Tag: Final Farewell

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Honouring the dead: how cultures around the world pay their respects

A look at the traditional funerary rituals of the mainland, Asia and beyond

People paying homage to their ancestors during the Ching Ming festival in Diamond Hill.

By Hana Davis

[T]he veneration of elders holds significant standing in Chinese culture, and reverence for its rituals endures beyond any individual’s time of death. As a traditionally patriarchal religion, the celebration of lineage and ancestry is integral to what it means to be Chinese.

On April 5, Hongkongers travelled on roads and in air-conditioned trains to pay their respects for Ching Ming, a public holiday widely known as the grave-sweeping festival. At the final resting place of their loved ones, celebrants replaced wilted flowers with fresh ones, incense and paper offerings were burnt, and food was laid out before the headstones of tombs citywide. Three pairs of chopsticks get placed above a display of food, which often consists of an assortment of meats and pastries.

To the Chinese, continuing obeisance to their forebears is as symbolic as their initial burial. The bedrock of intergenerational customs, funerals are considered a normal element of family life. Amid this week’s festival of honouring ancestors, City Weekend explores traditional funerary rituals in mainland China, Asia, and beyond.

A Chinese woman prays at the grave of a loved one at the Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing to mark the Ching Ming festival.

China

The belief in Chinese folk religion is that people have multiple souls, known as ‘hun’ and ‘po’. Upon death, these souls diverge, with hun rising to the heavens and po descending into earth. Chinese funerary rituals vary with the age, cause of death, and marital and social status of the deceased, but they respond to the needs of the two souls. The primary aim is to provide comfort for the deceased and demonstrate ancestral veneration. Regional traditions and minority groups determine the precise practices, but in general, the ceremony is carried out over the course of seven days. The deceased is clad in white clothing; red, which symbolises happiness, is rarely worn. Rituals and gestures are often carried out three times in accordance with the number’s positive connotation.

Sky burial, the Tibetan tradition of disposing of the dead by feeding it to vultures.

Tibet

For thousands of years, Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet and Mongolia have believed in the migration of spirits postmortem, the idea that the soul moves on as the body becomes an empty vessel. Because wood is too scarce for cremation and the terrain is too rocky for earthly burials, Tibetans believe the body must be chopped into pieces while Buddhist lamas chant and place it on a mountaintop – exposing it to the elements and to vultures – to return the soul to earth. The dead are placed in the fetal position and wrapped in cloth. The rogyapa, or person who breaks the body, unwraps it, saws away at the skin and strips it of its muscles and tendons, ultimately arranging it in a manner that attracts Himalayan griffon vultures to dine on the broken body. Consumption by the vultures is how the body is considered to be reunited with nature, where it can be of use again.

South Korea

Due to dwindling grave space, in 2000, the South Korean government passed a law requiring that the buried be removed from their graves after 60 years. Cremation has since become the country’s favoured form of funerary rite – breaking thousands of years of tradition. Several Korean companies offer “death beads”: turquoise, pink, or black gems made by compressing the ashes of the deceased. Traditionally, the funeral is similar to its Chinese counterpart, but infused with elements of Korean Confucianism.

Ghana

Funerals in Ghana are held to celebrate the life of the deceased and not merely mourn their departure. The approach differs from many cultures that regard the event as sombre rather than cheerful. This celebration of the dead is so revered that funerals are often the cornerstone of Ghanaian social life. As a result, they are often joyous social events with hundreds of attendees: the more, the merrier, and the more lovable the person must have been in life. Coffins are usually intricately ornamented and vibrantly coloured, adorned with items that represent the deceased’s profession or favourite things. A shoemaker’s coffin, for example, might come in the shape of a shoe.

Ukraine

Ukrainian rituals are heavily rooted in tradition. They organise banquet feasts on the third, ninth and 40th days after death, and again on the six-month and one-year anniversaries of the deceased’s passing. An even number of flowers is placed next to the coffin and expected from each funeral attendee. Water plays an important role because it is believed the soul of the dead drinks the water and uses it to wash away tears. Water is placed alongside a woven towel, with both serving as spiritual offerings. Mourners are required to avoid drinking water in the body’s presence. In accordance with ancient times, sleds are occasionally still used to transport bodies to burial sites in the mountainous Carpathian region of the country.

Open-air cremation in progress.

Colorado, USA

Colorado is home to the Crestone End-of-Life Project – billed as the only legal, public, open-air crematorium in the United States. In the town of Crestone, mourners place juniper boughs, piñon pine and spruce tree logs on the body of the deceased; they encircle the subject of cremation. The materials are chosen for their high flammability, and the mourners watch as fire overwhelms the body. Many are drawn to this funerary ritual, but residency in the small town is a prerequisite to take part.

