When you die, do you want to be buried? Cremated?
How about being cryogenically frozen and then vibrated into tiny pieces? If you want to spend the hereafter in Kansas, you may eventually get the chance if legal and regulatory issues are resolved.
A new option called promession, the creation of a Swedish biologist, holds the potential to make burial more environmentally-friendly, its proponents say. A body effectively reduced to small particles and buried would turn to soil in a matter of months.
And while promession has yet to be tried on human remains—only pigs have so far had the privilege—the company pursuing the idea regards Kansas as fertile ground for the new method. So much so that the firm, Promessa, has one of its handful of U.S. representatives based in Overland Park. And a state lawmaker may introduce a bill in 2020 to clear the way.
In promession, the body is frozen using liquid nitrogen, then vibrated into particles. Water is removed from the particles, which are then freeze-dried. The remains are buried in a degradable coffin.
But in a legal opinion released just before Thanksgiving, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt found that promession doesn’t meet the definition of cremation under Kansas law and regulation.
In cremation, the body is reduced to bone fragments and flesh is typically burned up by fire. In promession, both flesh and bone are reduced to particles. That difference is why the process does not legally count as cremation, according to Schmidt.
The decision was a surprise to Promessa representative Rachel Caldwell.
“We thought this would be no hang-ups whatsoever,” Caldwell said.
Interest has been growing in so-called green burials that minimize the environmental impact. A 2017 survey of more than 1,000 American adults 40 and older by the National Funeral Directors Association found 54 percent were interested in “green memorialization options” that could include biodegradable caskets and formaldehyde-free embalming.
“Newer, greener methods of burial, like promession, may help conserve resources and less pollution into the air or ground,” Zack Pistora, legislative director of the Kansas Sierra Club, said. “Why not rest in peace with peace of mind?”
Schmidt cautioned that a decision on whether promession is permissible under other state laws falls to the Kansas Board of Mortuary Arts. The board’s executive secretary didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.
Caldwell said Kansas is the first state where she has sought a formal legal opinion because of what she views as the state’s relatively lax cremation laws. For example, Kansas doesn’t require fire to be used in cremation. That’s a helpful distinction because promession freezes bodies instead of burning them.
Caldwell asked her state representative, Overland Park Democrat Dave Benson, to seek the attorney general’s opinion. Benson said Friday he wasn’t surprised by Schmidt’s conclusions because in his experience attorneys general are hesitant to provide new interpretations of law.
Benson suggested he may draft a bill to authorize promession because of interest in alternatives to traditional burial or cremation. And because he’s taken “a little bit of a libertarian” view.
“If that’s what you want, hey, where’s the government’s interest in telling you not to?” Benson said.
Promession has gained attention over the past decade, often when news outlets mention it as an alternative to traditional burial or cremation, said its creator, Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak.
Caldwell said she’s optimistic it could be used on a human body in the United States within five years. Promessa hears from people all over the world who want to undergo the procedure when they die, she said.
Still, it’s likely to take a long time to turn promession into a reality.
Jonathan Shorman covers Kansas politics and the Legislature for The Wichita Eagle and The Kansas City Star. He’s been covering politics for six years, first in Missouri and now in Kansas. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Kansas.
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Grounding Ourselves
On rethinking our views of green space and funeral options as we plan for the final disposition of our bodies.
By Regina Sandler-Phillips
In 2008, Vietnamese Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh wrote “The Bells of Mindfulness” about the need for collective awakening to protect the earth. One decade later, master composter David Buckel connected the self-immolation of Buddhist monastics to his own self-immolation for action against climate change. Tragically, Buckel’s self-described “early death by fossil fuel” caught public attention in a way that his long-term, nationwide contributions to community composting could not. Our most sustainable practices — those that quietly prevent the depletion of vital natural resources — are rarely headline-grabbing.
Natural burial, like community composting, involves acceptance that the organic remains of the living are neither trash nor personal commodities. They belong to the earth. Yet, even though human bodies have been continuously returned to the earth for millennia, the idea that our world will be overrun by cemeteries remains entrenched in popular consciousness.
The experience of the United Kingdom — a tiny island nation that has long promoted cremation to save space — teaches otherwise. “For most environmentalists, it’s actually better to fade away than burn out,” concluded UK ethics journalist Leo Hickman back in 2005. “Our lives … already result in enough gratuitous combusting of fossil fuels. Much better, in death, to compost down as nature intended.” (Read more about the energy inputs, emissions, and toxic impacts of cremation in part one of this series.)
