Yesterday, I said, speaking of the funeral “industry”, “Every product this “industry” sells is wasteful and unnecessary.” Let’s examine that:
Cremation: OK, let’s burn increasingly scarce fossil fuels and pollute the atmosphere so some relative of mine can have an overpriced vase with the crushed remains of my bones in it to be yet another item of clutter.
Interment: Let’s use up scarce, prime land to put up an overpriced stone marker that no one will visit after a few years anyway.
Funeral services: Let’s charge an obscene amount of money for people to stand up in front of a dead body and say nice things about it, while cheap refreshments can be had on stylish paper plates and in styrofoam cups.
Embalming: Another moneymaker. Let’s fill the body with unnatural chemicals so it doesn’t start to smell before all the relatives get here.
Caskets: Let’s see, we’ll put the body in a cheaply constructed metal box that costs nearly as much as an automobile, but isn’t going anywhere. It’s ostensibly designed to “preserve” that body, but, in point of fact, can hasten its deterioration. It’s only real purpose is to provide more markup/profit opportunities for the funeral “industry”.
Yep. I stand by what I said.
Now, a statement of my wishes, in public:
The natural cycle of life is birth, life, death, decomposition, rebirth as something new. Why do we pay so much money for anything else? It’s insane. I’d rather someone would plant me in the backyard and plant a rosebush or two or maybe a tree over me for my decaying body to fertilize, and bring a little beauty back into the world. Or bury me at sea, to become a part of that food chain. Anything but become a profit center for someone else at my family’s expense. Please, send my body to a medical school to help teach doctors to heal if you must. Just don’t bury me in an overpriced, hermetically sealed casket or waste energy to get a handful of ashes. It’s wasteful. It’s unnecessary. It’s unnatural.