Posts

Posted on

How Friendship Changes at the End of Life

“People become frightened at the end of life. Sometimes I see them moving away from friends as they get sicker.”

By Julie Beck

Julie Beck talks with two women who met through the nontheistic religion of Ethical Culture and have spent a significant amount of time ministering to aging and dying members of their congregation. They discuss how friendship changes at the end of life, and how they work to foster connection and community for members of all ages.

The Friends:

Anne Klaeysen, 68, a recently retired clergy leader for the New York Society for Ethical Culture and a humanist chaplain at New York University. She lives in Brooklyn.
Liz Singer, 71, a geriatric-care manager and the president of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. She lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Julie Beck: How did you two meet and begin ministering to the dying together?

Anne Klaeysen: Liz became a member of the New York society maybe seven years ago. I am always at the monthly newcomer reception, so we met there. She just dove right in, and shortly became the president of the board. I have to confess, Liz, I get a little worried when people dive in so quickly. I’m thinking, Oh dear, is she going to drown? Liz did not drown; she’s a strong swimmer. Liz came at a time when we really needed strong leadership. And she wasn’t afraid to take on a couple of the old boys. So I think there was certainly a feminist bond there. [We became] partners in crime, or [rather] partners in good works.strong>Liz Singer: We have a strong aging population. I think 30 percent of our members are probably over 70. And we started to see things like dementia. As Anne and I developed our friendship, we began having conversations on the very delicate process of aging and navigating our roles with the members.

Anne: Liz is a geriatric-care manager. Her expertise in this field was invaluable, but I was a little concerned because I didn’t want to take advantage of her. Members don’t mean to take advantage, but sometimes they do.

Also, our members are humanists. We’re a nontheistic religion of ethics. So most of our members don’t believe in a supernatural deity, nor in an afterlife. And they’re fiercely independent. One of our challenges has been to get them to tell us when they’re going through something. Very often we find out about things after they’re in the hospital. It’s not that they don’t trust us; they have a real fear of losing their dignity.

Another society member, Barbara Simpson, runs something called the Death Café. That’s an opportunity for folks to come and really speak about living. We know that we are mortal, and the gift of that is we can live life more completely and in connection with each other. It’s really a joyful experience for [our members]. Barbara has said that very often people are comfortable talking about [mortality], but their children aren’t. [They’ll say], “No, Mom, you’re never going to die; you’re not going to die yet.” People may have their life in order, their papers in order, but their children are in denial.

Anne Klaeysen (left) and Liz Singer (right) sharing a meal together.

Beck: Was there a turning point where you went from having a collegial relationship to more of a friendship?

Liz: The turning point was probably our first serious case, five or six years ago. There was a woman who was estranged from her daughter. Very stubborn. We were trying to bring the daughter back into the picture and make that relationship communicative. Because it was so difficult, Anne and I had to talk about it all the time. The trick was for Anne and I to work together very closely. Anne was having lunch with [the older woman], and gaining her trust. And I was trying to bring in oversight without activating her stubbornness.

Anne: [The woman] left the society for a while because she didn’t get along with people. People didn’t quite come up to her standards. When she came back I was thinking, How can we help her to fit in? How can we help her not be so judgmental? One really good connection was with the children [in our congregation]. I suggested that she come meet with the children, and tell them about her experience. She was a Holocaust survivor; she was on the kindertransport train from Germany to England. I wanted her to be connected with the children, because she was estranged from her own daughter. And she was kind of prickly around some of the adults. The children were so appreciative, and so affectionate with her. They wrote to her when she wasn’t well. They drew her pictures. That’s another thing that a community can do when it’s intergenerational: connect at all ages of one’s life.

Beck: Being with people at the end of life is very intense work. You are regularly seeing a part of life that a lot of people don’t see, or see very rarely. How do you feel that affects your relationships generally and your friendship specifically?