While it may seem alien to conventional expectations, the reuse of graves is a sustainable, long-established practice in Europe and elsewhere. In the historic City of London Cemetery, 1,500 out of 780,000 graves have been reused to date — a practice legalized for the municipality in 2007. As reported in The Guardian, graves chosen for reuse must be at least 75 years old, and notices must be posted for six months at the grave and in advertisements. If anyone connected with the grave raises an objection, the grave will not be reused. Gary Burks, who first came to live at the cemetery as the young child of a gardener and is now its superintendent, reports that very few objections have been registered.
In most cases, the original decomposed remains are lowered by deepening the grave, allowing for a new burial above. The original headstone inscription is preserved, but reversed to allow for a new inscription on the other side of the headstone. Burks believes that, with continued sensitive application of these procedures, the beautifully landscaped grounds will be able to accommodate interments indefinitely.
Most predictions of disappearing space focus on cemeteries within major urban centers. But just as city dwellers regularly leave these centers in search of more spacious real estate, the majority of burial plots — especially in the US — remain available outside of city limits. Like Hickman in the UK, American environmental planning professor Christopher Coutts has concluded that the most sustainable form of body disposition is burial without embalming in a simple biodegradable covering, followed by reuse of graves after bodies have decomposed back to the earth.
Another common variation of grave reuse involves a deeper excavation of graves at the outset, so that two or three family members can be buried one on top of the other(s) in the same plot. “Multiple-depth” burial practices are recognized in the United States, and ritually acceptable in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
While the utilitarian, lawn-style suburban cemeteries of the mid-twentieth century may not represent today’s ideal landscaping aesthetics, they still preserve basic green space against a range of more fossil-fuel-intensive onslaughts. The Green Burial Council recognizes this with three levels of North American cemetery standards.
“Hybrid” burial grounds are cemeteries or cemetery sections that simply forego the use of concrete vaults or other outer containers to reinforce the ground. Such vaults are never required by state law in the US, but rather by the regulations of individual cemeteries. Except in areas where the earth is particularly shifting and unstable (as in cities built below sea level), most Jewish and Muslim burial grounds would qualify as “hybrid” — since these traditions have long upheld a simple, natural return to the earth.
“Natural” burial grounds, besides foregoing vaults and outer containers, do not allow for burial of any bodies embalmed with toxic chemicals, or of any containers not made of biodegradable materials. Again, this is consistent with traditional Jewish and Muslim practices.
“Conservation” burial grounds are natural burial grounds legally committed to long-term stewardship for land conservation and preservation of natural habitat. There are very few designated conservation burial grounds at this time — and significantly fewer people can be buried in conservation burial grounds than in conventional cemeteries, which are zoned for many more graves.
Beyond the technicalities of “green” certification, there are always sustainability tradeoffs between each organic, inorganic, emotional, social, and economic consideration in the human ecosystem of funeral arrangements. For example, the greenhouse gas emissions of long-distance transport to a certified natural burial ground must be weighed against the availability of graves in more local cemeteries that support natural burial practices.
As the Funeral Consumers Alliance points out, “You can make any burial greener by eliminating embalming, and using a shroud or a biodegradable casket. Omit the vault if the cemetery will allow it. Otherwise, ask to use a concrete grave box with an open bottom, have holes drilled in the bottom of the vault, or invert the vault without its cover, so the body can return to the earth.”
Of course, the least privileged are not afforded this full range of choices. A cemetery of layered graves for the indigent and unclaimed is known as a potter’s field, referring back to the New Testament. Potters Fields Park in London is quite cheerful about its origins. In New York City, several now-upscale parks served as potter’s fields long before Hart Island — the largest mass burial ground in the United States — was opened for that purpose. More than one million dead, most of them lost to family and forgotten by history, have been buried on Hart Island in layered trenches by prison inmates since 1869.
Following decades-long efforts of family and community activists, supported by organizations like the Hart Island Project and the New York Civil Liberties Union, relatives of those buried on the island have won limited visitation rights in recent years. Those who “affirm a close personal relationship” can visit their corresponding burial area up to twice a month, while access for the general public remains restricted to a public viewing gazebo once a month. This past spring, the New York City Council moved formally toward transferring the jurisdiction of this municipal cemetery from the Department of Corrections to the Parks Department.
A few years earlier, the New York State legislature outlawed the use — without consent — of presumably unclaimed bodies for medical research or funeral embalmer training prior to Hart Island burial. Meanwhile, Hart Island continues to challenge us with a tangled thicket of ethical dilemmas, from cadaver shortages through prison reform to land use deliberations.
