John Hunter's legacy

My '60s art college course included anatomy. Our lecturer was a retired surgeon who wore a green operating gown, for no apparent reason. He drew the body parts with a felt-tipped pen on the naked flesh of life models. One new male model arrived in a pair of shorts, the sort worn by boxers, with an elasticated waistband and shiny fabric. It hid a substantial part of his body from above the waist to mid-thigh. When our lecturer wanted to talk about the gluteus maximus he hooked a finger around the model's waistband and hoicked it down, around his buttocks. The poor man blushed from the neck up. After the lecture was over, we never saw him again.

I enjoyed those lectures. Our lecturer brought pickled body parts in jars to show us. I remember a slice of a human brain. When we were invited to go on a trip to the Hunter collection at the Royal College of Surgeons, I leapt at the chance. I'd already done some pickling myself, preserving stuff with formaldehyde, which stank. My poor flatmate didn't complain.

One of these days I'd like to go and visit the collection again, now displayed in the refurbished Hunterian Museum. Meanwhile, I found a short film called 'Narrative Remains' by Karen Ingham, that used to be on the Wellcome Collection website, described as follows:

'Narrative Remains' is a collaboration between artist and writer Karen Ingham and the Hunterian Museum. This film accompanied a site-specific installation at the Hunterian, which contains a large number of 'wet specimens', preserved elements of human anatomy,  collected by the anatomist John Hunter.

Ingham's work brings the dead back to life through their displayed organs, giving the patients a voice and a narrative that connects to the preserved specimen. One such is the throat of Marianne Harland, a musically talented young woman who lost first her famed voice, and then her life, to tuberculosis.

I used to have a copy of a paperback book by Garet Rogers called 'Brother Surgeons', about John Hunter and his brother William, who revolutionised surgery in the 18th century. I wish I knew what's happened to the book, which is now out of print. Copies fetch between £50 and £70. I remember reading about the 18th century "treatment" for syphilis, which was mercury; a highly toxic substance. They used to say, "After Venus comes Mercury".

18th century surgeons obtained cadavers from the so-called "resurrectionists" or body-snatchers. It wasn't until 1832 that the Anatomy Act outlawed the practice. Nowadays the medical schools obtain cadavers through bequests, such as the one I've planned. Click here to find out how.

Portrait of John Hunter (13 Feb 1728 - 16 Oct 1793) by John Jackson.

Grief and mourning rituals are two different things

A Telegraph sub-editor has headed an article about grieving by Clover Stroud, "Have the British Forgotten how to grieve?" I've commented:

Generalised statements, like "Have the British forgotten how to grieve?", are meaningless. There is no collectively British way to grieve, and never was, though there have been socially acceptable rituals surrounding death for millennia. The two shouldn't be confused. Clover seems to be going through a list of options, in search of some sort of structured grieving process. There isn't one, though some people may find comfort in sharing rituals because they don't need to think about them; you just follow a prescribed formula, which is an easy option when you're emotionally fragile.

As someone who's been bereaved several times, in different ways, and as a humanist celebrant for over 20 years, my experience has been that grief is personal and everyone grieves according to their own personality and the relationship that they had with the person (or pet) who died. A mother who'd lost her baby once asked me, "How long will I feel like this?", as though there should be a time limit to it, or desperately hoping that the pain would end soon. Some self-styled grief counsellors used to tell clients that there are stages to grieving, to be followed in order. This is nonsense. Months, years after a loss, something may remind you of the one you loved and the feelings may return, perhaps less acutely, but still in a wave of emotion. No one has forgotten how to grieve; we just can't help ourselves.

To rot, or not?

The worms crawl in
And the worms crawl out
They crawl in thin
And they crawl out stout

Your eyes fall in
And your teeth fall out
Your brains come trickling
Down your snout ...

