and how she manages not to take her work home with her.

Alua Arthur

By Anisa Purbasari Horton

For many people, the thought of being surrounded by death (and have that be a central part of how they earn their living) can seem quite morbid. But for Alua Arthur, the founder of the end-of-life planning service Going With Grace, it feels exactly the opposite.

Arthur is a death doula—also often referred to as a “death midwife.” Arthur’s journey to becoming a death doula is a profoundly personal one, but she represents a number of professionals who are active in the growing “death wellness” and “death-positive” movement. As Fast Company‘s Rina Raphael previously reported, this movement rests on the notion that having a good death is “part of a good life.”

Fast Company recently spoke to Arthur about her motivations for becoming a death doula and how she copes with work-life balance as she helps others through the grieving (and often stressful) administrative process that comes before and after a loved one’s death. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Helping people become clear on what death looks like

A death doula is a non-medical professional who provides holistic support for the dying person of the family and the family members. I help the people who are close to death on what it looks like. After that, I help family members deal with their affairs.

I also work with healthy people. The way I conceive it, as soon as someone comes into any recognition that one day they’re going to die, that’s the time to start preparing for that, so I help them with an end-of-life plan. It’s where we write down all the stuff that’s going to be a pain. We get clear for what their desires are for life support, and who’s going to make the decisions for them. We walk through important information and documents, like where’s their birth certificate? Where is their retirement account? Where do they bank? 

I also help people who are terrified of death. I find that people are more afraid of the dying process than death itself, so with them, I do death meditations. This looks like us going through the eventual decline of the body, their systems shutting down, and their breathing becoming ragged. It’s an opportunity for the person to lay there with whatever it is they experienced. A lot of times, people experience a sense of peace after going through this process.

The desire to build a career around death

Growing up, I wanted to be lots of things. I really wanted to be an astronaut. I loved to read and immerse myself in another world. I also wanted to be a conductor. I applied to a music conservatory, but I ended up in a liberal arts school that had an okay music program. I got involved in student government and decided to go to law school. I worked in property law, starting with government benefits, and then I moved to domestic violence and then not-for-profit development. I fumbled around for 10 years and started getting really depressed, so I took a medical leave of absence. That’s how I found death work.

I met a woman in Cuba. She had cancer and was traveling, and we bonded. We spent 14 hours on the bus together, and I asked all the difficult questions. What would be undone in her life if the disease killed her? What does she think happens after she dies? Did she live with the recognition of death constantly? They were questions I never really had myself. That was the first time it hit me that death was very real and that we don’t talk about it enough. It became clear that I wanted to spend my career talking about death.

That was solidified when my brother-in-law got sick and died. It showed me how all the ways that we do it now are broken. We had so many questions—how do we transfer the title for his vehicle, and what should we do with his leftover medication? There was nobody to answer them.

A day in the life of a death doula

A typical day always includes a lot of emails. So many emails. The part of my job that stresses me out is the business part. God, it’s the worst! I need to go back to my vision of helping people feel less alone to keep me in clear focus.

I start my day checking on various things—with the people who are dying, how things were over the course of the night. I’ll also check on plans for any funeral procession. I do a lot of phone calls and talk to therapists who work with people that are dying. If I do have clients that are dying, I see them in the afternoon, or I will see my end-of-life planning clients.

These days, I also do a lot of education around death and dying. I’m doing a lot of talks to reach people about how to do this work because we’re all going to have to do it for somebody in our lives.

When it comes to work-life balance, I do things like meditate daily, exercise regularly, and drink a gallon of water every day. I just got my nails done. I don’t deny myself pretty things.

On death and relationships

I talk about death all the time with my friends and family. I think sometimes I can be a little bit annoying because I want people to be authentic in their decision-making. I tend not to tell people what to say or do, and I listen actively. My best friend and I, we always have challenges because she always wants to tell me what to do. It is a struggle for my friends who have a hard time with the concept of their own mortality, because I’m talking about it all the time.