We may offer tips for “how to avoid the fate of a common grave,” but the unspoken truth is that we are all fated to return to a common earth. The most integrated solutions to the dilemmas of Hart Island actually point toward the most equitable and sustainable consumer choices for all of us at death: layered burials in simple, biodegradable containers; preservation of urban green spaces and history; public transportation access; and community education and counseling for informed funeral decision-making — including fully consensual arrangements for needed anatomical gifts.
Archaeological discoveries remind us that layered civilizations inevitably result in layered burials. Our first priority should be helping to insure that our own civilization will not be prematurely buried (or drowned) in the upheavals of climate change — and that there will be equal access, regardless of income, to whatever sustainable burial options exist locally.
In a poignant twist, one of the family members most active in the struggle to open Hart Island as a public space made arrangements for her own burial there. Rosalee Grable, whose mother was buried on the island in 2014, died two years later at the age of 65. “I am getting quite eager for my little spot on Hart Island,” Grable reflected shortly before her death. She knew that under then-current city regulations she would need to forego a funeral attended by family and friends, that her burial would not be confirmed until 30 days afterward, and that local friends would have difficulty visiting unaccompanied by her long-distance family members.
Even so, Rosalee Grable leveraged her power of choice in solidarity with so many whose lack of choice brought them to the same place. By deliberately choosing “the fate of a common grave,” she left a legacy that challenges all of us to plan the final dispositions of our own bodies in affirmation of our common humanity — and our common earth.
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The environmental toll of cremating the dead
As cremation becomes more common, people around the world are seeking greener end-of-life options.
By Becky Little
Over the past four years, cremations have surpassed burials as the most popular end-of-life option in the United States, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. At the same time, companies have been springing up touting creative things you can do with a loved one’s ashes, such as pressing them into a vinyl record, using them to create a marine reef, or having them compressed into diamonds.
Cremation—along with these creative ways to honor the dead—is often marketed as a more environmentally friendly option than traditional embalmment and casket burial. Concern for the environment, in addition to economic considerations, may be driving some of the increase in popularity.
“[For] some people, I bet that’s part of it,” says Nora Menkin, executive director of the Seattle-based People’s Memorial Association, which helps people choose end-of-life options.
But while it’s true that cremation is less harmful than pumping a body full of formaldehyde and burying it on top of concrete, there are still environmental effects to consider. Cremation requires a lot of fuel, and it results in millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year—enough that some environmentalists are trying to rethink the process.
The average U.S. cremation, for instance, “takes up about the same amount of energy and has the same emissions as about two tanks of gas in an average car,” Menkin says. “So, it’s not nothing.”
Greener funeral pyres
The particular impact of an individual cremation depends on where and how it’s performed. In India, Hindus have a long tradition of cremating relatives on an open-air pyre. This requires cutting down millions of trees, and the practice contributes to air and river pollution since most pyre cremations occur near water.
Since 1992, the nonprofit Mokshda Green Cremation System has been trying to curb this pollution by giving communities access to more fuel-efficient structures for funerary rites.
In these structures, the “pyre” is a metal tray heated with firewood. This setup takes less time and requires less wood than a traditional pyre. It’s also easier to transition from one cremation to another by removing the metal tray filled with ash and replacing it with a new tray containing the next body.
Right now, about 50 such units are spread around nine Indian states. According to Anshul Garg, the director of Mokshda Green Cremation System, one metal pyre can handle around 45 cremations a day. The system also lowers the amount of wood needed from about 880 to 1100 pounds for a conventional cremation to 220 to 330 pounds.
“So, it’s almost less than one fourth of the wood requirement,” Garg says.
Though there has been some resistance to this non-traditional method, Garg says, people are more open to the Mokshda system now than they were in the 1990s. More than 150,000 cremations have taken place on Mokshda pyres in India, saving more than 480,000 trees, averting about 60,000 metric tons of ash from rivers, and releasing 60,000 fewer metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to program officer Chitra Kesarwani.
In addition, Garg says, the nonprofit has received inquiries from other countries in Africa and Asia about making their pyre cremations greener.
In the U.S., by contrast, all cremations happen indoors at crematoriums. The big environmental concerns with this type of cremation are the amount of energy it requires, and the amount of carbon dioxide emissions it produces.
Regional environmental regulations mean that most U.S. crematoriums have scrubbing or filtering systems, such as after-chambers that burn and neutralize pollutants like mercury emissions from dental fillings.