The Worm Song has been attributed to British soldiers serving in the Crimea in the 19th century. I learned it as a Girl Guide; it was one of the scary songs we sang around the campfire in the dark. Essentially, it's about what happens to buried bodies; a gradual process of decomposition. Horrible as it may sound, if this didn't happen, we'd have a problem; bodies piling up, refusing to rot. This is what's happening in Norway, according to Ashley Feinberg:

Norway's got a major corpse problem that isn't going away anytime soon. Literally—they won't rot. What's the culprit behind this profusion of bodies that refuse to take their place in the circle of life? The same thing that's also working to keep your sandwich fresh: plastic wrap.

The Norwegians answer to the problem is to poke a long tube into the grave, puncturing the plastic, and injecting lime into the space, to hasten decomposition. If you imagine that rotting bodies are horrible, how horrible are corpses that won't rot?

I sometimes wonder about American corpses. The Americans embalm a lot more bodies than we do and like to display them looking as fresh as the day they died in open coffins. Many of their coffins are great heavy things, made from metal, so they seal a corpse in and prevent it from decaying naturally. Instead, the action of anaerobic bacteria will cause the corpse to putrefy, turning it into a disgusting semi-liquid soup. If you've ever watched an episode of CSI where they tip a corpse out of a sealed plastic or metal container, you'll know that the smell it produces is indescribable - far worse than the smell of a naturally decomposed corpse. The dear departed's relatives might go to the grave to pay their respects, imagining him or her as he or she was when last seen. What's happening in the grave or crypt is nothing like that; it's the real stuff of horror stories.

Face it; death means decomposition. Trying to prevent it may only make matters worse, and as we're running out of burial space, the sooner we rot, the better - but not until after we're dead, of course.

Photo © M Nelson - a newly dug grave immediately after a burial, Greenwood Burial Ground, Farnham, Suffolk.

Making room for the dead

The news that most British cemeteries are either full, or nearly full, shouldn't be a surprise. The population continues to grow, and so does the demand for burial space. Cemeteries can be fascinating places, with historically interesting headstones and thriving wildlife, but it makes no sense to expect to stake your claim to a burial plot and expect it to remain yours in perpetuity. Many graves are neglected, forgotten or ignored by the descendents of those who occupy them, while the newly dead must be buried wherever there's room.

Maybe it's time to coax the squeamish into considering burying people long enough for full decomposition, before exhuming the bones and storing them in an ossuary? Neatly stacked bones take up far less space than bodies.

Of course there's cremation, which is popular here and in Japan, but even with efficient new cremators, it's not an environmentally-friendly option. Other new methods of disposal include bio-cremation and freeze-drying, but they still use energy, which is also is increasingly short supply.

Dealing with the problem of burial space shortages means dealing with death and with the population problem; two subjects that most people would rather not know about. It's not going to be easy.

________

Here lies father and mother and sister and I,
We all died within the space of one short year;
They all be buried at Wimble, except I,
And I be buried here.

Headstone in a Staffordshire churchyard.

________

Photo of headstone fragments by the wall of St. Peter's Church, Elmsett, Suffolk © M Nelson.
Photo of bones in an ossuary in Sedlec near Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic from the Czech Tourism website.

Dressing for dusty death

Silk, hemp and cotton fabrics used by Pia Interlandi

I've heard that, before the law was changed to prevent pollution, the dead could be cremated in all sorts of unsuitable outfits. One example was a farmer who was cremated wearing his wellies; the burning rubber smell must have drifted around the area and probably didn't do the cremator much good. Similarly unsuitable outfits were worn by those being buried; man-made fibres don't biodegrade. Now there are rules about the materials that can be used to line a coffin and dress a corpse, but some clothes may still make it tricky. Fiddling about with buttons on a body isn't easy. If you're not expecting to view the body, what does it matter what it's wearing? The funeral director will take their usual shroud off a shelf, and you'll never see it. But if you do want to be seen by your dearly beloved, you might want to look as good as possible, bearing in mind you won't be at your best. I wouldn't want to be embalmed, which is far more popular in the US than here; that's about creating an illusion. So Pia Interlandi's clothes for the dead are a good idea. They're made from fabrics that will rot as the body rots after burial; they've all been tested on pig corpses.