I don’t push the issue with my friends who are uncomfortable, but with my family members, I do. For my dad, he first had to come around to the idea that I wasn’t going to be practicing law anymore. Being an African parent, he wanted me to be either a lawyer, doctor, or engineer. I was like, how about death? He was like, how about what? That was a little tricky. But eventually, we got around to talking about it. After all, I’m the one who’ll have to deal with it when it happens.

I think people actually want to talk about death, but they feel like they don’t have permission to do so because it’s “heavy.” Well, it’s a regular part of living. Without death we wouldn’t have life. It’s funny: when I meet someone for the first time and I tell them I’m a death doula, so many of them say, “Oh, when x died, I wish that you had been there.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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People in western China smoked marijuana to bury their dead 2,500 years ago

— the oldest evidence of weed smoking in human history

In a tomb in western China, scientists discovered human remains and evidence of marijuana use from 2,500 years ago.

By Aylin Woodward

It appears people have been smoking weed for more than two millennia.

Researchers reported on Wednesday that they’ve found some of the earliest evidence of ritual cannabis smoking in the archaeological record.

The evidence comes from stone-filled braziers — a device used to burn a plant and fill the air with its vapors — that were unearthed in eight tombs at the Jirzankal Cemetery in the Pamir Mountains of western China.

Preserved in the 2,500-year-old braziers were traces of cannabinol (CBN), the compound that forms after tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) comes in contact with the air. THC is the most potent psychoactive agent in marijuana.

This wooden brazier with burnt stones in the center provides some of earliest evidence of ritual cannabis smoking.

The authors published their findings in the journal Scientific Advances. The chemical signature of THC residue in the tomb, they said, indicates that people in this region of China likely smoked marijuana during burial ceremonies, perhaps as a way to communicate with the dead.

“It’s the earliest strong evidence of people getting high” on marijuana, Mark Merlin, a botanist at the University of Hawaii, told USA Today.

This marijuana was potent

Marijuana is one of the most widely used psychoactive drugs in the world today, but the legacy of its use and cultivation spans millennia. The earliest known cultivation of cannabis plants occurred in Eurasia roughly 6,000 years ago, but it was used as a food crop and for hemp material — not smoked for psychoactive effects.

Previous evidence of ancient cannabis smoking came mostly from historical anecdotes, not archaeological evidence. Greek historian Herodotus wrote about ritual and recreational pot use around the same time that these braziers were buried in distant China.

Scientists also found cannabis seeds in a different 2,500-year-old Chinese tomb in 2006, but there was no evidence of smoking

Usually, wild cannabis ( Cannabis sativa) has lower levels of THC than its cultivated counterparts. But the residue in these Chinese braziers indicates that the type of cannabis smoked in them had higher THC levels than wild plants. It also had higher amounts of THC than the cannabis grown in ancient Eurasia, the authors of the new study noted in a press release

The authors aren’t sure whether the cannabis used in this region was intentionally cultivated to have higher amounts of THC (as it is today), or whether the people who conducted this burial had some other way of seeking out more potent plants.

Either way, they appeared to be aware that not all cannabis is created equal when it comes to its psychoactive qualities.

These tombs had evidence of human sacrifice

In the Jirzankal Cemetery, the archaeologists also found skulls and other bones with signs of fatal cuts and breaks, which they interpreted as signs of human sacrifice. They found a harp as well — an important musical instrument in ancient funerals and sacrificial ceremonies.

These clues from the past indicate that the burials had a ritual quality to them, and that smoking marijuana played a role in commemorating the dead.

The excavation of the tomb M12, in which evidence of the oldest ritual smoking of cannabis was found. In the photo, the cannabis brazier can be seen at the middle bottom edge of the central circle.

“We can start to piece together an image of funerary rites that included flames, rhythmic music, and hallucinogen smoke, all intended to guide people into an altered state of mind,” the study authors wrote.