“Most filtration systems are focused on reducing metals and particulate matter and nitrous oxide,” says Paul Seyler, the marketing division manager for Matthews Environmental Solutions, which manufactures cremation technology.
However, these filters do not neutralize the CO2 generated by cremating a body, including the gas generated as a by-product of heating that body up to 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit or more. Matthews estimates that one cremation produces an average of 534.6 pounds of carbon dioxide. Given this figure, Seyler estimates that cremations in the U.S. account for about 360,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions each year.
Back to the earth
For Americans who don’t want to use up so much fuel or release so much carbon dioxide when they die, alkaline hydrolysis may be a more appealing option. Sometimes known as water cremation or aquamation, this way of dissolving a body in water is now legal in at least 18 states.
Alkaline hydrolysis “has about a tenth of the carbon footprint of conventional cremation,” Menkin says. “While the process does take a similar amount of time, it doesn’t have to heat that much, and it’s the water that’s doing most of the work.” In addition, the process releases zero emissions from the body itself.
As with cremation, there are some remains left over after alkaline hydrolysis that families can keep in an urn or scatter in a special location. And the process creates a lot of sludgy organic liquid that has some very practical uses.
“Some facilities capture the liquid, and it’s taken away and it’s used on some farmland; it’s an excellent fertilizer,” Menkin says. “But most places, it just goes into the municipal sewer system. And a lot of sewer systems actually appreciate it, because it actually helps with the quality of the wastewater.”
In the future, we’ll probably see many more alternatives to cremation. This year, Washington State became the first in the U.S. to legalize a type of corpse composting called natural organic reduction, or recomposition. Starting in 2020, this process will convert bodies into useful soil that friends and family can either use or donate to the state’s Puget Sound region. And across the U.S., it’s legal to opt for a so-called natural burial, in which the body is allowed to decompose in the ground without added chemicals, concrete, or synthetic materials.
Ultimately, people have to take into account many factors when making funerary preparations, such as how much a certain option costs, whether it aligns with religious and cultural practices, and whether it’s available in a given area. But with more end-of-life options becoming widely available, it’s getting a bit easier to go from ashes to ashes while still being green.
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First green living, now green dying
Biodegradable caskets, water-based cremation
Seven years ago Jack Davenport, co-owner of Davenport Family Funeral Homes and Crematory, was approached with what seemed to be an unusual request.
A family trying to grant the last wishes of a loved one wanted the body buried in a biodegradable casket to allow for natural decomposition.
Davenport, 53, was able to accommodate the family, and in the process launched a new line of business that caters to environmentally conscious families. His firm now offers biodegradable caskets and shrouds, which are typically a linen cloth used to wrap the body of the deceased.
“I do this because the environmental, green movement is growing,” Davenport said. “Some families don’t want cremation. They want a burial … their mentality is that what comes from the earth will have to return back to it.”
Green burials aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by cremations and toxic chemicals used for embalming a body. And as consumers become more conscious about the products and services they use, Illinois funeral homes are ramping up their green burial services for a small but growing client base interested in reducing their carbon footprint, even in death.
Several funeral homes in the state offer services in which the body is buried in the ground in biodegradable materials like willow, seagrass or bamboo. Other green options include biodegradable urns and a water-based alternative to cremation called alkaline hydrolysis.
According to a 2019 survey from the National Funeral Directors Association, less than 20% of funeral homes across the country performed green funeral services in the past year. And some funeral homes are limited by state laws in what they can offer. But demand for green funeral services is growing, so much so that the funeral directors group now offers a green funeral practice certificate.
Davenport, who has funeral homes in Barrington, Lake Zurich and Crystal Lake, said his firm has performed about eight green burials so far this year.
“By and large it’s a request by the deceased,” Davenport said. “It’s something that’s preplanned by families.”
Proximity has helped Davenport in his effort to offer green burials. Davenport said his funeral homes are only a few miles away from Windridge Memorial Park and Nature Sanctuary, a cemetery in Cary that has a nature trail dedicated to natural burials.
The 48-acre cemetery has been offering natural burial sites along the trail for a number of years, Windridge family service manager Kelly Lawyer said. The cemetery is plotting an additional 400 natural gravesites at a different location on the property, Lawyer said.
Illinois state law does not require bodies to be buried in caskets, although cemeteries typically require gravesites to have some type of reinforced concrete box — either a vault or a grave liner — to keep the ground level and prevent settling. A handful of cemeteries are willing to waive the vault requirement and allow natural burials, at least on a portion of their properties.
It’s unclear exactly how many Illinois cemeteries reserve sections for natural burials, but Lawyer said she knows of at least four, including one in Springfield and another in Vernon Hills.
