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Back in high our high school days, my best friend and I were inspired by the Joe Diffie classic Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox to come up with our own outrageous funeral plans. His plan was pretty complicated, involving Guns N’ Roses, some marionette strings, and a lighter. Mine was pretty simple: forego the embalming and just dump me into shark infested waters. At first, it was just a joke intended to elicit shock. But, the more I thought about it, the more the idea grew on me. How cool would it be for the atoms that make up ”me” to go on as a shark? Also, my funeral would basically be a Caribbean cruise for my friends and family! They didn’t like the idea, though; so, I had to find a more genteel way to get the same basic effect.
The Problems With Traditional Burial
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Embalming
It is common knowledge among many in the US that it is illegal to be buried without first being embalmed. This is one of those times when common knowledge is wrong. No US state requires the routine embalming of every body, although many states require that the body be either embalmed or refrigerated if burial or cremation isn’t performed within a certain time frame. Furthermore, some states do require embalming if the deceased carried certain diseases.What Is Embalming?
While different methods of preservation have been used throughout history, this article will refer to the modern method of embalming used in the US. The basic procedure begins with the posing of the body. Stiffness due to rigor mortis may be massaged out, or tendons may be cut in order to get a presentable pose. Various creams and lotions may be used to keep the skin soft and pliable; and gause, glue, mouthpieces, and wire sutures will be used to mold the face into the right expression. Next, an artery and a vein are opened up. Blood is drained from the body from the vein as embalming fluid is pumped in through the artery. Organs are pierced and relieved of gases that may have built up, and the torso is filled with more embalming fluid. Finally, all incisions are sewn up, and the body is cleaned and makeup is applied.Why Do We Embalm?
Many people assume that embalming is performed as a sterilization procedure to ensure public health and safety. The truth is that claims like this have never been substatiated. In fact, they have been widely discredited. The only real reason for one to be embalmed is to prolong the preservation of the body when interment can not happen quickly. In fact, the practice didn’t become commonplace until after the Civil War. Before then, families handled the final arrangements for their own deceased relatives. The body was kept in a cool room long enough for friends and family to pay their last respects; sometimes up to an entire week. Before decomposition progressed too far, it would be placed in a simple pine box and buried. During the war, families found it difficult to get their loved ones’ bodies back home for a family burial before they putrefied. Some of them began turning to the then little used practice of embalming. Intrepid entrepreneurs would follow soldiers around from battle to battle offering embalming services to families who could afford them. And that is probably the real reason why embalming is so common. It is big money for the funeral services who offer it. In fact, many of them refuse to allow open casket funerals to families who don’t pay the extra $500 to $1000 to have their loved one embalmed.How Embalming Harms The Environment
Embalming works by either killing the microorganisms that would live on a corpse or by denaturing the proteins in the body so that those microorganisms can’t digest them. These are some harsh substances! During the Civil War era, the embalming process involved arsenic and mercury based chemicals, and those chemicals are now finding their way into the environment. Today’s embalming fluids are mostly formaldehyde based. Formaldehyde is an extremely dangerous and volatile chemical that can cause major problems if it is ingested, inhaled, or comes into contact with the skin. Known reactions include all kinds of respiratory discomfort, burning eyes, skin rashes, and it is a known carcinogen. Oh, I forgot to include DEATH. Ingesting just 1 ounce of a formalin solution consisting of 37% formaldehyde would be enough to kill an adult.Here in the US, we bury about 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde along with our dead every single year. That is more than enough to fill an olympic sized swimming pool! And that stuff doesn’t just stay put; it leaches out into the soil.
Wasted Resources
In addition to all of that formaldehyde, Americans put 30 million board feet of hardwood, over 100,000 tons of steel, almost 3000 tons of precious metals, and over 1.5 million tons of reinforced concrete into the ground, annually. The wood alone could build something like 4.5 million houses, or we could have left it alone and still had 4 million acres of pristine forest. Furthermore, those are not materials that degrade quickly. Today’s cemeteries are becoming more akin to landfills than peaceful resting places.What About Cremation?
Cremation isn’t much better on the environment, releasing pollutants and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Interestingly, the process releases mercury, presumably from dental fillings. I always imagined that the ashes were probably helpful to the environment and could be utilized as nutrients to plants and microorganisms, but they are actually very acidic and have a very high sodium content, so they’re not very useful to the soil, either.What’s The Alternative
As a Christian, I believe that this body is just a shell, so to speak. Once my physical body is dead, I don’t think I’m going to be in it, anymore. I guess that’s why I was always able to say “let the sharks eat me!” It won’t make an ounce of difference, to me. However, I do understand the importance of giving my friends and family the proper opportunity to mourn. For that reason, I have abandoned my burial-at-sea idea. Instead, my plan is to opt for a green burial.
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Being A SteemStem Member
I would like my body to be offered to votours, to be burried in a forest would also be nice, unfortunatly in France is is not allowed to be burried outside cimeteries, even if are burn to ashes.
Not a great topic of conversation I suppose, but one that we must all come to grips with one way or the other. It turns out that this subject is on my mind of late, as I must euthanize my pet dog of ten years because of it's many health problems. It is something that I do not want to do, though I must. What to do next, is the question? Thanks for the discussion...
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Amazing! <3
The day I die, I would like to become the necessary nutrients for a tree to grow!!
Awesome artical
Kept up