Anne: Generally I have a great appreciation for what the elderly are going through. A big challenge with one of our members was the lack of understanding among hospice and health-care staff for people who are humanists, who don’t believe in God, and don’t believe in an afterlife. It was really difficult for this person when others around her were saying, “Oh, don’t be afraid. God loves you.”

I’ve been on different panels to try to train people not to assume that they are caring for God-fearing people. Just listen to these people. Even when they have dementia. They may not know where they are, they may not remember things, but you’ve got to listen.

Liz: How does it affect my personal life? Number one, it [gives me] an appreciation for life. Number two, I have a reputation when I go to dinner parties. Don’t bring up any questions about aging or I’ll get on a soapbox.

Beck: You mentioned that sometimes you are ministering to people who are your friends, which I imagine is very special, but at the same time could make the balance harder.

Anne: It does. Keeping our work separate from [our personal lives] is a challenge. Where do you draw the line for someone who’s a friend and someone that you’re pastoring to in a professional capacity? But there’s a part of me that wants my life to be integrated. You don’t want to compartmentalize, but you also don’t want to become so involved that you lose perspective. One thing Liz and I do in our friendship is try to help each other keep that balance.

Beck: Is there anything that you’ve observed about how friendship changes at the end of life?

Liz: People become frightened at the end of life. Sometimes I see them moving away from friends as they get sicker. Once people get past that fear of what’s going on, they can be friends again.

Anne: Partly, [what changes is] a sense of loss. My dad died at 101. He was hale and hearty up until the end, and very sound of mind. I remember him saying that all of his friends had died on him. But because he was hard of hearing, it was difficult for him to make new friends. I think a lot of the infirmities that are experienced in advanced age make it difficult to make new friends. Often at the New York society, I see people who become a member after a spouse has died. They’re grateful to have a group of people with whom they can socialize.

I don’t want to sound stereotypical here, but women have been raised to develop those social skills. Men have very often relied on women to do that for them. What we find is that, in the aging population, women are able to cope better. Men who have relied on a spouse or a girlfriend lack those skills. They prefer to have a woman in their lives who can do that for them. That’s the way they were raised. It’s really difficult for them.

Beck: Because of this work, are there things you’re able to talk about with each other that are harder to talk about with your other friends?

Liz: [Anne and I have] skills around dealing with very deep conversations, where a lot of people don’t want to go.

Anne: Of course we’ve also had a lot of challenges in this political atmosphere of, How do you hear somebody with whom you profoundly disagree? We’ve seen that with members who may not be on speaking terms with family or friends. A lot of the work that we do is about—no matter what age somebody is—having respect for human worth, and seeing the other person as a full person.

Liz, you and I had a little rocky time when we weren’t really understanding each other.

Liz: It had to do with some organizational issues at the society. It was very political.

Anne: I thought, I’m going to assume that this is a misunderstanding. We just really need to go back and listen more carefully. What I really appreciated about Liz was that she not only listened to me but she also checked in with other Ethical Culture clergy. I really appreciated not only the deep listening, but also her checking to see, What’s the bigger story here? I think that comes back to being a religion of ethics. Friendships take work. And a lot of people aren’t willing to do that.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Enough of the euphemisms.

Let’s talk about death openly and honestly

‘To discuss dying, we need to use the language of death. Not, perhaps, with the wit and beauty of Clive James, but with simplicity, describing the process by which each of us will end our lives.’

We no longer feel comfortable naming death, and we’ve lost the etiquette that told us how to support the dying and bereaved

By

Not for the first time, I find myself playing death-euphemism bingo as TV and radio news bulletins tell us that Clive James has “passed away” after living with leukaemia and Jonathan Miller, who had Alzheimer’s, has “passed on”. Of all the departures from life mentioned in broadcast media over the past few days, it seems the only one with a D-word attached is Gary Lineker’s dog, Snoop. Snoop died.

We are abandoning the language of death. Fear of saying the wrong thing to dying or bereaved people causes friends and family to say nothing, to “talk positive” or to avoid them altogether. Bereaved people frequently talk about others crossing the road to evade them. Mentioning death becomes impolite. Perhaps it’s even becoming rude to die.