Marion Friel, owner of Green Burials of Love in Norwood Park East, said she also uses Windridge for green burials, a service she has been offering since 2010.
Last year Friel helped Cheryl Barnes, of Beverly, set up a green burial for her 66-year-old sister, who died of uterine cancer on Dec. 28. Barnes said she was able to honor her sister’s last request, which was “to be put in a bag and then be put in the ground under a tree.”
Barnes said her sister was wrapped in a light shroud and buried next to a tree near a hill at the Windridge nature trail.
“I thought I had to settle for a second-rate of what my sister wanted,” Barnes said. “But I was able to give my sister exactly what she wanted.”
The overall cost of the burial alone was about $6,000, plus other expenses for the funeral service, Barnes said.
According to the funeral directors group, National Funeral Directors Association, a family can pay up toward $9,000 for a traditional funeral service and a burial. Green burials tend to be less expensive because they don’t involve embalming chemicals and vaults, and instead allow the body to decay naturally. Davenport said he has different prices for green burials — a service with a wicker casket can cost about $5,200 with a ceremony, or about $4,800 for a burial with a shroud.
The availability of green burial options varies by state and locality.
Traci Macz, owner of Irvin Macz and Day Macz Funeral Homes in Sandoval, Illinois, doesn’t offer natural burials yet. Macz said she’s been working with local leaders to reserve a section in the city-operated Sandoval Cemetery for green burials. Currently, she educates families about other green options available to them like less harmful embalming fluids or biodegradable urns.
“For us, having two young sons, we have to set the bar and educate consumers on what is available to them,” Macz said. “That why it was important for us to get the green funeral practice certificate from the National Funeral Directors Association.”
Jimmy Olson, owner of Olson Funeral Home and Cremation Service in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, said state law wouldn’t allow his funeral home to accommodate a family’s request to perform alkaline hydrolysis, a water-based cremation process that breaks down the body to liquid and bone using water and either sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide.
The relatively new process is sometimes referred to as flameless cremation, resomation or aquamation.
“It’s so new. We are all trying to find a way to explain it and offer it to consumers,” Kurt Soffee, a funeral home director in Murray, Utah, and a spokesman for the national funeral directors group, said of the process.
Several states, like Wisconsin, do not yet permit alkaline hydrolysis. Olson said he found a funeral home in Minnesota that was able to accommodate the family’s request.
“I’ve spent the last year working with (Wisconsin) state Sen. Patty Schachtner to pass a bill that will allow for alkaline hydrolysis,” Olson said.
Although Illinois has allowed alkaline hydrolysis since 2012, only a handful of funeral homes have the equipment to perform it.
Matt Baskerville, who owns four funeral homes under the names Reeves and Baskerville in Illinois, said he began offering the service to clients shortly after it became legal in the state.
Baskerville, who refers to the process as flameless cremation, said it’s a much greener option because it does not burn fossil fuels or release emissions. The funeral home charges about $3,000 for alkaline hydrolysis, which is a little more than cremation because the firm has to use another company to perform the process, Baskerville said.
“I think there are so many different forms of green funerals. Many shades of green,” Baskerville said. “A natural funeral can involve no harmful embalming products or using biodegradable caskets, or it can also include purchasing locally owned flowers. People are more conscious of this today.”
Barnes, who visited her sister’s gravesite a couple of weeks ago at the Windridge cemetery, said she hopes more people will consider the greener options. Barnes said she herself would like to donate her organs after her death and have a natural burial for the rest of her remains.
“My sister, at the time, she did not want to be embalmed or put in a box,” Barnes said. “I hope people realize all they’re doing is putting chemicals into the ground when the body is filled with embalming fluids.”
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A day at a ‘body farm’
Forensic scientists in Sydney and Perth are studying what happens to our bodies when we die.
By Michelle Wheeler
If you accidentally stumbled across the remote facility where Jodie works, you might be a little concerned and (potentially) a bit queasy.
For starters, there’s more than 70 dead bodies scattered around the area – some just lying on the ground as they decompose.
But before you dial 000 and report a homicide, let’s clear something up.
Jodie’s not a killer – she’s helping to catch them.
Dr Jodie Ward is the director of the Australian Facility for Taphonomic Experimental Research (AFTER).
It’s the only research facility in the southern hemisphere for the study of human decomposition, or what’s known colloquially as a ‘body farm’.
“Essentially, it’s a unique body donation facility that enables generous Australians to donate their body to forensic science,” Jodie says of the research facility on the outskirts of Sydney.