“The body is a gift,” Interlandi says. “It’s a big bag of nutrients and water and protein. When you place it back into the earth, I think the garment is almost like wrapping paper.”

This story reminded me of Mr Bun. I was visiting a funeral director after interviewing Mrs Bun about her husband's funeral. My undertaker friend was keen to show me around the premises. Standing over an open coffin in the morgue, she patted the skinny corpse's knee and said, "This is Mr Bun." His face was veiled by white lace, as though partially gift wrapped. Knowing what I did about Mr Bun, having just heard his life story, it seemed bizarre to cover him in the sort of lace you'd see in a bridal veil. He wouldn't have been seen dead in it.

HT to @megatonlove for the link.

On a good man's death, and a difference of opinion

I've just been talking to a young woman about her grandfather, who died recently. He was a friend and I know his views about religion, which were that it's all nonsense and he couldn't understand what anyone sees in it. He recently wrote,

On the rare occasions that I’ve discussed religion with a person of faith, I’ve asked if God made everything. The answer was always "Yes". I then asked why he made, for example, cancer. End of conversation. It all remains a mystery.

I don't know what it says on his death certificate about the cause of death, but cancer was part of his problem. Seems that he never discussed any of this with his granddaughter, who told me that the family are all Christian and it will seem strange having a humanist funeral. She expressed regret that he died without religion. I find it sad that she feels that way. I said that her grandparents had a very happy marriage, despite their differing views on religion, because they adopted the philosophy of "Live, and let live." She said we'd have to agree to differ. Made me wonder if she expected him to adopt his wife's faith, to make the family happy? They were happy, as far as I can tell. Incidentally, his wife is a non-conformist from an organisation that doesn't proselytise.

My friend was one of the kindest, gentlest people I've known; a man of few words, but when he did say anything, it was often after careful thought and worth listening to. He had a very dry sense of humour and very green fingers; his friends will remember his gifts of runner beans. Why does his granddaughter feel that it's regrettable that he rejected religion? Surely not because she fears for his salvation? If there was a god, and if he, she or it judged my friend wanting, I'd question its judgement.

I look forward to conducting my friend's funeral, and to making it clear that there is no reason to feel that there was anything missing from his life.

In case you hadn't noticed, someone important has died

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure." -- Clarence Darrow (1857 - 1938)

I may be wrong, but I think I read somewhere that Mrs Thatcher liked Anthony Trollope's novels. In Dr Thorne, Trollope wrote, "In these days a man is nobody unless his biography is kept so far posted up that it is ready for the national breakfast-table on the morning after his demise." The obituary writers will have been updating their Thatcher files for some years, in anticipation of her demise, just as they do with other public figures. The difference between those written in Trollope's time and those published and broadcast this week is that it was far easier to avoid them 130 years ago. You just didn't bother to read them in a newspaper, or you never read a paper anyway. Now, it's almost impossible to avoid the interminable eulogising on the TV news, especially the BBC, when anyone of any importance snuffs it. The day someone invents a news channel filter, I'll scrape together my pennies to buy one ASAP.

The current hoo-ha will go on until after the funeral on April 17th, over a week away. Meanwhile, I'll be recording the news bulletins and fast forwarding through anything Thatcher related.

Today on Twitter

Just a few of the death related tweets today. Just do a search and you'll find more.