But it isn’t only saying the words aloud that has stopped; we avoid considering our own mortality. In the UK, a country with a 100% death rate, only 40% of adults have written a will. Worse, a mere 6% of us have nominated a lasting power of attorney, a person to make medical decisions on our behalf should we become temporarily or permanently unable to do so for ourselves. In other words, we seem to take some action to manage our affairs after death, but we don’t engage in planning for the dying itself. How did this happen? And why does it matter?

As 20th-century medicine transformed our life expectancy, familiarity with death at home was replaced by an expectation that modern medicine would save the lives of those sick enough to die, and return them to health, to work and to family life. The once familiar process of dying became overlooked as hospitals used newly developed drugs, machines and operations to postpone death.

Death itself became a failure to save a life; an unwanted medical outcome; an adverse event. An increasingly secular society drifted from traditional spiritual practices around a deathbed, but found no new rituals to replace them. We no longer feel comfortable naming death, and we have lost the etiquette that told us how to visit the dying and support the bereaved.

But should it be taboo? I have seen that the dying, and the elderly who recognise that their survival is becoming a numbers game, are grateful for an opportunity to discuss their wishes, but people around them are often too uneasy to join the conversation.

Not talking about death won’t prevent dying. I recall an unconscious man in his 90s in a hospital emergency department. With multiple medical problems for years, that day he had collapsed at home and not regained consciousness. “Please do something,” begged his desperate sons.

“What did your dad say he would want to happen, if he was ever sick enough to die?” I asked them. The D-word made them blink. They looked at me like helpless rabbits caught in torchlight. They had never discussed it, they told me.

Then one of them, speaking slowly and looking anxiously at his brothers, said, “Dad did try to talk to me about it last year. I told him to stop being maudlin.” Then, one by one, his brothers described the occasions when they, too, had ducked the conversation when their father had tried to broach it. There were tears.

Their mother saved the day. She and their father had agreed that they would not want intrusive medical treatments. “Let him go, boys,” she told them. There were more tears. And then, as they sat with him around his hospital bed over the next several hours, he died the way humans die: deepening unconsciousness; automatic breathing cycles, fast then slow on repeat; some rattling as his breath bubbled through saliva at the back of his mouth; pauses between breaths. Utterly unaware. Finally, an out-breath that just wasn’t followed by another in-breath. Knowing what to expect allowed his family to recognise and follow his progress through the usual sequence of changes in breathing, helping them not to misinterpret noisy breath sounds as drowning, or distress, or breathlessness. Such misinterpretations haunt people’s bereavements.

That encounter stayed with me for a long time afterwards. We can’t keep explaining the process one family at a time. This is a public health problem: there is a pressing need to address the public (mis)understanding of dying.

To discuss dying we need to use the language of death. Not, perhaps, with the wit and beauty of Clive James, but with simplicity, describing the recognisable process by which each of us will finally end our lives. Dying is not a medical event, but a deeply personal and social experience.

Nobody ever tells me “I wish we had never talked about it”. I have lost count of those who regret not having tried.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

The death doula: helping you prepare for the day you die

By , , , and

What does it mean to have a good death? Leah Green meets with Aly Dickinson, an end-of-life doula. Aly helps clients to plan what they want to happen at the end of their lives, and she accompanies them as they transition from life to death. She helps Leah draw up a death plan, and takes her to a death cafe, where strangers discuss dying over tea and cake

Posted on

The world’s first human composting facility will let us recycle ourselves

In life, we strive to reduce and reuse. The human composting center Recompose aims to offer a more sustainable death.

by Lilly Smith

What happens to us when we die? It’s one of life’s most enigmatic and profound questions. And—let me clear this up now—I don’t have any insights to offer on the afterlife. But the first renderings of new after-death center Recompose (don’t call it a “funeral home”) reveal another option for the afterlife of our bodies here on earth: composting.