Merlin told The Atlantic that this discovery does not suggest ancient Chinese people were into recreational drug use. Instead, he said, it was likely a spiritual practice — part of ushering the dead into the afterlife and helping the living commune with deities or the deceased.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Aid in Dying Soon Will be Available to More Americans. Few Will Choose It.

By October, more than one in five U.S. adults will be able to obtain lethal prescriptions if terminally ill. But for those who try, obstacles remain.

By Paula Span

On Aug. 1, New Jersey will become the eighth state to allow doctors to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who want to end their lives. On Sept. 15, Maine will become the ninth.

So by October, 22 percent of Americans will live in places where residents with six months or less to live can, in theory, exercise some control over the time and manner of their deaths. (The others: Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, California, Colorado and Hawaii, as well as the District of Columbia.)

But while the campaign for aid in dying continues to make gains, supporters are increasingly concerned about what happens after these laws are passed. Many force the dying to navigate an overly complicated process of requests and waiting periods, critics say.

And opt-out provisions — which allow doctors to decline to participate and health care systems to forbid their participation — are restricting access even in some places where aid in dying is legal.

“There are what I call deserts, where it’s difficult to find a facility that allows doctors to participate,” said Samantha Trad, the California state director of Compassion & Choices, the largest national advocacy group for aid in dying.

“We’re nearing a tipping point,” said Peg Sandeen, executive director of the Death With Dignity National Center, which oversaw the Maine campaign. “The issue, while still controversial, is less scary.”

The New Jersey bill had neared passage several times since it was introduced seven years ago, but derailed in 2014 when Chris Christie, the governor at the time, threatened a veto. Finally, legislators passed the Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act this winter, and Gov. Philip D. Murphy signed it in April.

In Maine, the state legislature voted yes this spring, but supporters were unsure what the new governor, Janet Mills, would do. As in New Jersey, a Democratic governor replaced an outgoing Republican who had promised a veto.

Gov. Mills signed the law last month. “I do believe it is a right that should be protected by law — the right to make ultimate decisions,” she said.

What’s changed?

All these laws require states to track usage and publish statistics. Their reports show that whether a state has six months or 20 years of experience, the proportion of deaths involving aid in dying (also known, to supporters’ distaste, as physician-assisted suicide) remains tiny, a fraction of a percentage point.

California, for example, in 2017 received the mandated state documents for just 632 people who’d made the necessary two verbal requests to a physician, after which 241 doctors wrote prescriptions for 577 patients. More than 269,000 California in all died that year.

With such data showing no slippery slope toward widespread use or abuse, “a lot of the hypothetical claims our opponents made no longer carry so much weight with lawmakers,” said Kim Callinan, chief executive of Compassion & Choices.

Ms. Callinan also pointed to changing attitudes within the medical community, once a well funded source of opposition. In recent years, a number of national organizations and a dozen state medical societies have instead adopted neutral stances.

“It levels the playing field a little,” she said.

Opponents, including Catholic organizations and some disability activists, still denounce these laws. In March, an aid-in-dying bill passed the Maryland House of Delegates but failed after a tie vote in the Senate. Opponents are attempting a ballot initiative to repeal Maine’s new law and pursuing a slow-moving court case to invalidate California’s.

Public opinion polls consistently show broad support for aid in dying, however. Compassion & Choices says its upcoming legislative targets include Massachusetts, Maryland again, New Mexico, New York and Nevada.

But the persistently small number of users suggests that most Americans close to death would not personally choose to self-ingest barbiturates, even if they support legalizing that option. The low numbers may also reflect difficulty in actually using these laws.

A recent survey of 270 California hospitals, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that 18 months after implementation of the state’s End of Life Option Act, more than 60 percent — many of them religiously affiliated — forbade affiliated physicians to participate.

Compassion & Choices is intensifying efforts to persuade local health care systems, doctors and hospices to agree to consider patients’ requests.

Even aid-in-dying laws long on the books are beginning to draw renewed scrutiny.