“And it enables forensic scientists to study the decomposition of the human body once someone dies.”
Replicating Crime Scenes
Jodie says donors are placed in scenarios that replicate crime scenes as much as possible.
Some bodies are left on the surface, while others are buried or placed in vehicles. Some donors are clothed and others are not.
There’s even a mass grave with 10 bodies replicating a war crime or disaster scenario.
Jodie says the bodies are being studied by experts from every discipline of forensic science.
“We have biologists trying to improve the quantity and quality of DNA able to be recovered from compromised bones and teeth,” she says.
“We have chemists studying volatile organic compounds to define the chemical signature of decomposition odour.”
Jodie says AFTER is used to train cadaver dogs to locate deceased people and by archaeologists studying Neolithic funeral practices.
The facility even made headlines this month with a discovery by researcher Alyson Wilson that human bodies can move after death.
“Without a human taphonomic facility, we don’t have the benefit of studying these types of things,” Jodie says. “There’s so much we are learning from using human donors.”
OUT WEST
In WA, forensic scientists are also learning more about what happens when we die.
While the state doesn’t have human decomposition trials, UWA researchers are using pig carcasses as a model for what happens in people.
UWA forensic entomologist Dr Sasha Voss says the pig trials have been running since 1999 in a secure facility in Perth.
“They’re ethically treated, they’re sourced from abattoirs and then we conduct various ‘unpleasantries’ on the dead animal.”
Recent studies include hanging, burning and even placing pig carcasses in a wheelie bin, to help determine the time of death of real cases.
The reserve has also been used to see whether infrared cameras can detect maggots on a body from the air, helping police to locate missing persons who have died.
Sasha says the reserve is currently being used to train postgraduate students, allowing them to monitor the decomposition process and collect insects from the carcasses.
She says a government report from a body farm in Tennessee found a 45kg domestic pig is the best proxy for human decomposition.
“There’s obviously still differences, but if you can’t go with humans, that’s the best option,” she says.
Dying to get in
Back at AFTER, Jodie’s team has been flooded with offers from people wanting to donate their bodies.
She says many donations are made by older people wanting to benefit the living after they die.
Jodie says other donations have been made by families who have lost loved ones at a young age and wanted their death to benefit others in some way.
Whatever the reason, Jodie says the donations are invaluable.
“Obviously our facility wouldn’t exist without them, so we’re forever grateful,” she says.
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Musicians must prepare estate plans for their musical works
Whether or not we want to plan for it, we all inevitably die. A hard subject for some to grasp, death can bring forth a variety of emotions, conflict, or even chaos, depending on whether or not the deceased had a pre-established estate plan.
To some extent, everyone has assets, but what happens when music is one of those assets—specifically song lyrics and the recording of those songs? We often think about the physical attributes of an estate plan after someone dies—like jewelry, amplifiers, and guitars—but how does a musician plan their legacy that will proceed their death?
Some Minnesota musicians and artists have developed assets over time and have developed their own plans for their music as part of their estate planning process.
Musician Chris Osgood, one-third of the punk-rock trio The Suicide Commandos, has spent time organizing his own musical assets with his fellow bandmates, and for himself, as he continues his own estate-planning process.
“People like myself have a tendency to forget non-physical property is still an asset,” Osgood says over the phone. “When you are doing your death planning, the first thing you think about is, who gets which guitar and objects? The last thing you think about is intellectual property, like your songs, that hopefully will continue.”
Working with musicians, artists, and other talent, attorney Ken Abdo has helped create estate plans that include music assets and legacy planning.
“An artist’s music assets, in the context of estate planning, are really just one of many assets that an artist has,” Abdo says. “The estate planning does not limit itself just to the music aspect. They may have a house, debts, other property, other children. It is part of the whole estate of an individual.”
When you are a musician, prominently known or not, you may have the additional, non-physical assets of copyright, trademark, and even name and likeness potentially included in estate planning. All of these assets together are better known in estate planning as intellectual property.
“When we are talking about music assets, we are really talking about the greater world of intellectual property,” says Abdo. “Copyright is one of those parts. There are two different copyrights involved in the recording of music: there is the underlying composition or songwriting part of it, and then there is the recorded version of that song.”
Protected under United States copyright law, a musician’s compositions and recordings are preserved for 70 years past their death. Musical assets can continue making money well past the death of the musician—an estate plan can determine who benefits from or administers these royalties. Once the copyright period expires, the music enters into the public domain, which helps explain the popularity and exorbitant recordings of songs like “Silent Night,” or other classical hits—because the originator is no longer protected, anyone can write and record the song without the penalty of payment.