19th century passenger trains often transported corpses between medical institutions, unbeknown to living passengers on board.
— The QI Elves (@qikipedia) April 3, 2013

Postcode lottery over baby ashes: A BBC investigation uncovers a postcode lottery over the cremation of babies in… goo.gl/fb/0lwMq
— Politic (@Politics_news1) April 3, 2013

Elderly people at weddings always poke me and say "You're next." So guess what?..... I started doing the same thing to them at funerals
— Speak Comedy (@SpeakComedy) March 29, 2013

Funerals that help the environment are taking off in Britain econ.st/ZxdXVJ
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 28, 2013

"Giving atheists religious funerals is a disservice… And now is the time for it to stop": iheu.org/story/death-an…
— IHEU (@IHEU) March 28, 2013

'Professional sobbers' who charge £45 to attend strangers' funerals and pretend to mourn bit.ly/YHSrLc
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) March 27, 2013

Deadly litter to mark a death

Young people releasing lanterns for Jade -

Photo from the Daily Mail

The death of Jade Anderson, the Manchester girl attacked by dogs, was tragic and horrific. Her teenage friends are, apparently, marking her death with the release of fashionable sky lanterns. They've become increasingly popular for all sorts of occasions, including memorial events and weddings. So have helium balloon releases. It seems like a meaningful, harmless gesture. Whether they're meaningful is debatable, but they're not harmless.

This trend for grand gestures to mark a death or deaths is something I've written about before. One of my friends in the funeral trade said that he thought it all started with the Hillsborough disaster, when people left flowers and scarves outside the gates of the stadium. Florists and soft toy retailers did very good business when Diana died, leaving London's street cleaners with a mammoth clean-up task. Since then, municipal cemeteries have had a constant battle with the proliferation of tat around graves, including plastic flowers, wind chimes and soft toys, with bereaved relatives accusing the staff of insensitivity when it's all cleared away so that the grass can be cut.

There's a difference, of course, between the mass hysteria over Diana, who was "mourned" by people who didn't know her, but thought they did, and the fashionable gestures of family and friends. I saw one ash-scattering reported online, where they'd left the cremated remains in a beauty spot (without permission) and released balloons at the same time - double-littering.

Sky lanterns and helium balloons may seem harmless, compared with unsightly soggy bears and rotten flowers, because they float off into the sky. Trouble is, they don't stay up there. They may end up miles away, in the sea or on agricultural land, where they can maim or kill valuable livestock or wildlife, after considerable suffering. For this reason, the RSPCA, the RSPB, the Marine Conservation Society and the NFU are all campaigning to have sky lanterns and balloon releases banned. In addition to the lethal littering, the helium used in balloons is a colossal waste of a gas that's needed for science; the Independent reported,

The shortage has mainly affected research centres studying the brain using magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanners, which are similar to the MRI machines used in hospitals but need to be topped up regularly with liquid helium (helium super-cooled to minus 269C, just four degrees above the lowest possible temperature, absolute zero).

When I tweeted about this, most reactions were sympathetic, such as, "Too much harm can be done without meaning to," but one follower wasn't. He wrote, "Considering what there're going thorough right now they can send up as many sky lanterns as they like," and, "The damage is utterly insignificant in comparison the death of a child." But does a death justify destructive gestures, of any sort? And are they a healthy development?

In response to my comment about the shortage of helium, another tweeter commented, "But no shortage of opportunity for mawkish celebration of tragedy it seems. What happened to quiet personal grief?" He has a point. Why do so many people feel it necessary to make such grand gestures, often involving some expense, rather than quieter, less ostentatious demonstrations of loss? Do they make them feel better? The Daily Mail, in typically crass mode, wasted no time in trawling through the Manchester area where Jade died, even photographing over the house's back yard fence, to write a report that was grossly insensitive and sensational. It featured some of Jade's friends, oblivious to the way that they were being cast as a maudlin chorus, repeating phrases that we've heard so many times before, from the vox pop phrasebook.

If I lost someone like this, I wouldn't want a media circus or a public carnival of lanterns and balloons. I'd want peace and quiet and calm, to reflect on the enormity of what had happened. If I died like this, I certainly wouldn't want part of my legacy to be the litter left by lanterns and balloons, or dead animals, or the loss of valuable assets by farmers left to clear them away.