For decades, the model has been the first-in-the-nation Oregon law, which took effect in 1997. It requires a terminally ill patient to see two doctors, make two oral requests for a lethal prescription plus one in writing, and face a 15-day waiting period.

Every state law but one incorporates those elements. (In Montana, a court legalized aid in dying, so there’s no statute.)

“There’s too many roadblocks in the existing legislation,” said Ms. Callinan, whose organization has long promoted that legislation. “They’ve actually made it too difficult for patients to get through the process.”

Indeed, a study from Kaiser Permanente Southern California, a health system that supports patients who request and meet requirements for aid in dying, shows that at least a third of those who inquire about it become too ill to complete the process, or die before they can qualify.

Yet states are enacting even more supposed safeguards. Hawaii, whose law took effect in January, requires a 20-day wait; both its law and a proposed Massachusetts law add a mandated mental health consultation.

By contrast, the Oregon legislature recently approved an amendment waiving the waiting period in cases where the physician believes the patient will likely die within 15 days. Gov. Kate Brown has until Aug. 9 to sign it.

Perhaps, Ms. Callinan proposed, aid-in-dying laws shouldn’t require waiting periods.

“It takes people a long time to find a first doctor, to make an appointment, to find a second doctor, to find a pharmacist,” she said. “The process itself is a waiting period,” one often exceeding 15 days.

Since rural areas face physician shortages, Compassion & Choices has also urged that nurse-practitioners and physician assistants be allowed to provide aid in dying in states where they can legally write prescriptions.

In Oregon, a veteran state legislator has taken an even more audacious step toward expanding access.

State Rep. Mitch Greenlick has introduced several bills that would permit those in the early stages of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases to use aid in dying, securing prescriptions they could then use later as their illnesses progressed.

“You could make the request when you were cognitively able to do it,” he said.

Every existing state law bars that. Those requesting aid in dying must have mental capacity; dementia patients will have lost it by the time they’re within six months of dying. National groups emphatically oppose Mr. Greenlick’s propositions.

Yet those at heightened risk for Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, are already well aware of aid-in-dying laws, and some would opt to use them, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania recently reported.

They interviewed 50 older adults enrolled in a drug study, most with family histories of Alzheimer’s, all found to have elevated levels of the biomarker amyloid. “We describe it as an increased but uncertain risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” said Emily Largent, a Penn bioethicist.

The team’s interviews revealed that about two-thirds of the group would reject aid in dying and about 15 percent had ambivalent responses. But one in five said they would pursue it if they became cognitively impaired, were suffering or burdening loved ones.

Overall, “very few understood that they wouldn’t be eligible” for lethal prescriptions under current laws if they developed dementia, Dr. Largent said.

But they were strikingly open to legal aid in dying.

“It was important to have it available,” she said. “Even if they felt they wouldn’t choose aid in dying themselves, they weren’t opposed to it for others.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Could Trees Be the New Gravestones?

A California start-up wants to “redesign the entire end-of-life experience.” The answer to “eternity management”? Forests.

By Nellie Bowles

Death comes for all of us, but Silicon Valley has, until recently, not come for death.

Who can blame them for the hesitation? The death services industry is heavily regulated and fraught with religious and health considerations. The handling of dead bodies doesn’t seem ripe for venture-backed disruption. The gravestone doesn’t seem an obvious target for innovation.

But in a forest south of Silicon Valley, a new start-up is hoping to change that. The company is called Better Place Forests. It’s trying to make a better graveyard.

“Cemeteries are really expensive and really terrible, and basically I just knew there had to be something better,” said Sandy Gibson, the chief executive of Better Place. “We’re trying to redesign the entire end-of-life experience.”
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And so Mr. Gibson’s company is buying forests, arranging conservation easements intended to prevent the land from ever being developed, and then selling people the right to have their cremated remains mixed with fertilizer and fed to a particular tree.