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Waking the dead a balm to the grieving process

Thanks to the kindness of fantastic friends and neighbours, we gave ‘Nan’ a great send-off

In some rural areas, the practice of watching over the recently deceased from the time of death to burial is still followed.

By Muiris Houston

[A]s this is an Easter column, I thought I would share some recent reflections on death. Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In the New Testament, the event is said to have occurred three days after Jesus was crucified by the Romans and died in approximately 30 AD. Although a holiday of high religious significance in the Christian faith, many traditions associated with Easter date back to pre-Christian, pagan times.

I hosted my first wake recently.

It was for my mother-in-law Marie, a lovely woman with whom I enjoyed 40-plus years of friendship and a shared sense of humour. Almost 94 when she passed away peacefully surrounded by her grandchildren, there was never any doubt that we would wake her in our home, which she shared with us for a decade or so.

The origin of the wake may date back to the ancient Jewish custom of leaving the burial chamber of a recently departed relative unsealed for three days before finally closing it up, supposedly so that family members would visit in the hope of seeing signs of a return to life.

We were introduced to wakes for the first time after moving to the west of Ireland. Until then, our funeral experience had followed the more urban tradition of an evening removal from hospital or funeral home to a church, followed by a formal service the following morning. But in the rural area we live in, the practice of watching over the recently deceased from the time of death to burial is still followed. I have come to appreciate how a wake is an important part of the grieving process.

Thankfully, the more raucous alcohol-fuelled wakes of Irish folklore are no longer with us.

Marie was brought home to us by the Burke family, our local undertakers. She had been embalmed and looked great when the coffin was opened in her living room. Thus began a two-day wake. At no time was she left alone, with family and friends taking it in turn to sit with her throughout the nights – an important part of the waking tradition.

Unbidden, neighbours appeared with chairs, flowers, sandwiches, soup tureens, cooked chickens and salmon. Cyclical pots of tea and coffee emerged from the kitchen. There was no fuss and soon we felt shrouded in a welcome, slow-moving blanket of grief.

At one point I jumped up, concerned about traffic building up on our country road. I needn’t have worried – some neighbours were already directing traffic around our house as those paying their respects came to visit.
No one is invited

No one is invited to a wake.

If you knew the deceased or know any member of the deceased’s family, you should consider attending. The atmosphere is unique. Memories of Marie triggered both crying and laughing as people paid their respects. Groups formed around us and beyond us. Prayers were said. Some people stayed 10 minutes. Others were with us for hours.

There is no formula for a wake.

Things happen spontaneously, but slowly. And this, I think, is key: rather than rushing through your grief you are transported with it at a natural pace. It is hugely comforting as the deceased’s life is remembered and treasured.

Another advantage to having a wake is it allows relatives who live far away time to get home. My son travelled from western Canada; he appreciated being able to spend an entire night sitting with his granny before her burial.

Wakes may not suit every person and every family circumstance. Private, low-key funerals have their place, too. But waking someone close to you – literally staying “awake” to watch over them – seems to set up a soothing of the grief to follow.

Along with fantastic friends and neighbours we gave “Nan” a great send-off.

Thank you everyone.

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Death is changing — can the Catholic Church change with it?

With cremation on the rise, cemetery space dwindling, and cryogenic freezing around the corner, the Vatican is facing some tough decisions.

By Leah Thomas

[T]he Catholic Church preaches the importance of following ritual, especially when it comes to burial practices. It stresses that, if possible, one’s whole body should be buried in a Catholic cemetery after carrying out a traditional Catholic funeral service, which involves the wake, the funeral mass, and the final interment prayer at the gravesite. If it was good enough for Jesus, reasons the Vatican, it’s certainly good enough for everybody else.

But in 2018, choosing cremation over full-body burial is so popular even Catholic priests are planning to skip out on classic casket burials. “I haven’t signed up for it yet, but yes, that’s what I will do,” said Father Allan Deck, a priest and professor of theology at Loyola Marymount in California.

“I think it’s a bit more practical,” he continued, laughing. “It’s easier to move the cremated remains around than it is a coffin, right?”

Cremation is prevalent now more than ever, with over half of Americans opting to be cremated rather than having a standard burial. And this percentage is projected to reach 78.8 by the year 2035, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

Whether the Catholic Church felt pressured by the decreasing number of standard burials or by its own priests choosing the alternative, the Vatican released a statement in 2016 outlining the church’s new, more relaxed stance on cremation and the handling of cremated remains.

The new guidelines clarified that while cremation is acceptable, full-body burial is still preferred in order to (hopefully) emulate the Easter Day resurrection of Jesus Christ. “In memory of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord, burial is above all the most fitting way to express faith and hope in the resurrection of the body,” the document stated.