The flagship facility, expected to open in Seattle in spring 2021, is designed to reconnect human death rituals with nature and to offer a more sustainable alternative to conventional burial options. Today, burial often involves chemical-laden embalming, while cremation uses eight times more energy, according to the architects at Olson Kundig who designed the new facility. Recompose will offer a first-of-its-kind “natural organic reduction” service on-site, which will “convert human remains into soil in about 30 days, helping nourish new life after death.”

Recompose emerged as an idea in 2016—the result of a Creative Exchange Residency at the Seattle-based global design practice that brought Recompose founder and CEO Katrina Spade and her team into collaboration with the architects to create a prototype facility.

But the passage of a new bill “concerning human remains” in Washington State has quickly ushered their prototype into the realm of the possible. After Governor Jay Inslee signed SB-5001 this past May, Washington became the first state to recognize “natural organic reduction” as an alternative to cremation or burial. The law will go into effect May 1, 2020, according to the Seattle Times.

With the design of Recompose, the architects at Olson Kundig have brought a whole new meaning to the term “deathbed.” Their design for the facility is focused on a few key aspects of the experience, starting with the individual “vessels” where the organic reduction takes place. In typical funerary practice, they might be referred to as coffins; a person’s remains are placed in the vessel and covered with woodchips. There, the remains are aerated to create a suitable environment for thermophilic bacteria, according to Dezeen. That bacteria will then break the remains down into usable soil.

What’s the benefit of this process taking place in a controlled facility like Recompose, as opposed to a cemetery? “By converting human remains into soil, we minimize waste, avoid polluting groundwater with embalming fluid, and prevent the emissions of CO2 from cremation and from the manufacturing of caskets, headstones, and grave liners,” the company explains on its website. What’s more, it explains, “By allowing organic processes to transform our bodies and those of our loved ones into a useful soil amendment, we help to strengthen our relationship to the natural cycles while enriching the earth.”

Seventy-five of these individual spaces will be built as part of the first Recompose project. They’re arranged to surround a large, airy gathering space at the center of the 18,500-square-foot facility. This space will be used for services, and reads more New-Age health center than macabre funeral parlor: It’s bright and light-filled, punctuated by trees, and canopied by tall natural wood ceilings.

“This facility hosts the Recompose vessels, but it is also an important space for ritual and public gathering,” says Alan Maskin, principal and owner of Olson Kunig. “The project will ultimately foster a more direct, participatory experience and dialogue around death and the celebration of life.”

Although Recompose claims to be the first facility to offer organic reduction services, Recompose is not alone in trying to end the practice of keeping death and its associated after-care rituals at arm’s length—a movement that’s come to be known as “death positivity.”

Caitlin Doughty is one such person working in this space. She is the co-owner with Jeff Jorgensen of Clarity Funerals, which offers environmentally-friendly services like carbon neutral cremation, tree planting memorials, all natural products, and locally produced urns and caskets. Doughty is also the founder of the Order of the Good Death, “a group of funeral industry professionals, academics, and artists exploring ways to prepare a death-phobic culture for their inevitable mortality.” She had previously founded Undertaking LA, which Tara Chavez-Perez, a publicist for the Order of Good Death, said shut down earlier this year.

According the website, the business was an “alternative funeral service” that brought people closer to the experience of death by “placing the dying person and their family back in control of the dying process, the death itself, and the subsequent care of the dead body,” for instance by helping people take care of a loved one’s corpse at home. Undertaking LA offered more sustainable alternatives to typical practice as well, including biodegradable willow caskets, according to the New Yorker.

She also sits on Recompose’s board—and, as Chavez-Perez told me, “Caitlin’s an enthusiastic and avid supporter.”

New alternative burial companies (like the startup Better Place Forests, which sells the right to scatter your ashes beneath a redwood) are trying to bring nature back into the commercial funeral industry. Recompose, meanwhile, is trying to use nature as the framework for a better death. “We asked ourselves how we could use nature—which has perfected the life/death cycle—as a model for human death care,” Spade says in a statement. “We saw an opportunity for this profound moment to both give back to the earth and reconnect us with these natural cycles.”