Would you?

Read about the Marine Conservation Society's Don't Let Go campaign.

The RSPCA's Chinese lanterns petition.

A report on sky lanterns by the Women's Farming Union (pdf).

And some opinion from NFU members.

A wound that never heals

As I've said at funerals, we might accept the death of an old person who's lived a long and full life, though we still grieve for him or her, but it's different when we lose a young person. I've said it while remaining necessarily detached from the waves of emotion coming from the mourners, the parents and siblings, the families and friends, of the baby or child who's died. One distraught mother asked me, during my interview, "When will I stop feeling like this?" I couldn't answer that.

On Red Nose Day I saw the faces of the celebrities visiting hospitals in Africa where babies were dying from preventable diseases, like malaria, and from complications due to malnutrition, and from pneumonia, and they were all visibly moved. How could they not be? Could you imagine losing not one, but more than one of your children like that? So much grief, then having to carry those poor little bodies home, wrapped in a cloth, on public transport. Can you imagine having to do that?

Today one of my Twitter contacts posted a link to an article in the Guardian, a terrible story about how the 2004 tsunami hit a family on holiday in Sri Lanka. Sonali Deraniyagala has found the words to describe losing her two young sons. She found the words; many others share the pain. It's not the sort of thing that you can just drop into a conversation with strangers. That's the thing about grief; other people are oblivious to yours, and you are to theirs.

I think I also don't confess because I am still so unbelieving of what happened. I am still aghast. I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone to someone else. So I am evasive in order to spare myself. I imagine saying those words – "My family, they are all dead, in an instant they vanished" – and I reel.

Take care of the people you love and never take them for granted; you don't know what might happen, and how much you'd regret it if you hadn't.

-----------oOo-----------

A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?

from ‘We Are Seven’ by William Wordsworth

Photograph: a memorial headstone for children in The Old Cemetery, Ipswich 

On preserving the wrong sort of memories

Important people who died in foreign parts used to be taken home for burial stuffed into a barrel of something alcoholic. In 1805, Admiral Nelson's body was brought home in a barrel of brandy. In hot climates, bodies are either buried as soon as possible, before they start to stink (the origin of the contemporary funeral practices for Jews and Muslims), or they might be embalmed, if the body is to be viewed. Embalming is less common in the UK than the US, where open coffins are favoured. These are short term solutions to the problem of putrefaction, when scented handkerchiefs don't do the trick. The long term preservation of a body is another matter.

Channel 4's newsman Jon Snow has written a cautionary post in his blog about the plan to preserve the body of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, referring to the embalming of Kenya's President Kenyatta and the USSR's Lenin, who's been gradually crumbling over the years:

Lenin has suffered considerably down the years. An ear fell off some time ago and had to be re-attached. Nasty black splodges appear on his skin from time to time and have to be removed with hydrogen peroxide.

Poor Fido! Must have

been much better

looking before he died.

Not how Lenin probably expected to be remembered - a mouldering heap - and an example of how not to preserve the dead. If you're really keen to be kept around in some semblance of your living appearance, you could elect to be stuffed or plasticised. As I don't expect to look very attractive when I kick the bucket, I wouldn't want to inflict the sight of my corpse on anyone for longer than necessary, and in any case, some medical students will have a better use for it.



Stuffed dog from a collection of examples of what happens when taxidermy goes wrong.

How about a musical coffin?

"Expect nothing less than godlike comfort and heavenly sound" from the CataCoffin with a CataCombo Sound System for only €23,500. No peace after you're dead in one of these.

Sexy coffins

The calendar I was given by one of our local funeral firms is lovely, with beautiful animal photos, but not as novel as this.



Polish coffin firm Lindner has a calendar for 2013 that's upset the Catholic church, among others. It'll probably upset some feminists too. Click here to see more.