“More and more of our funeral services are with cremains rather than with coffins,” Father Deck said. “It goes up every year, and the church has tried to respond to it in a constructive way, indicating certain things that should be observed if at all possible, like that cremated remains be put in one place, either in a cemetery or a mausoleum.”

The Vatican’s statement also made it clear that cremated remains, or “cremains,” should not be scattered, divided up, kept in one’s home, or preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry, or other objects. But why is it so necessary for those ashes to be buried?

“The preservation of the ashes of the departed in a sacred place ensures that they will not be forgotten or excluded from prayers,” said Andrew P. Schafer, Executive Director of Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Newark.

“We’ve had situations where homes have been sold and the next buyer finds an urn with human cremated remains in it simply because as the generations passed on, the family forgot about that person,” Schafer recalled. “And so it’s important to remain part of the Christian community and to be buried properly so you will always be remembered, especially in prayer.”

The fear of being “forgotten or excluded from prayers” derives from the church’s belief in the concept of purgatory, which is described as a post-death cleansing process where prayers from loved ones and other Catholics can pass a soul into heaven. If one’s body or ashes aren’t in one place — particularly a Catholic cemetery — they may not be remembered. The person may not receive prayers in their name. And they may never leave the eternal waiting room that is purgatory.

Catholics also stress the importance of burial in completing the church’s funeral traditions — traditions they maintain allow families to heal and grieve properly.

“There’s something psychological about bereavement and loss, and there’s a beauty that we offer with a funeral ritual,” said Peter Nobes, Director of the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

The funeral rituals Nobes is referring to being the three parts of the traditional Catholic funeral service.

“Rituals are important, particularly when there’s a loss in the family. Avoiding things, not wanting to do particular things or not spend money on a particular thing or cut corners here or there, can all be harmful to the family’s grieving process,” Nobes said.

But some attribute the rise in defying Catholic traditions to the high costs of Catholic traditions.

“You’re supposed to get buried in a catholic cemetery, which is also an income generator [for the church],” said Norma Bowe, a Kean University professor who teaches a course called “Death And Perspective.” She added, “I just have to wonder: are they continuing this tradition so that they’re still making money? Because it’s expensive to die.”

She’s not wrong. The average funeral, including embalming and burial, rings up to around $11,000.

The Catholic Church’s mandated burial practices not only present the issue of cost but have also led to a separate issue of cemeteries running out of room.

By the year 2030, the average baby boomer will reach age 85, increasing the death industry by 30 percent, according to the International Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Assocation. Moreover, individuals over 80 years of age are less likely to choose cremation and more likely to opt for a full-body burial, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, further contributing to the space issue that Catholic cemeteries are attempting to alleviate without defying traditions.

Catholic cemeteries are beginning to feature “green burials,” or eco-friendly burial pods that recycle into the earth over time.

Other cemeteries are “doubling-up” — or placing the cremains of an individual inside an already used burial plot.

The rules for doubling, tripling, and quadrupling-up vary by region and diocese. In Nobes’ diocese, for example, up to three cremated remains are allowed to be buried inside one traditional full-body burial plot.

Some Catholic cemeteries are building up, rather than down.

“Many of our Catholic cemeteries have been building mausoleums for years now,” Schafer said. “So we’re kind of using the dead space above the cemetery — no pun intended.”

The Catholic mausoleums resemble that of the illustrious above-ground cemeteries in New Orleans, created as an adaptation to the city’s swampland rather than lack of burial space.

The rise in cremation is somewhat helping to alleviate the space issue, as cremated remains take up a significantly less amount of space than full body burial plots. Cremation “niches” can be as small as 12 inches square, according to Schafer.

Bowe, a Catholic, has faith that the church will eventually allow for more choice when it comes to what one has done with his/her ashes.

“I see the church changing,” she said. “I see them embracing folks they haven’t embraced before. Religion serves the people, so they have to think in terms of what the people want.”

When it comes to other modern death practices (or death avoidance practices) the Catholic Church is taking a stronger stance.

“People think they’re going to be frozen or do things to prevent death,” Father Deck said in regards to cryonics, or the practice of freezing bodies in order to potentially be revived in the future with scientific advancements. “But no one in human history has ever avoided death. Even Jesus died on Easter.”

Father Deck went on to clarify that while the church does believe in combating diseases and other health epidemics with medical research and advancements, it does not believe in preventing natural death.

“Death comes to us all. And as Christians we believe that the hour of death leads to the hour when we begin eternal life with the lord,” Father Deck said.

Regardless of Catholic burial recommendations, Bowe still plans to be cremated and have her ashes scattered.

“We have a cabin in New Hampshire that’s been our family retreat for years. I pick blueberries off an island that’s right in the middle of the lake,” Bowe said. “And that’s where I want to go. I want to be among the blueberry bushes. And I don’t think that makes me less of a Catholic.”