With Recompose, Olson Kunig has designed a seemingly more sustainable alternative to burial or cremation—and perhaps a small way for you to leave the world better than you found it.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

On the art of dying

By Gary Moore

I’m reading this excellent book by the author Katy Butler entitled “The Art Of Dying Well.”

Put down those phones, no emergency call needed! I’m not going anywhere for awhile. I just want to be prepared.

George Harrison, one of my musical idols also spoke a lot about preparing for death, so when you finally die, you can do so peacefully and transition seamlessly into the next stage of your life. In fact, he wrote a song entitled “The Art of Dying,” which appeared on his first solo album “All Things Must Pass.” In that song, he wrote:

“There’ll come a time when all your hopes are fading

When things that seemed so very plain become an awful pain

Searching for the truth among the lying

And answered when you’ve learned the art of dying”

George’s wife, Olivia, said that when he passed, you didn’t need a candle to light the room. By that, I assume she meant his lighted spirit left his body. Selfishly, I wish George hadn’t left so soon, and I doubt I will encounter him if he returns (because he may not, having died peacefully). But, one never knows.

George’s wife, Olivia, said that when he passed, you didn’t need a candle to light the room. By that, I assume she meant his lighted spirit left his body. Selfishly, I wish George hadn’t left so soon, and I doubt I will encounter him if he returns (because he may not, having died peacefully). But, one never knows.

In the book, Ms. Butler outlines chapter by chapter what elders can do as they reach the end of their life cycle and how to prepare for each stage. She thoughtfully begins each chapter by stating “If you are experiencing…” and lists several conditions, going from mildly annoying to life-threatening, that people our age will experience as they reach the end. It’s done matter of factly, clinically, but with great warmth and compassion, because she then expounds in each chapter on what you should be doing at each particular stage.

One of her suggestions that I found very helpful was transitioning from a general practitioner to a doctor that specializes in elder medicine. In this kind of practice, the doctor asks “What is it that you want to do?” rather then tells you how she or he is going to save you from dying.

Let’s face it: death is a phase we all must go through. There may be a way to delay it, preventative practices you can use to slow it down, but, in the end, it’s the end.

A reader recently responded to one of my articles that discussed death with a quote from the film director and gay rights activist Derek Jarman, who is quoted to have said “I am not afraid of death, but, I am afraid of dying.”

This is because, we know death is coming, but we don’t know how or when it will come. We are unsure of the process by which we transition from life to death and what waits on “the other side.” We have books on faith and religion and spirituality to suggest, in some way, what we might expect, but we don’t know for sure and that uncertainty breeds fear.

On the other hand, another of my heroes, Mark Twain, is quoted as saying “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at anytime.”

A story told about St. Francis of Assisi has a man asking everybody in town what they would do if they knew they were going to die tomorrow. Various people offer various versions of tying up loose ends. When the man reaches Francis, Francis is hoeing the garden of the monastery. The man asks Francis what he would do. Francis looks up and around, smiles and replies “I would keep hoeing.”

I doubt that I possess Francis’ courage, strength of faith or ease with mortality. In fact, I might add, this column seems to verify that. Dylan Thomas urges us to “rage / rage / against the dying of the light.”

Katy Butler urges us to accept it and prepare for it as best we can.

I find myself somewhere in the middle. As my younger friend expressed it “I have so much more I have to do.” I think many people in my generation feel that way. Places to go. People to visit. Grandchildren to watch grow. Alas and alack.

But, in conclusion, this quote from Lord Beaverbrook, who was a newspaper tycoon and member of Churchill’s cabinet, struck me:

“This is my final word. It is time for me to become an apprentice once more. I have not settled in which direction. But, somewhere, sometime, soon.”

The idea of becoming an apprentice, of starting over, of beginning a new, different phase of “life” appeals to me. And, maybe, that’s exactly what happens.

Or, to quote Oscar Wilde’s dying words: “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”

He did.

Hold those grey heads up!