Imagine there's no heaven

A significant proportion of the contributors to my funerals made some reference to an afterlife, though they didn't claim to be religious, so a report from the National Secular Society (More people may believe in an afterlife than believe in God) doesn't surprise me:

Almost half – 49 per cent – of those surveyed earlier this year by the Institute of Education, University of London believe that there is 'definitely' or 'probably' life after death. Only 31 per cent have said that they believe in God, either without doubts (13 per cent) or with some doubts (18 per cent).

I think it's mostly due to wishful thinking and a reluctance to accept that death really is the end of us or that there's no chance of being reunited with those we've lost. For most people, belief in an afterlife is reassuring. You might say that it's natural to deny death. We are mostly emotional beings, rather than coolly intellectual ones, when it comes to facing it. The prospect of an afterlife doesn't appeal to me, but nor does it bother me that so many people expect one; after all, there's no way of proving them wrong. Why should I care, as long as they don't try to foist their opinions on me, or as long as someone I care about isn't unhealthily preoccupied with the hereafter? There's nothing new in this. People have believed in various forms of afterlife throughout history. Some were based on a sort of template offered by a religion - a Christian afterlife will be different from a Muslim one, for example - while others were based on folk traditions within a tribe, which were religious in a different sense. Ancestor worship, for example, is based on the notion that our ancestors are aware of what's happening in the present, and that they have some influence over our lives.

In 21st century Britain, however, a belief in an afterlife seems to be generally vaguer and more personal; everyone has his or her own version of what to expect, with little detail. Many nominally religious people I've met have similarly vague beliefs. They're not interested in orthodoxy; they'll talk about some sort of "higher power" that's essentially good, and the importance of caring and compassion. No harm in that, is there? The new agey, 21st century sort of afterlife is a nice place. Hardly anyone imagines that he or she will go to hell. Before you go to hell you must be judged, and few expect that to happen.

Wikipedia on an afterlife

Photo: 'Guide to the Afterlife for the Custodian of the Property of the Amon Temple Amonemwidja with Symbolic Illustrations Concerning the Dangers in the Netherworld' - an ancient Egyptian papyrus depicting the journey into the afterlife, from Wikimedia. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Stories from the day hospice

The Wellcome Collection currently has a post on its website about a creative writing group at the Princess Alice Hospice, Esher, where the patients don't seem to have lost their sense of humour.

An ambulance siren went off in the distance. Margaret said, “Oh, I don’t like that sound, go away.” She tells us how she was waiting outside the hospital for her taxi the other day. Being a self-confessed chatterbox, she got talking to the man next to her. Just then, a hearse pulled up in front of them. “Is that mine or yours?” she asked.

This reminded me of one of my funeral director friends and his dry sense of humour. For the past few years I've struggled to manage graveside ceremonies due to poor mobility. The funeral directors knew this, and did what they could to help. When a grave was a long way from the  car park, a funeral director offered me a lift in the hearse. Afterwards, he asked if I'd like a lift back to my car. I said yes please. "Horizontally or vertically?" he enquired.

Customer feedback

On a grey day, after several cold callers got fleas in their ears, the phone rang again. I was all set to slam the phone down when the caller asked if I was the person who'd conducted several funerals for her family. The names she mentioned were familiar but as I've done so many since 1991, I can't remember the details. A close relative was in a hospice, she said, and the family wanted to know if I'd be available when the time came. I wish I could, I said, but my bad back won't let me; a colleague will help instead. It seems that the funerals I did for her family are still talked about, they all thought they were lovely, and that they helped them through some sad times. It's strange to be cheered up by funeral talk, but I was. Nice to know you're appreciated.

Hazlitt and Watts on death

William Hazlitt, born in 1778, wrote On the Fear of Death,

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern—why then should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be? . . . To die is only to be as we were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or repugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and disburthening of the mind: it seems to have been holiday-time with us then: we were not called upon to appear upon the stage of life, to wear robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded; we had lain perdus all this while, snug, out of harm’s way; and had slept out our thousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and free from care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of infancy, wrapped in the finest and softest dust. And the worst that we dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes, and idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled dream of life!