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How the world of death and funerals has become fashionable through digital culture

‘Tearleading’ – the process of publicly sharing condolences after someone famous has died – has become an internet phenomenon. It’s made grief trendy and has digitised the only one true certainty in life: death

Public mourning: Céline Dion pauses at the casket of her late husband René Angélil – his funeral was livestreamed

By Oliver Bennett

[I]t’s one of the more blood-curdling things about Facebook – the social media death notice. You know the score: the recently deceased star of Top of the Pops, sitcom or stage is commemorated by way of a YouTube video and a deluge of weepy RIPs and “part of my life” eulogies, a phenomenon derided as “tearleading”. The high-water mark for this was who “taught us how to live, then taught us how to die” two years ago. 

Of course, entrepreneurs have noticed this spectacle, which writer and psychologist Elaine Kasket brackets as “the data of the dead”. It’s part of a digital-led revolution in dying and death and it’s changing the way we see people pass into the ineffable digital afterlife. “We’re developing an entirely new mentality about death and dying,” she says. 

​Kasket (yes, she knows) is the author of an upcoming book about digital death called All the Ghosts in the Machine, and has observed a huge rise of interest. “I was at a recent SXSW festival and was introduced to someone who put on a super-serious voice and told me: ‘I’m in the death-tech space’.” As a subject, dying has become fashionable, with investors pouring money into startups, bolstering thought leadership and inspirational TED Talks on “new ways to think about death”. 

There are so many new death-tech sites that they break up into different types. There’s the price disruptors like Harbour Funerals, Beyond.life, and Funeral Zone, which offer price comparisons and sometimes, TripAdvisor-type reviews. Derrick Grant set up Willow when a close friend couldn’t afford his funeral expenses and found one-sixth of Britons struggle to pay for a funeral – the average cost of dying is £8,905. He now offers an against-deadline price check to help those who “couldn’t afford to die”: the ultimate poverty. “I found the industry hadn’t changed for 100 years,” says Grant. “People thought you had to pay a lot to do right.” Now it’s becoming more transparent, more open, and partly as a result, says Grant, “funerals have become less funereal”.

Starman: tributes at a Bowie mural in Brixton the day after the announcement of his death

Then there are the planning sites, which include Cake, a US company that has developed an app for end-of-life planning, and the UK’s DeadSocial.org which explains how to prepare your digital estate from the scattered confetti of Instagram, Facebook, Gmail et al. On SafeBeyond, users can create an online cache – including video and audio messages – to be shared posthumously with loved ones which founder and chief executive Moran Zur has called “digital relics” and “emotional life insurance”. My Last Soundtrack will develop your end-of-life Spotify playlist. More than half a million people die every year in the UK, and market analyst IBISWorld says the UK funeral sector is worth £1.7bn. No wonder there’s been significant funding from angel investors in that “death-tech space”.

This stuff enthuses Peter Billingham, a celebrant and “digital death adviser” who founded the website Death Goes Digital. “The world of death and funerals has really been disrupted by digital culture,” he says. “What was stable for hundreds of years has changed enormously in the last five years. We’re more open about death than ever before and technology is helping to reframe what death means.”

Baby boomers, now moving into the death demographic, are leading the way. Milestones include the 2016 livestreaming of funerals, including those of Lemmy Kilmister and Céline Dion’s husband René Angélil; and of course Bowie, who as ever in the avant-garde, favoured a direct cremation, where the body is cremated before the funeral. There’s a growing inventiveness in eco-death options too: recomposition, where the body becomes compost, and aquamation, a kind of a water cremation – even a “mushroom burial suit”. There are death celebrities, notably Caitlin Doughty, a “mortician and activist” who founded “death acceptance” collective The Order of the Good Death, spearheading the “death positive” movement.

But it is the tech spiritualism that is perhaps the most fascinating part of the digital death otherworld. Many readers will recognise the curious and unsettling scenario whereby a dead friend or relative pops up zombie-like on Facebook, perhaps in a prompt to recognise a birthday.

Modern trend: Dave Grohl delivers a speech at Lemmy Kilmister’s televised funeral

This has led to a huge leap in the way we approach the afterlife. In the past, says Elaine Kasket, attitudes to the dead divided into two main global tendencies: cultures of memory, and cultures of care, roughly zoned into west and east: in China, for example, there’s a tradition of believing that one’s ancestors remain active, while here we honour their memory with photographs and grave visits.

“Now, with digital culture the dead are becoming more vocal and socially influential and the West is moving towards a care culture,” adds Kasket. “They are increasingly in the places of the living.” Digital representations of dead persons won’t be confined to cemeteries. They will haunt different spaces: perhaps even become a rights lobby: the “transdimensional”, perhaps. They will be what Kasket calls the “active dead”, and what Billingham calls “present not absent”. Many people have online conversations with the dead on Facebook, which introduced a legacy contact option in 2015, and Billingham says that we’re already seeing the emergence of a new kind of professional: the “posthumous legacy curator”.