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

South Koreans Take Part in ‘Living Funerals’ to Improve Lives

Participants sit inside coffins during a “living funeral” event as part of a “dying well” programme, in Seoul, South Korea, October 31, 2019.

by Bryan Lynn

Thousands of South Koreans have taken part in “living funeral” services in an effort to help improve their lives.

The experience is designed to simulate death for individuals seeking to increase their knowledge about their current lives.

More than 25,000 people have completed mass “living funerals” at the Hyowon Healing Center in Seoul since it opened in 2012.

“Once you become conscious of death, and experience it, you undertake a new approach to life,” said 75-year-old Cho Jae-hee. Cho took part in a living funeral that was part of a “dying well” program offered by her local community center.

The event was attended by many people from the area, both young and old. During the program, people are asked to lie down in a closed coffin for about 10 minutes. They can also write a will and take funeral pictures.

University student Choi Jin-kyu also took part in a “dying well” event. He told Reuters news agency the experience helped him realize that, too often, he considers others as competitors.

“When I was in the coffin, I wondered what use that is,” the 28-year-old said. Choi added that he now plans to start his own business after finishing school instead of trying to enter the highly-competitive job market.

Participants get into coffins during a “living funeral” event as part of a “dying well” program in Seoul, South Korea, October 31, 2019. Picture taken on October 31, 2019.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, has rated South Korea 33 out of 40 countries on its Better Life Index. The index considers many measures of personal well-being, including housing, income, employment and health.

Many younger South Koreans have high hopes for education and employment. But such hopes can be ruined because of economic conditions.

Professor Yu Eun-sil is a doctor at Seoul’s Asan Medical Center who has written a book about death. “It is important to learn and prepare for death even at a young age,” she told Reuters.

In 2016, the World Health Organization reported South Korea’s suicide rate was 20.2 per 100,000 people. That is nearly double the worldwide average of 10.53.

Hyowon Healing Center began offering living funerals to help people see the value in their current lives. The experience can also help people seeking forgiveness and better relationships with family and friends, said Jeong Yong-mun, the head of the center.

Jeong said he is pleased when people are able to reconcile at a family member’s funeral. But he is saddened that the connection could not happen sooner.

“We don’t have forever,” he said. “That’s why I think this experience is so important – we can apologize and reconcile sooner and live the rest of our lives happily.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

More people want a green burial, but cemetery law hasn’t caught up

by Alex Brown

Visitors to the White Eagle Memorial Preserve in southern Washington won’t find rows of headstones, manicured lawns or pathways to a loved one’s final resting place. Instead, they stroll through an oak and ponderosa forest set within more than a thousand acres of wilderness.

Twenty acres of the wilderness is set aside as a cemetery. Bodies are placed in shallow graves among the trees, often wrapped in biodegradable shrouds, surrounded with leaves and pine needle mulch, and allowed to decompose naturally, returning nutrients to the soil. Grave markers are natural stones, said Jodie Buller, the cemetery’s manager—”rocks that look like rocks.”

“People drive their loved one out themselves, in the back of a Subaru,” Buller said, summing up White Eagle’s granola ethos.

Conservation cemeteries like White Eagle, which was founded in 2008, are still few and far between—only seven have been officially recognized by the Green Burial Council, the industry’s certification body—but they’re part of a growing movement to handle the dead in eco-friendly ways.

Green burial, the catchall term for these efforts, takes many forms, from no-frills burials in conventional cemeteries to sprawling wilderness conservation operations. Cemetery operators say they’re seeing increasing interest in these less conventional end-of-life options.

“It’s been a slow, , but we are seeing the groundswell happening now,” said Brian Flowers, burial coordinator with Moles Farewell Tributes, which conducts green burials along with more conventional options on sites in Washington state.

While no explicitly prevent green burial—generally defined as burials that happen in eco-friendly containers and without embalming—cemetery operators all over the country say outdated state and local laws have made it difficult for green burial to gain a foothold.