Osgood and the other members of The Suicide Commandos have a musical history that spans back to 1975. Planning everything from songwriting credits to publishing rights to trademark, Osgood and his fellow bandmates recently meticulously combed through their catalog and assigned the appropriate credits for their music to each band member.
“When we put out the last record “Time Bomb,” we got a publishing deal from a company called Words and Music down in Nashville,” says Osgood. “It was mandatory when we accepted that contract, to go through each song of our entire catalog and figure out who wrote what and make sure that all parties were content with the fractions. It was easy for us to agree. Songwriting credits are pretty easy to divvy up. Song lyrics hold equal weight to the music.”
A newer technology is helping to preserve intellectual property: holograms. Holographic tours have grown in popularity amongst some musicians, and although the process to create a holographic tour is complicated, it can help protect an artist’s name and likeness, trademark rights, copyright rights, and enable an income source for heirs.
As for reputation and how musicians want people to see their image after death, they can include that in their estate planning under the right of publicity, also known as “personality rights,” which applies to 23 states and controls the commercial use of their identity.
“When you die, that is an asset, where you can bequeath the rights to your name and likeness to another person,” says Abdo. “If you died and were famous and branded, you would want to make sure that your name and likeness fall into the right hands. You would designate that person for trustee, or someone who could shepherd your legacy by making good and correct use with guidance, to keep your legacy going—it survives your death. [For] most people, when you die, you’re dead. But when you are a famous person, you have a name and likeness that has value after your death.”
Although most people do not start their estate planning process until their 50s according to a national survey, Osgood believes being pragmatic is important when dealing with assets- especially when creative assets such as music, are a part of the process.
“It’s still mailbox money and money that can go to someone who is handling my estate,” says Osgood. “I think a lot of people overlook that and don’t think a lot about it. For most of us this side of Steely Dan, it’s not that big of a deal one way or another. It could be, and it often is, if someone’s song gets picked up for a movie or an ad posthumously.”
For anyone that has music as an asset, Osgood believes that musicians should include their work in their planning, even if they do not work full-time in the industry.
“For any creative person, don’t sell yourself short or think that because you are not making a complete living from your art, whatever it happens to be, that it isn’t important or that it wouldn’t be important for future generations,” says Osgood.
Reflecting on artists like Aretha Franklin, who recently made headlines for not having a formal estate plan, Osgood believes that musicians and others who have assets can learn from those public eye experiences.
“It’s a cautionary tale for anyone,” says Osgood. “You are taken aback that somebody of that stature hasn’t given that some thought. Maybe they didn’t because they were afraid of death, or something spooked them. It doesn’t spook me. It’s the last part of life. You have to prepare for it the same way you fill up your car before you take it on a trip.”
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Is there greener life after death?
By Tom Jokinen
In Winnipeg in a January blizzard, there are few places as toasty and sheltered as a crematorium. I know this because I worked in one. When the cremation chamber, or retort, is firing at 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit (900 Celsius), the work space is balmy, like a ski lodge. The noise of the powerful gas jets is buffered by the stone and steel of the machinery. When the gear is running, all you hear is a low, soothing rumble. It’s peaceful. I used to read Eudora Welty short stories while the body burned, stopping regularly to monitor temperatures and stoke the remains with an iron hook passed through a small, eye-level porthole in the oven door. The process is conducive to reflection.
Cremation seems clinical: fire, ashes. But in fact there is enormous spiritual heft behind it. We talk about the cleansing power of fire. As a funeral rite it goes back to the Bronze Age at least. “Fire,” writes the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, “magnifies human destiny, it links the small to the great, the hearth to the volcano.” Man “hears the call of the funeral pyre” not as destruction but as a road to renewal. This is overstating the case, as French philosophers do, but it still scans. Now try saying the same about a chemical process.
Last week, I read a story about a new process called alkaline hydrolysis. In a nutshell, it’s like cremation without the fire: The body is immersed in chemicals in a cylindrical device that looks (judging from the photo, as I’ve never seen one up close) like a large telescope with an Instant Pot lid. The chemicals break down the soft tissue, which is flushed away, leaving behind bones and any non-organic residue such as tooth fillings or artificial hips. The device is called a Resomator, a Doctor-Whovian commercial euphemism for what is basically a body-dissolving machine.