There are far reaches of death-tech that encroach upon sci-fi. Eternime, founded by MIT fellow Marius Ursache, is about creating an eternal posthumous avatar: animated by your digital footprint and given life by artificial intelligence, and is building a database of like-minded people who gain the chance for grandchildren to interact with their unmet great-grandparents. Also in the US, Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, a computer scientist and specialist in personality emulation, is engaged in a project to create simulations of the dead people so as to keep our loved ones “alive”. These avatars will start on the screen, move into virtual reality and augmented reality, then potentially become life-size simulations. Ahmad, who was inspired to work in the area when his father died, sees it becoming reality between 2030 to 2050. “It’s not if, it’s when,” he says. And to those who say it sounds like Black Mirror: well, go back and have a look at the “Be Right Back” episode. 

Open-ended: a woman in ‘Black Mirror’ gets an AI version of her husband after he died

Ahmad thinks that cultures like Japan, with its animist traditions and a neophilic acceptance of robots, will be the early adopters. But he doesn’t see why (bar a few surmountable religious barriers) it shouldn’t take hold everywhere as we become used to it. “It means my daughter will have the chance to interact with my father,” he says. “It will deepen our relationships with our dead loved ones and offer a living memorial that can bring ‘emotional enrichment’.” We’ll be less likely to visit graves, perhaps, and more likely to summon Gran like a digital Doris Stokes.

Of course Ahmad has critics. “People bring up the idea that we need ‘closure’,” he says. “But it goes towards solving the ‘if only I’d said this or that’ problem to an extent.” Still, he concedes there are plenty of legal and ethical issues. What if the simulation were sanitised, with difficult opinions edited out? How should their ageing be represented? Does their voice sound right? Ahmad thinks that the development of digital trusts will emerge, and with artificial voice synthesis, the latter will get better. “But these are uncharted territories. It will affect the way we see identity. Adding emotions may be a challenge.” Will Death 2.0 bring on unintended consequences? It’s a dead cert.

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Thinking About Having a ‘Green’ Funeral? Here’s What you need to Know

By SONYA VATOMSKY

[A] typical American funeral usually involves a few hallmarks we’ve come to expect: an expensive coffin, lots of flowers, an embalming for the deceased and a number of other add-ons.

But how necessary are those embellishments? Enter the “green burial.”

The specifics of a green burial vary widely, but typically they require far fewer resources for the care of the body and skip a number of the traditional steps, making them better for the environment. Plus, they can save families on funeral costs.

Interest in these pared-down, eco-friendly options has grown as people look for ways to cut their carbon footprint. Nearly 54 percent of Americans are considering a green burial, and 72 percent of cemeteries are reporting an increased demand, according to a survey released earlier this year by the National Funeral Directors Association.

Death planning may not be at the top of your mind, but if you’re curious about looking into a green burial, here’s what to know.

What exactly is a green burial?

The Green Burial Council’s steps for minimizing negative environmental effects include forgoing embalming, skipping concrete vaults, rethinking burial containers and maintaining and protecting natural habitat. Choices can be made at each step of the death care process to limit waste, reduce the carbon footprint and even nourish the local ecosystem.

Embalming, vaults and coffins can be expensive, with the national median cost of a funeral reaching upward of $8,500, according to the N.F.D.A. Replacing them with other options or scrapping them altogether can save money as well as the environment, since you’re not spending on extraneous items or putting them into the ground.

The extent of how “green” a burial can be is up to the individual; the service can be as simple as wrapping the deceased in a cotton shroud before lowering them into the ground. The services can also become more complicated, involving a memorial ceremony and burial in a conservation park like Washington’s Greenacres, where families can choose to plant a variety of plants, flowers and shrubs on the grave.

These aren’t entirely new ideas — the funeral traditions of many religions, for example, are in line with these steps.

Why would I want one?

Death planning is a deeply personal and often unpleasant topic, so reasons for choosing one type of burial over another are as varied as you can imagine. But for many people who opt for a green burial, it can come down to cost, environmental impact and legacy.

Since burial costs vary not just state to state but cemetery to cemetery, hybrid cemeteries — or those offering both conventional and green burials — offer a balanced look at the financial aspect of death. According to the Green Burial Council, a nonprofit that encourages environmentally sustainable death care, most hybrid cemeteries report that graves intended for green burial cost “the same or somewhat less” than their conventional counterparts; after the costs of vaults, coffins and embalming are factored in, the savings a green burial offers are “significant.”

The reason others choose green burial is right in the name: It’s environmentally friendly. Green burials do away with both the embalming chemicals and the extraneous cement, steel or other non-biodegradable materials conventional burials put into the earth, and lack the carbon footprint of cremation, which has been calculated to be the equivalent of a 500-mile car journey.

