Do You Want to be Buried, Cremated - or Pulverised?

It was bad enough when we only had to choose between burial and cremation, but now we have pulverization? A Swedish company has patented a new type of disposal; freeze dry the body, dip it lightly in nitrogen, pound it flat and then bury it.

Like most people in the western world, I've always assumed that when I died I would be fitted into a wooden coffin before I became too smelly, and buried 6 feet under in a cemetery. And as the name cemetery, (from the Latin sleeping place) implies, I would rest in peace until doomsday. That should be enough time for the microbes to finish munching on my soft tissue before my bodily fluids leached into the ground and contaminated the water table. And my skeleton would be found by archaeologists in a few thousand years, unless I was buried in Sweden, where I would be bulldozed aside in 25 years to make way for another high-rise.

The idea of leaving this world via a Tibetan type of funeral has never crossed my mind. Tibetans opt for their loved ones to be left in the open and ripped apart by vultures. If any part of the body is too heavy or awkward for the vultures to fly off with, mourners chop the corpse up into smaller pieces with axes to make it easier for the vultures. You know, the more I think of it, when my mother-in-law pops her clogs, I might arrange for her to be buried in Tibet; I may even volunteer to be an axe man. Bizarrely enough, tickets are sold in Tibet for these occasions.

Another thing I have never considered is the Hindu ceremony of being burned in a public pyre and having my ashes thrown into the sacred Ganges River, to float down to the Bay of Bengal. The same applies to being cremated and having my carbon ashes turned into a diamond, although when the subject comes up I do notice my wife has a gleam in her eyes as she fiddles with her engagement ring.

I have considered normal cremation, if you can call it that. Over the years I have buried a lot of people and cremated some, and I still haven't quite made up my mind. Burial would still give me a plot of land which would be mine alone, unless I was sharing it with a family member. And the headstone would give me an address, if you like, so that anybody who wanted to could come and visit. Of course I could ask for the headstone to be replaced by a tree and make it a green burial.

If I was cremated it would free up a lot of land but would still pollute the atmosphere to some degree. My urn could then be buried in a tiny piece of land, or as happens in some parts of China, I could be placed underground and have a tree grown from me, yet again - what on earth is going to happen to all these trees; will someone eventually cut them down and make toilet paper from them.

As for this new idea, I'm not too sure. Even thinking about being pulverized into a powder gives me the shudders. It would be like all the ants I've ever stood on getting their revenge. And would the mourners have to wear protective clothing at the flattening ceremony? Another thing that makes me hesitate about being ground up is that I would be buried only inches underground. I don't mind being composted, but can the inventors of this method guarantee that I won't be squirrel junk food? And have the company considered how many archaeologists will be put out of business in future generations? Humanity's history will disappear.

Still, I suppose the idea will catch on as it's Swedish, and soon we will probably have do-it-yourself flattening kits at Ikea.

http://www.adamstein.org/archive/individual/2003/05/25/sky_burial.html
http://www.forestofmemories.org/
ottawacitizen