On ending up as litter when you're dead

I've previously written about how scattering ashes (otherwise known as "cremains") qualifies as litter. It's tricky, because bereaved people get understandably upset if thwarted when trying to mark a loss with soggy teddy bears, plastic flowers, wind-chimes and so on. They're likely to get even more upset if you try to tell them that scattering Mum's ashes on a favourite walk isn't such a good idea. To some people, bereavement seems to mean a licence to do as you please, no matter what the consequences.

Another form of litter spread by bereaved people is the floating kind - balloons and sky lanterns. Both of these are a menace. Balloons can end up anywhere and many fall into rivers or the sea, where they're ingested by birds and mammals, killing them. Sky lanterns can cause fires (and have done) and the frameworks can kill livestock if accidentally eaten. Some farmers report the loss of very valuable animals.

I was reminded of all of this today while watching Griff Rhys Jones on TV, talking about a volunteer who spends a lot of his time on the top of Snowden, clearing up litter. People leave plastic bottles, fag ends, chewing gum, and all sorts of rubbish up there. They also leave human ashes, oblivious to the damage they cause. Ashes affect the ecology of the mountain. As Jones pointed out, they're not the same as the rocks; they're more fertile. Meanwhile, the mountain rangers report that, some days, they go up there and it looks like a dusting of frost, there are so many ashes lying about. The plastic flowers that are sometimes left with them are totally inappropriate. As Griff says, "Snowdon is not a public memorial in the sky."

If you were thinking of suggesting to your nearest and dearest that you'd like your ashes scattered where you used to enjoy all those lovely family picnics, think again. They can bury them under a tree (one that they've bought to plant for the purpose, and with permission) or keep them in a jar. Anything, in fact, except litter with them.

The Shrewsbury babies' missing ashes

A pencil drawing of stillborn twins

Shropshire Co-operative Funeralcare and Emstrey Crematorium don't seem to have sorted out their customer care. There are some very upset bereaved parents demanding to know why they weren't given their babies' ashes after cremation.

The review into Emstrey Crematorium in Shrewsbury began after the BBC found the ashes of only one baby out of 30 had been given to families since 2004.

When someone is cremated, what remains (usually called cremains) isn't ashes but pulverised bone. Everything else is vaporised in the intense heat of the furnace. The bones are raked out and put into a machine that grinds them up after any spare parts, such as metal screws and plates, are sorted out. The cremains can then be scattered or buried, or (in some cases) kept on your mantelpiece.

Small babies, whose bones haven't fully developed, don't leave anything to be pulverised after cremation. If there is anything left, it's dust. It's not an easy thing to explain to parents mourning the loss of a baby, even if most people weren't so squeamish, so maybe it's not always done well, if at all.

Sadly, the distress that a bereaved parent will naturally feel can become focussed on the lack of a grave or any tangible evidence that their baby existed. One mother is quoted as saying,

"It's just I have got nothing. I need to go where he is because my life isn't complete until I know where he is."

When I miscarried at 18 weeks, a long time ago, I briefly fretted that my baby's tiny body had been pickled in a jar. I was told that wasn't true, and that he'd been "respectfully" disposed of. What almost certainly happened was that the body had gone into the hospital incinerator. A funeral director I know told me that they are sometimes contacted by bereaved parents decades after they lost their baby, asking where he or she is buried. It's only fairly recently that babies have been given individual graves, so it's not possible to tell them.

The Shrewsbury parents seem to have good reason to complain that they weren't properly informed, but what they need now isn't a box of ashes, which is impossible, but help to come to terms with what's happened.

The drawing (above) was my gift to the young parents of stillborn twins. It was copied from a photograph that was unsuitable for framing. I hope that the Shrewsbury parents have photographs, if nothing else.

Click here to read what SANDS (Stillbirth & neonatal death charity) says about cremation.

Update: 5/6/2015

The story rumbles on in today's Guardian. Parents accuse the crematorium staff of not telling the truth. It sounds more like a breakdown in communication and old cremators.