Perhaps the most personal reason of all is one where the idea of green burial simply speaks to a person. They might find comfort in their body “returning to nature,” or want to take part in a conservation burial, where burial fees are also used to cover land protection, restoration and management. “Not only does conservation burial help protect land, but the burial area becomes hallowed ground, restored to its natural condition and protected forever with a conservation easement,” explains the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery. “Citizens who support conservation are offered a more meaningful burial option with the certainty that protected land is the ultimate legacy to leave for future generations.”

But isn’t embalming necessary?

Generally speaking, no. Embalming — the preservation of human remains for public display through the use of a chemical mixture that delays decomposition and makes the body “look natural” — is more of a cosmetic procedure than a public health safeguard.

“The easy elimination in traditional funerals is embalming,” said Amber Carvaly, a service director at California’s Undertaking LA, referring to how to lessen a funeral’s environmental impact.

“It’s almost exhausting at this point to argue with people in the industry on whether it is good or bad,” she said. “You took a body that would have decomposed naturally, you put chemicals in it and a huge part that is left out is that most of the chemicals don’t stay in the body: They are flushed down the drain when they are let back out of the body’s arterial system.”

Still, popular culture tends to reinforce the idea that embalming is a necessary step: Just about 48 percent of people are aware that embalming isn’t needed for a cremation service, according to the N.F.D.A.’s consumer survey.

Jeff Jorgenson, who owns Elemental Cremation and Burial in Washington, said forgoing embalming is a crucial part of green burials.

Instead, he suggested asking for dry ice or Techni-ice, a refrigeration unit, or a nontoxic embalming agent. You can also keep (or bring) the body home and cool it with fans, cooling blankets or open windows.

“Traditional funeral directors will frequently talk about how mom or dad won’t look very good” if the bodies aren’t embalmed, Mr. Jorgenson said. Instead, he has found that families are thankful that his company doesn’t perform embalming “because it feels like there is more room for closure.”

Cremation or burial?

Here is what Americans put in the ground each year through traditional burials: 20 million feet of wood, 4.3 million gallons of embalming fluids, 1.6 million tons of reinforced concrete, 17,000 tons of copper and bronze, and 64,500 tons of steel, according to the Green Burial Council.

Green burials eliminate much of this waste by leaving out almost all of those materials; most bodies are simply wrapped in shrouds made from a biodegradable material like cotton and placed in the ground. And although cremations often have the reputation as being an eco-friendly option, they tend to have an outsize carbon footprint.

(A third option, called alkaline hydrolysis or aquamation, in which water pressure accelerates the decomposition of soft tissues, uses less energy than cremation but is only legal in 14 states.)

Each option has its pros and cons, and it’s important to consider your situation. If you’re attentive to your carbon footprint, cremation in your hometown might still be a better choice than using a green cemetery hours away, and certain funeral homes have ways to offset the environmental hit, like working with organizations on strategic reforestation processes, Mr. Jorgenson said.

Should you go with cremation, there is one final factor to consider: What to do with the remains.

“Even scattering small amounts can be hazardous in a delicate environment such as an alpine environment or vernal pool,” said Michelle Acciavatti of Ending Well, a service that guides families all over the country through their end-of-life options.

Instead of scattering, try Let Your Love Grow, a product that turns ashes into plantable soil for a memorial flower or tree. Another option is Eternal Reefs, which hold cremated remains in an underwater cement ball and create new marine habitats for fish and other sea life.

A ‘green’ burial by any other name

While cremation is a straightforward option, a green burial encapsulates a wider range of decisions, from how to where. If there aren’t green cemeteries where you live, there are still plenty of ways to minimize the burial process’s environmental impact.

Substitute concrete vaults and toxic burial containers for coffins made with sustainably harvested wood and organic liners, and check if products or components were transported over long distances, which can increase the carbon footprint.

You also shouldn’t feel limited by what a funeral home is selling you — by federal law, they’re required to accept a coffin provided by the customer at no extra charge. Or skip the coffin altogether. A shroud made from organic, biodegradable cotton can be purchased through your funeral home or online, or even at the local fabric store.

A growing movement

When it comes to green burials, funeral professionals say the biggest challenge is a lack of awareness and resources.

“Thinking about the impact of disposition on the environment is a new idea,” Ms. Acciavatti said. “And, I would say the other big issue is access: Even though there are over 150 green cemeteries in the U.S. and Canada, there still aren’t enough.”

Ms. Acciavatti and many others in the industry believe that educating the public as well as continuing to invest in green practices helps not just the environment, but humans, too.

“It’s always really rewarding when someone says, ‘I’d really like to return to the earth.’” she said. “And I get to say, ‘I can help you do that.’”