Many followers of Islam and Judaism use similar practices, burying the dead in a shroud or coffin of untreated wood without cremating or embalming. Such techniques are allowed in every jurisdiction, but new cemeteries with an explicit focus on green burial have run into obstacles.

Cemeteries were little-regulated until the late 1800s, experts say, when officials began adding rules primarily for consumer protection. The goal was to prevent scam artists or ill-prepared operators from opening cemeteries that might later be abandoned. But the regulations establishing best practices for conventional cemeteries often inhibit green-burial practices.

“The bottom-line issue in pretty much every state is the statutes don’t contemplate this kind of burial ground,” said Tanya Marsh, a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Law who has written books about laws pertaining to the dead. “It’s probably not that the legislators wanted to make things difficult; it just didn’t occur to them that everybody wasn’t going to set up a cemetery in what they conceived of as a regular cemetery.”

While no organization keeps a comprehensive database of all state and local cemetery laws, operators have no shortage of stories about the obstacles they’ve faced. Some laws, for instance, require paved roads to burial plots. Others mandate fencing around cemeteries—both antithetical to the natural settings required for conservation cemeteries.

Many states mandate that new cemeteries set up a large endowment fund for future maintenance, which green-burial advocates say is a burdensome requirement for places that are intended to be left in their natural state.

Some states require a licensed funeral director to handle transportation, and some laws mandate refrigeration or embalming once a person has been dead more than 24 hours. Green-burial advocates say families should be allowed to take care of arrangements themselves, and these laws are based on misguided fears that the dead carry diseases.

In many places, local officials may not give green cemeteries the zoning permits they need or may pass other regulations to block them. In 2008, for instance, commissioners in Georgia’s Mason-Bibb County adopted an ordinance requiring leak-proof containers for burials after neighbors complained about a proposed green-burial cemetery.

Advocates say their movement is long overdue. According to the California-based Green Burial Council, cemeteries in the United States put more than 4 million gallons of embalming fluid and 64,000 tons of steel into the ground each year, along with 1.6 million tons of concrete.

Consumers are shifting their behavior as well. More than half of the dead in the United States are cremated today, according to a report from the National Funeral Directors Association, up from an industry-estimated rate of just 4% in the 1960s.

That’s at least partially because cremation is less expensive, but some Americans also have expressed a desire to leave a smaller environmental footprint. However, the council estimates that cremation—which involves heating a furnace to close to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for up to two hours—produces about the same emissions as driving 500 miles in a car.

Burial also is a land-use issue, as cemeteries must claim ever-increasing acres to accommodate new arrivals. Conservation cemeteries, on the other hand, are designed to preserve and expand existing wilderness areas while using the burials as a funding mechanism for the environmental work.

White Eagle, which has buried about 85 people so far and has reserved another 130 sites, charges a little more than $3,000 for a burial, which helps with continued land acquisition, invasive-species monitoring and forest management to reduce wildfire danger.

A 2019 survey from the funeral directors’ association found that nearly 52% of Americans expressed interest in green-burial options. Most cited environmental reasons, but others mentioned cost.

“Most people know what green burial is,” said Lee Webster, who heads education for the Green Burial Council. “They just don’t know how to make it happen.”

The council currently recognizes 72 cemeteries in the country that conduct green burials, ranging from “hybrid” cemeteries that allow green burials alongside conventional plots to conservation cemeteries that can span vast wilderness areas. While an increasing number of cemeteries are adding green options, operators say they face many hurdles in trying to set up new cemeteries dedicated to the practice.

Heidi Hannapel and Jeff Masten run Landmatters, a consulting firm based in North Carolina that helps those seeking to establish conservation cemeteries. The partners are attempting to set up their own such cemetery in North Carolina, but obstacles have stalled the project.

“We’d have to pave an entire road throughout the property,” Hannapel said. “That completely defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to create. We’d have to establish a large endowment that would have to be held back. There’s no room within existing North Carolina law that allows for what we’re talking about.”