Industry licensing bodies such as the Bereavement Authority of Ontario are not sure what to make of alkaline hydrolysis. Is it safe to just flush the liquefied organic material into the city sewage system? Are there health risks? Is it dangerous or just very, very creepy? Is it any creepier than cremation – or burial for that matter? For now, though, its main selling point is that alkaline hydrolysis is considered greener, or less carbon-intensive, than other methods.
According to the Ecology Action Centre, the average cemetery buries 4,500 litres of formaldehyde, 97 tonnes of steel and 56,000 board feet of hardwood per acre. A single cremation, which intuitively (and emotionally) seems so clean and efficient, uses as much fossil-fuel energy as an 800-kilometre car trip. Sulphur dioxide and mercury are released into the atmosphere, up the flue. That warm feeling on a January day in Winnipeg comes at an ecological cost.
Meanwhile, hydrolysis uses one-eighth the energy spent in cremation. There is no embalming, no casket or container. Even with cremation, there is always a container of some kind, including, in my experience, very expensive hardwood caskets with brass trimmings. So alkaline hydrolysis is marketing itself thusly: your green alternative.
When you’re dead, there are few options for what happens next. I don’t mean spiritually – that’s between you and your God or His/Her metaphysical substitute. I mean with the body. We all leave a remainder. Some more than others. You can bury it, sink it in the sea, leave it in the trees or on hilltops to be devoured by carrion birds – known technically as excarnation, a natural process of removing the flesh before earth burial (in Tibetan and Comanche cultures, known as sky burial) – or most commonly you can burn it. In Canada, the cremation rate varies by region, but in 2018 more than 61 per cent of the dead in Ontario and Manitoba and more than 71 per cent in Quebec were cremated. The national cremation rate is expected to rise to 76.9 per cent by 2023, according to the Cremation Association of North America.
For the funeral industry, cremation has always been a shoe that pinches. It’s an industry based on the pricing of intangibles: the meaning of life and death, ritual, the concept of “closure.” It has been able to translate the emotional turbulence of death into product (caskets, vaults, embalming) and real estate (cemeteries), but over the past 50 years has watched as a cultural revolution changed everything. Religion loosened its hold, and fewer people felt bound by tradition. Cremation was cheaper. People moved around – for work, for relationships – and the idea of a permanent resting place lost its appeal. Postmodernism struck the funeral industry: Meaning and ritual came down to personal taste.
So the industry reinvented itself. Funerals became “celebrations of life,” and funeral directors became event planners like those who booked weddings (and the cost of weddings, they noticed, was skyrocketing). If cremation was on the rise, it could surely be monetized: urns shaped like golf bags, garden watering cans or basketballs, depending on the hobbies of the dead in question. Cemeteries focused on marketing columbaria, the small, above-ground vaults for urns.
I once met a cemetery salesman who assured me that scattering human remains was illegal (not true) and that he himself once stepped on a human bone on a beach in British Columbia (unlikely, as most crematoria process the remains to a fine, biologically inert powder). His sales pitch was simple: Only the industry knows how to handle what we all leave behind – the rest of us are not equipped. It’s a powerful message. As Jessica Mitford, author of The American Way of Death, found out, people will pay to avoid dealing with death and will subcontract what is basically an existential puzzle (what’s to become of me?) to a professional.
But it’s possible to be too clinical. We like at least a little meaning with our rituals, especially the death rituals. “Belief in a future state,” writes Bertram S. Puckle in Funeral Customs: Their Origin and Development, a 1926 text, “presupposed a material existence after death, with corresponding material necessities. Food must be provided, weapons and clothing, and a supply of charms with which to ward off evil influences.” And so even today people are buried with iPhones or cremated with a blanket from home. This is not superstition. It is about doing the right thing, even if the thing is a complete mystery. Alkaline hydrolysis is maybe too much like a chemistry experiment to bear much meaning.
And the industry continues to adapt and innovate. An Italian company used to market the Capsula Mundi, a starch-based, acorn-like pod that calls for no headstone as it, with the body, dissolves in time as compost and produces a tree. Demand, it turns out, was slim. Now the company offers an egg-like urn for cremated remains that does the same job for US$457 – tree not included. (But again, there’s the carbon footprint of the cremation itself.)
Straight-up green burial – in a shroud, with no embalming, in a legally designated forest (the law frowns on “freelance” burial) – is sparsely available. The industry has never embraced it.
Maybe it expects greater things from alkaline hydrolysis. After all, if meaning is and always will be knit deeply into our death rituals, it ticks the right boxes: In life, we rejected plastic straws and used twirly light bulbs. In death, we were thus safely melted. Carve it into your tombstone.
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