Interested? Start here

The Green Burial Council’s website has information, a list of providers and additional resources for people interested in green burial.

The Order of the Good Death, a collective of funeral professionals, academics and artists, has an informative page about green burials.

Looking for a green burial for you and your pet? Visit the Green Pet-Burial Society.

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An Alternative to Burial and Cremation Gains Popularity

An alkaline hydrolysis unit at a funeral home in Windom, Minn. This week, California became the 15th state to outline commercial regulations for the disposal of human remains using the method.

By JONAH ENGEL BROMWICH

[W]hat do you want done with your body after you die?

It is an unnerving but important question, and for most Americans there have long been only two obvious choices: burial or cremation.

But a third option, a liquefaction process called by a variety of names — flameless cremation, green cremation or the “Fire to Water” method — is starting to gain popularity throughout the United States.

This week, California became the 15th state to outline commercial regulations for the disposal of human remains through the method, chemically known as alkaline hydrolysis.

It may seem markedly different from the traditional means of digging graves or burning the dead. A machine uses a chemical bath to dissolve protein, blood and fat, leaving only a coffee-colored liquid, powdery bone and any metal implants, like dental fillings.

Alkaline hydrolysis has been used to dispose of human cadavers and dead pets since the process was modernized in the 1990s. About 10 years ago, the machines became available for ordinary funerals, and now families are requesting it more frequently. Some are motivated by environmentalism or cost, as cemeteries fill up. Others find the process more comforting than cremation, which recently edged past burial in the United States, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

The California bill was sponsored by Assemblyman Todd Gloria, who represents much of San Diego, after he was contacted by executives from Qico Inc., the company that advertises the process with the trademark “Fire to Water.”

Assemblyman Gloria said that he supported the bill partly to advocate for a constituent but also because he thought that people should have more choices.

“It was definitely new to me,” he said. “I think like most people I don’t talk a lot about death. I don’t think about it a great deal; I probably shy away from it. But when the concept was brought to me, of course I needed to understand it better.” He added, “It’s pretty fascinating stuff.”

Alkaline hydrolysis was patented in the United States in 1888 “for the treatment of bones and animal waste” and modernized by Dr. Gordon I. Kaye and Dr. Peter B. Weber, two professors at Albany Medical College about a century later.

t works like this: An alkali, or salt derived from an alkali metal or an alkaline earth metal (usually sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide or a combination of the two), is combined with water in a specially made machine.

About 65 percent of the human body is already water, while another 20 percent or so is protein, including blood, muscle and collagen, which is found in tissue and bone. The alkali breaks down the body’s proteins and fats. The machine produces sterile brown effluent made up of minerals, salts, amino acids, soap and water, as well as weakened bones that can be crushed into an ash, and any metal in the body.

Bio-Response Solutions is one of the few working manufacturers of such machines in the United States. Joe Wilson, its chief executive, said the field is so new, people do not yet agree on what to call the machines. He sells two models: the High-Temperature 28 and Low-Temperature 28. The first sells for $220,000 and can dissolve a body in as little as three hours; the second costs $150,000 and takes up to 16 hours. Some competitors sell far costlier models. (The number refers to the diameter of the cylinder, 28 inches.)

An alkaline hydrolysis unit at Bio-Response Solutions in Danville, Ind. The company is one of the few working manufacturers of such machines in the United States.

One of his competitors sells a $500,000 model. “It’s a very high-end unit, like a Rolls-Royce,” he said. “And Rolls-Royces are nice but you don’t see many of them around. I watched it for a couple years and finally decided to do a Chevrolet.”

Flameless cremation seems to have caught on among younger funeral directors.

Ryan Cattoni, 28, who graduated from mortuary school in 2010, said that he learned about the method from a trade magazine and thought it was probably “the wave of the future.”

He opened AquaGreen Dispositions in South Holland, Ill., in September 2012, about a year after the state legalized the process. He offers a flameless cremation package covering the paperwork, an urn (filled with powder from the bone) and transport for $1,795. He said that he performs hundreds of them a year. A simple nonceremonial cremation in Chicago can cost as much as $3,000.

The environmental benefits of alkaline hydrolysis are significant. Its carbon footprint is about a tenth of that caused by burning bodies. Mr. Wilson said liquefaction uses a fraction of the energy of a standard cremator and releases no fumes.

Funeral directors thought the machines would be popular for their environmental benefits, but they were surprised to discover other motives.

“When it’s a family that has just lost Mom or Dad, they’re in a more emotional state and they look at it and say it seems more gentle,” said Jason Bradshaw, the president and chief executive of a funeral and cremation service with six locations in the Twin Cities.

One of his customers was Judy Kastelle, 68, a resident of Hudson, Wis., who has found herself averse to burial. Both her grandparents were buried, she said in an interview, and she thought it seemed wrong to put their bodies in coffins encased in concrete.