... by 2009 ... furnaces at Emstrey were decrepit. “The computer control system was archaic,” Jenkins said. “The system ran on obsolete floppy discs and staff had to recycle old computers to keep the system running.”

The report noted the cremators had no infant setting and staff did not realise they could override presets. Lower temperatures would have made it more likely that some infant remains could have been recovered. But Jenkins said environmental regulations may have banned that and other practises, such as cremating young children, at the start or end of the day.

What's meant by "some infant remains"? Burnt tissue? Is that really what you'd want to keep? I wonder if the parents have really considered what this means. Burning a cremator at a lower temperature has been described as "gentle" cremation, a euphemism meant to make the process sound pleasant.

In my experience, funeral directors and crematorium staff aren't unaffected by a baby's funeral. They are keenly aware of the parents' feelings, especially as most will have children themselves.

It seems to me that the buck stops with the funeral directors' funeral arrangers, who are responsible for making all the arrangements. They should know what is or isn't possible, and advise the families accordingly.

The moral is, if you want remains after the disposal of a small infant, don't cremate them, bury them.

Shropshire Council commissioned a report into what had happened. Click here to read it.

A similar babies' ashes story has been told in Scotland - click here to read about it.

More on the theme of "What creative uses can you think of for your cremains?"

Apparently, an artist has used a 3D printer to turn human ashes into objects. Fascinating. Only, what's a 3D printer? Mine is 3-dimensional. If I had a 2-dimensional one, it'd take up far less space in my already cluttered office. Or is it just that it makes things 3D? How? Magic? Must be.

Anyhow. If I was to be turned into a 3D object for my loved ones to keep on the mantelpiece, instead of a boring old urn, what should it be? Tray with a mug of tea and a slice of toast, plus crumbs? Jar of marmalade, plus spoon? Are you sensing a theme here?

Ashes, rockets and paperweights

When you pop your clogs, you can have your ashes sent heavenwards in a fireworks display. The company says it will be "Celebrating life through the spectacular and tasteful dispersal of cremation ashes by firework." They wisely don't guarantee where the ashes will land, so they possibly take the precaution of not firing any rockets near a motorway or sewage farm, particularly if there's a strong wind. They say "Each firework is labeled [sic] with your loved-ones [sic] name and a named Certificate of Authenticity is provided." Judging from the website, they might not spell the name right, but what does it matter if it's labelled anyway? It'll burn. You can have a "Manned Professionally Fired Tribute Firework Show" from £1,750.00 inc. VAT.

If you don't fancy a firework display, what about being turned into a paperweight? Might as well make yourself useful when you're dead.

Tom Sutcliffe wrote about this sort of thing in The Independent, and how his dog almost peed on a pile of ashes - not quite the dignified ending the family might have wanted. At least a paperweight might not get peed on, unless you carelessly leave it in the loo.

A few years ago, a retired RAF officer told me how a former colleague had requested that his ashes should be scattered from a light aircraft. It proved to be difficult to fulfil his request, as the ashes blew back into the cockpit as fast as they were thrown out. Some were swept up with a dustpan and brush after landing; he didn't say what they did with them.

A lot of people choose to have their ashes scattered in places that had special significance for them - on the top of hills, on football pitches, and so on. So many people are doing it these days that it's become a pollution problem and the government had to bring in new anti-pollution rules. Surely the ashes firework displays might be in breach of these rules, as they can't control where the ashes will land?

Carelessly throwing ashes around is as anti-social as littering, it seems to me, and not nearly as "tasteful" and romantic as many people might imagine.

Update, September 2018

I've been given a small container with some relative's cremains. The rest have been distributed among other family members and in places my relative enjoyed visiting. I didn't ask for them and didn't want them. I think the idea was that they should go in my garden somewhere. When I'm dead no one in the family will have access, since I'm a tenant, so that'll be that. Meanwhile, they sit on a bookshelf. To prove how illogical I am, a box of my last dog's cremains are nearby, to be inherited by my next of kin. Can you imagine them being passed along after my demise? Well, they won't be my problem, will they?

Oh, and I've just learned that it's now possible to have ashes sent into space.