The Better Place team is this month opening a forest in Point Arena, a bit south of Mendocino; preselling trees at a second California location, in Santa Cruz; and developing four more spots around the country. They have a few dozen remains in the soil already, and Mr. Gibson says they have sold thousands of trees to the future dead. Most of the customers are “pre-need” — middle-aged and healthy, possibly decades ahead of finding themselves in the roots.

Better Place Forests has raised $12 million in venture capital funding. And other than the topic of dead bodies coming up fairly often, the office is a normal San Francisco start-up, with around 45 people bustling around and frequenting the roof deck with a view of the water.

There is a certain risk to being buried in a start-up forest. When the tree dies, Better Place says it will plant a new one at that same spot. But a redwood can live 700 years, and almost all start-ups in Silicon Valley fail, so it requires a certain amount of faith that someone will be there to install a new sapling.

Still, Mr. Gibson said most customers, especially those based in the Bay Area, like the idea of being part of a start-up even after life. The first few people to buy trees were called founders.

“You’re part of this forest, but you’re also part of creating this forest,” said Mr. Gibson, a tall man who speaks slowly and carefully, as though he is giving bad news gently. “People love that.”

Sandy Gibson, the chief executive of Better Place Forests, in the start-up’s Santa Cruz location.

Bring Your Dog, Forever

Customers come to claim a tree for perpetuity. This now costs between $3,000 (for those who want to be mixed into the earth at the base of a small young tree or a less desirable species of tree) and upward of $30,000 (for those who wish to reside forever by an old redwood). For those who don’t mind spending eternity with strangers, there is also an entry-level price of $970 to enter the soil of a community tree. (Cremation is not included.)

A steward then installs a small round plaque in the earth like a gravestone.

When the ashes come, the team at Better Place digs a three-foot by two-foot trench at the roots of the tree. Then, at a long table, the team mixes the person’s cremated remains with soil and water, sometimes adding other elements to offset the naturally highly alkaline and sodium-rich qualities of bone ash. It’s important the soil stay moist; bacteria will be what breaks down the remains.

Because the forest is not a cemetery, rules are much looser. For example: pets are allowed. Often customers want their ashes to be mixed with their pets’ ashes, Mr. Gibson said.

“Pets are a huge thing,” Mr. Gibson said. “It’s where everyone in your family can be spread. This is your tree.”

“Spreading” is what they call the ash deposit. The trench is a “space,” the watering can is a “vessel,” the on-site sales staff are “forest stewards.” When it comes to both death and start-ups, euphemisms abound.

Available trees are marked with ribbons. Multiple ribbons indicate type and size of the trees.

It’s all pretty low-tech: mix ashes in with dirt and put a little placard in the soil. But there is a tech element: For an extra fee, customers can have a digital memorial video made. Walking through the forest, visitors will be able to scan a placard and watch a 12-minute digital portrait of the deceased talking straight to camera about his or her life. Some will allow their videos to be viewed by anyone walking through the forest, others will opt only for family members. Privacy settings will be decided before death.

Death Is a Growth Industry

As cities are running out of room to bury the dead, the cost of funerals and caskets has increased more than twice as fast as prices for all commodities. In the Bay Area, a traditional funeral and plot burial often costs $15,000 to $20,000. The majority of Americans are now choosing to be cremated.

“The death services market is very big — $20 billion a year — and customer approval is low,” said Jon Callaghan, a partner at True Ventures, an investor in Better Places. “The product is broken.”

The firm’s other investments include Blue Bottle, Peloton and Fitbit, and Mr. Callaghan sees consumers of those products as ones who would be interested also in Better Place trees.

“Every industry seems to have its time when things get wild,” said Nancy Pfund, the founder and a managing partner at DBL Partners, which led early funding. “It’s been mobile apps, it’s been cars, it’s been fake meat, and now it is death care,” she said.

“But we have to come up with a better name than ‘death care.’ Maybe it’s legacy care,” she added. “Maybe it’s eternity management.”