When her mother, Marcella Okerman, died at 95 earlier this month, Ms. Kastelle had already arranged for flameless cremation.

“I just liked the gentleness, of her kind of being dissolved away,” Ms. Kastelle said. “I didn’t think a lot about that. I knew cremation was the thing, and it just seemed like an option that felt kinder, to me.”

Not everyone feels this way. Some critics recoil, in part because the effluent is released into local sewage systems.

“They say ‘soylent green’ or ‘throw mama down the drain’ or all that stuff,” Mr. Wilson said.

But experts note that the fluid is sterile and contains nutrients, so much so that it can be and is used as a fertilizer. Rick Vonderwell, who manages Tails Remembered, a pet crematory in Delphos, Ohio, uses the effluent at his farm, as do several large universities.

In some places where flameless cremation is available, it has quickly overtaken the alternative. Mr. Bradshaw, who has been offering both services for five years, says that more than two-thirds of families seeking cremation choose the new method when it is offered.

“Burial is dead,” Mr. Wilson said. “It’s going to go away. It’s not sustainable. Too many people and not enough land.”

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A Matter of Life and Death

Kevin Toolis as child in County Mayo, Ireland.

By ANN NEUMANN

MY FATHER’S WAKE
How the Irish Teach Us How to Live, Love and Die
By Kevin Toolis
275 pp. Da Capo. $26.

[I]n his 2015 book “The Work of the Dead,” Thomas W. Laqueur takes up an ancient question: Why do we care for the bodies of the dead when we know that after our loved ones have left them they are empty shells? He begins his query with Diogenes, the eccentric fourth century B.C. philosopher who requested that his dead body be thrown over the city walls to be devoured by beasts. The corpse may be waste, “meat gone mad,” James Joyce wrote in “Ulysses,” but since our beginnings we have endowed corpses with cultural and symbolic significance. “Whatever our religious beliefs, or lack of belief, we share the very deep human desire to live with our ancestors and with their bodies. We mobilize their power,” Laqueur wrote.

The author, center, holding donkey.

The journalist Kevin Toolis does not doubt that corpses have particular superpowers. In his new book, “My Father’s Wake,” the bodies of our dead are life lessons, moral instructors of how to have satisfying lives and peaceful deaths. The tradition of the Irish wake, with rituals that predate Christianity, is our legend, “the best guide to life you could ever have,” he writes.

“My Father’s Wake” is at heart a memoir, chronicling a childhood spent between Edinburgh and remote Achill Island off the western coast of Ireland’s County Mayo, where his parents were born. When Toolis is 19, his brother Bernard dies of leukemia. He is his brother’s keeper, a bone marrow donor, but the transplant fails. The trauma sends Toolis as a young reporter out into the world, from Somalia to Afghanistan, in search of death, disease, famine and war. “I was grieving,” Toolis writes. “Not for my dead brother but for the young man who died with him and lost his mortal innocence. Me.”

The contrast between young Bernard’s death (in the city, in the care of what Toolis calls the “Western Death Machine”) and his father Sonny’s death (at home in old age on Achill) sets up Toolis’s castigation of modern medicine and death rites. But it is Toolis’s fine skill at showing the means and aftermath of death rather than his prescription for how to improve dying that most animates “My Father’s Wake.”

“Under the greenish light of a fluorescent tube, Eliza’s hands writhed involuntarily at her wrist as if seeking to escape their dying host,” he writes of a 20-year-old Malawian girl who dies in the middle of the night of AIDS. In the local dialect, Toolis tells us, the disease is known as matantanda athu omwewa, “this thing we all have in common.” Toolis’s writing is so visceral and profound when he is near dying bodies that the lessons of such experiences become evident — so evident, indeed, that the unfortunate framing of “My Father’s Wake” as a how-to for urban Westerners feels a bit clumsy and redundant.

Early in the book, Toolis implores us to face our mortality by calculating the date of our death, “the end point for you.” In the book’s final chapter, “How to Love, Live and Die,” he offers this advice: “If you can find yourself a decent Irish wake to go to, just turn up and copy what everyone else is doing,” and “take your kids along too if you can.”

These bookends undermine Toolis’s manifest intellectual curiosity about contemporary medical and funerary practices. Studies indeed show that when dying patients plan for and accept their impending death, their family members more ably manage grief, but Toolis never sheds light on why that is. Nor does he identify where or how the funeral industry — “the dismal trade,” as Jessica Mitford called it in 1963 — has gone wrong. Grievers in funeral homes touch their corpses too.

I can’t help wishing that Toolis had kept the beautiful memoir of his life-and-death experiences and thrown the self-help curriculum over the city walls to be devoured by beasts. There really is no greater truth than a corpse.

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