Cremains

In 1874, Sir Henry Thompson, Bart., FRCS, Surgeon to Queen Victoria, founded the Cremation Society of Great Britain, having written, "it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied". Municipal cemeteries were filling fast, and cremation was introduced to deal with the problem of disposal. It wasn't popular with the church to begin with, maybe because it associated the fire of the furnace with the fires of hell, but as the practice gained popularity with the general public, the clergy changed its tune.

I believe that we British cremated more of our dead than any other nation apart from the Japanese, who don't have a lot of space for internments. This is probably still true. I think most people prefer cremation to burial because it's all done behind closed doors and they don't have to deal with the messy aspects of disposal, like mud and earth. But as the population's increased, funerals have become more elaborate, and a majority of families choose to remove cremains (which are bone fragments, ground up) from crematoria, instead of leaving them to be buried or scattered in the "gardens of rest", the country's being liberally dusted with bone meal. It might do some plants good (though blood and bone meal used to attract our dogs' attention), but it's not the sort of stuff you want to scatter everywhere, willy-nilly.

When a close relative died the other year, her ashes were divided up between several people and places. I'm not sure how many portions there were, but one lot was scattered in Cornwall, another in Norfolk, and there's a little pot sitting on a shelf at home because I haven't done anything with it. It was suggested that because she enjoyed sitting in my garden, I could scatter my portion there. I don't know how the ashes were divided; whether they were weighed in equal portions or if it was a guestimate. It's irrational, I know, but I don't like the idea of dividing people up like this. It doesn't matter to her, of course, but why spread her about like that? I didn't ask for a share but hadn't the heart to refuse. Once upon a time, people dreaded being cut up or otherwise divided, for fear of being denied access to heaven without all their parts. That's not how I feel, but it still seems unnecessarily fussy to mess about with people's ashes.

Like most people, I never used to give the matter much thought. It's become popular to scatter ashes, whether all at once or in portions, in places associated with the dead person. I suppose it's quite romantic, to imagine that he or she will become a part of a place that he or she liked, or where something special happened. But it's irrational, as most of our reactions to death are, and so many people are doing it that it's causing a pollution problem, and is being restricted. I can imagine some bereaved people, determined to ignore restrictions, shuffling around beauty spots with ashes dribbling from the bottom of their trousers, like the men in The Great Escape who had to get rid of the earth from their tunnels without the guards seeing them.

A retired RAF officer I know told me about an airman who requested that his ashes be scattered from the cockpit of a plane. Apparently they blew straight in again and had to swept up with a dustpan and brush when the plane landed.

The lover of a woman who died years ago had to keep his loss a secret, as he was a married Catholic and his family knew nothing about the affair. For almost a year after the woman died, he used to write to me about her, as he had no one else he could talk to. He showed me photos of a secluded place in the Suffolk countryside where they used to meet, and where he scattered her ashes, so he could "feel close to her". After a year, he wrote that he thought he could manage, and I never heard from him again. I wonder how often he visited the spot where he'd left her, and whether it stayed as he remembered it, or if it had been sold to a developer and was covered with semi-detached houses - or, worse still, industrial units.

As an increasing proportion of the population becomes obese, cremators that can cope with big bodies are in demand. Fat people from our area have had to be taken miles away for cremation because none of the local cremators are big enough. Then there's the problem of mercury pollution, from tooth fillings. A new building to house equipment that will deal with such pollutants is being planned for our local crematorium where it will take up a hefty proportion of the car park, which is already too small.

One way or another, the disposal of cremated remains is becoming a problem as serious as the one that cremation was designed to solve. It'll be a long time before it's sorted, mainly because there's a general aversion to discussing anything to do with death. Try applying for planning permission for a green burial site, and you'll see what I mean.

If they'll have it, my body's going to the anatomists, who'll bury what's left when they've finished with me. As for my relative's ashes; I'm going to fork her into the flower border in the spring, safe in the knowledge that, since the dog died last summer, she's less likely to be dug up again. As for the dog; her ashes are in a little box, next to her photo and her collar. You see, I said we're irrational about death.