Around 75 million Americans will reach the life expectancy age of 78 between 2024 and 2042, Better Place suggests. The company’s pitch is that tree burial is good for the environment, the location is more beautiful than a traditional graveyard — and it’s cheaper as well.

Ms. Pfund also sees these forests as a way to monetize conservation. Actively managing a forest is expensive, so much so that financially strained state park systems are having to turn down gifts of land. Conservation easements, an agreement between an organization and the government to preserve land, have become more popular as a solution.

“No one has really made a big business monetizing conservation, nothing that could scale,” Ms. Pfund said. “So a bell went off when we heard this pitch.”

Where’s Grandma?

Those tracking the death services industry are more skeptical about how disruptive it will be.

John O’Conner, who runs Menlo Park Funerals, said more than 90 percent of his clients opt for cremation.

“Most of my people scatter on their own,” Mr. O’Conner said. “They just go at night, scatter grandma, have a cup of champagne, and every day they drive by that park they know grandma is there. Why would they pay $20,000 to go to a memorial grove when they can scatter at any little park they want to for free?”

That act is, technically, illegal.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Mr. O’Conner said. He said he knew of a few golf courses in the region that had to put up signs imploring people not to scatter guest remains there.

Ben Deci, a spokesman for California’s Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, said Better Place Forests’ activities do not fall under the bureau’s purview.

“It looks to me like they’ve just purchased large tracts for forest land and are allowing people to disperse their ashes, and they say here ‘This’ll be your tree or whatever,’” Mr. Deci said. “You don’t need our approval to do that.”

Mr. Gibson does have a permit from the state verifying him as a cremated remains disposer. “But that’s not quite the right way to think about it,” he said.

How to Choose the Right Forever Tree

One recent day, Mr. Gibson walked through his 80 acres of Santa Cruz forest where about 6,000 trees are available, many wrapped in different colored ribbons, waiting to be chosen.

“The last major innovation in cemeteries was the lawn cemetery in the ’50s and ’60s, basically so they could get a lawn mower through easier,” Mr. Gibson said.

To claim a tree, customers walk through the forest and find one that speaks to them. The Better Place brochure also guides them: Coastal redwoods are “soaring and ancient,” tan oaks are “quirky and giving,” while a Douglas fir is “stately and reverent.”

“Some people want a tree that is totally isolated, and some people really want to be around people and be part of a fairy ring,” Mr. Gibson said. “Some people will come in and they’ll fall in love with a stump.”

“People love stumps,” he said, pointing out a few trees people bought just for the nearby stumps. “They’ve got a lot of personality.”

Younger people often choose younger trees because they like the idea of growth.

Debra Lee, a retired administrative assistant in San Jose, felt immediate kinship with the madrone tree she chose.

“She’s about 60 years old, and I’m 63,” Ms. Lee said of the mature evergreen with dark red bark. “Looking at her growth pattern you can see things have been hard at times because she’s kind of curved, but she made it to the top to get to the sunlight.”

When a customer chooses her tree, as Ms. Lee did, she cuts the ribbon off in what Better Place calls the ribbon ceremony.

As Mr. Gibson hiked across the Santa Cruz forest in a sweater and work boots, he noticed a rhododendron, his mother’s favorite flower, growing out of a stump.

Both his parents died when he was young, and, at 12, Mr. Gibson was adopted by his half brother. He is now 36, and, since then, he has spent many afternoons in Toronto at his parent’s grave site, set on a noisy corner, with a shiny black headstone that reflects traffic.

“You remember them dying, you remember the memorial service, and you remember the image of their final resting place,” Mr. Gibson said. He was haunted by that badly designed grave site. “It’s comically bad.”

Visiting their grave in 2015, he decided to quit his job running a marketing automation company. He would make a better graveyard.

“A lot of investors laughed at us when I first pitched this,” Mr. Gibson said. “People don’t really like thinking about this.”

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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↩!