I thought of this quote when I came across a video, an animation produced by Luke Jurevicius and directed by Ari Gibson and Jason Pamment, based on a lecture by philosopher and writer Alan Watts (1915-1973), author of the cult-classic The Way of Zen.

Thanks for your interest, if you had any

As I've retired as a celebrant and am planning to spend my time doing other things (like painting, drawing, taking photos and keeping the weeds at bay), I'm unlikely to be blogging here very often, if at all. If you haven't visited before, there's stuff to read anyway. If you have, thanks for showing an interest.

Here's one of my favourite poems about death:

Someone
Dennis O'Driscoll

someone is dressing up for death today, a change of skirt or tie
eating a final feast of buttered sliced pan, tea
scarcely having noticed the erection that was his last
shaving his face to marble for the icy laying out
spraying with deodorant her coarse armpit grass
someone today is leaving home on business
saluting, terminally, the neighbours who will join in the cortege
someone is trimming his nails for the last time, a precious moment
someone’s thighs will not be streaked with elastic in the future
someone is putting out milkbottles for a day that will not come
someone’s fresh breath is about to be taken clean away
someone is writing a cheque that will be marked ‘drawer deceased’
someone is circling posthumous dates on a calendar
someone is listening to an irrelevant weather forecast
someone is making rash promises to friends
someone’s coffin is being sanded, laminated, shined
who feels this morning quite as well as ever
someone if asked would find nothing remarkable in today’s date
perfume and goodbyes her final will and testament
someone today is seeing the world for the last time
as innocently as he had seen it first

From The Long Pale Corridor, Contemporary Poems of Bereavement, edited by Judi Benson & Agneta Falk, published by Bloodaxe Books (now out of print, but try www.abebooks.co.uk).

It could be you, so carpe diem!

______________________

Postscript:
Dennis O'Driscoll died suddenly on Christmas Eve, 2012, aged 58.

Poor Miss Baker

Miss Baker was a squirrel monkey who was sent into space in 1959 as part of the US space programme when she was two years old. She was the first animal to be sent into space that returned alive, though the poor little thing must have been terrified.

Miss Baker died in 1984 and is buried in Huntsville, Alabama, where this headstone marks her grave. Note the bananas left on top.

Click on the images to see them enlarged.
Photo of Miss Baker from Wikipedia Commons.

Photo of her grave from 'Cemetery Conservation Issues'.

HT to The Daily Undertaker.

There's cremation, and there's bio-cremation

I haven't been to the crematorium in town recently but not many people have, apparently. They've been busy installing some new cremators and redesigning the place, to meet current regulations about emissions, among other things. I heard that when they re-open there'll only be one chapel, instead of two. The additional equipment needed more room. Meanwhile, the new crematorium outside town is being kept busy. They've already got a big new cremator.

I'm wondering how long it will be before these new cremators are out of date. The Scandinavians have introduced freeze-drying, so that bodies can be reduced to granules like instant coffee, then safely buried in shallow graves or even dug into your garden. And I've just found an American website promoting "biocremation" that involves what sounds like pressure-cooking bodies in water with an alkali, so that all the liquid can be drained away and all you're left with is bones. Calling it "bio" anything makes it sounds like an environmentally-friendly process, but what about energy used to heat the water, and where does the liquid end up? In comparison, green burials are low-tech, or no tech. All you do is dig a hole and plant a tree.

There will probably be even more innovative ways to dispose of bodies. There's no shortage of them, but there is a shortage of space for burial in many places and there's money to be made.

Postscript (14/1/12): A celebrant friend tells me that there's a biocremation company in Scotland. He wrote, "The second system you refer to (alkali water) is a Scottish system and very good and, in my view, much better than the Swedish promession. This is the web site  - www.resomation.com - and they have been working for years to get the UK government to agree to its use. I think it's a winner."