Freddie Johnson, executive director of the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery in Florida, said the cemetery does not sell sites in advance, which exempts it from state statutes that would have required more than $250,000 upfront. However, that requirement makes it difficult for customers who can’t pre-plan their burials.

“The whole industry is set up to accommodate modern burial,” Johnson said. “You’re trying to do something simple and better for the environment, and some rules and statutes become hurdles. There needs to be another model available for cemeteries to choose based on natural and conservation burial.”

Few states are looking at changes to their burial policies. Wisconsin legislators are considering a bill to allow alkaline hydrolysis, an eco-friendly form of liquid cremation that uses a pressurized solution to rapidly decompose a body. But green-burial operators say they’ve seen little action on policy related to their cemeteries.

Aside from regulatory hurdles, operators say there’s also much work to be done in educating consumers.

“Everybody assumes you need to be embalmed or you can’t transport unembalmed bodies,” said Kimberley Campbell, who operates Ramsey Creek Preserve, a conservation cemetery in South Carolina. “The idea that you’re going to be spreading disease if you don’t embalm the body is complete codswallop.”

Buller, who manages the preserve in southern Washington, said she would like to see hospital chaplains and hospice workers present green burial as an option when they talk with families about their end-of-life choices.

Meanwhile, the so-called death care industry has begun to offer options with various “shades of green”—such as wicker caskets, urns designed to grow into trees and an organic mixture that reduces the toxicity of cremated remains, allowing for safe mixing into the soil.

In Washington, lawmakers passed a bill earlier this year allowing for human composting. The measure was based on a technology that rapidly converts human bodies into soil. State Sen. Jamie Pedersen, the Democrat who sponsored the bill, said it enjoyed broad support.

The bill passed on an 80-16 vote in the House and a 38-11 vote in the Senate. Among those opposed was the Washington State Catholic Conference, which argued that human composting disrespects the body in a manner against church teaching.

“The Catholic Church strongly recommends that the bodies of the deceased be buried in cemeteries and other sacred places,” the conference said in a news release when Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed the bill. “The practice of burying bodies of the deceased shows a greater esteem towards the deceased.”

Pedersen said that he would be open to looking at more changes to state law to accommodate green burial.

“If there are obstacles to responsible practices for the disposal of human remains,” he said, “it makes sense for us to clear those away and leave space for the practice to develop.”

Any movement to change cemetery law would make Washington a rare case, said Marsh, the legal expert.

Some in the green-burial movement blame that on the existing funeral industry, which they believe has outsize political influence, as well as control over many local cemetery commissions. But Jimmy Olson, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association, noted that many conventional cemeteries are adopting their own green options.

“With cremation rates now over 50%, I would think they would welcome this with open arms, because they would see this as an option to continue to use their cemeteries,” he said. “This is only going to help them as more and more people choose not to use a cemetery.”

Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, said it’s important for customers to know they can opt for a green burial—and save money—at many conventional cemeteries, simply by declining options that aren’t eco-friendly.

Some green-burial plots are less expensive than conventional ones, but they still cost more than cremation. However, because of the costs for embalming, caskets and vaults, green burials are often more affordable than the full cost of a conventional burial.

The typical U.S. funeral costs more than $8,000, according to the funeral directors’ association, even before the purchase of a cemetery plot. An average burial plot costs from $1,000 to $4,000, according to the life insurance company Lincoln Heritage. Green- operators interviewed for this story charge from $2,000 to $4,500 for plots.

“Everything about death is so commercialized that we have a hard time thinking about anything other than a product that can be purchased,” Slocum said. “No state requires embalming as a condition of being buried. No state law requires a coffin or casket. No state requires a concrete vault.”

Still, he acknowledged that many who choose green burial may prefer not to be put in the ground between plots with vaults, caskets and embalmed bodies. Regulations may need to change to accommodate new cemeteries that don’t fit the traditional mold.

“We need to get over this idea that everything needs to look like an MGM backlot and manicured within an inch of its life,” he said. “I’m hoping that the artificial prissiness that has dominated the American approach can go away.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!