Taking control of our funerals: An option for some–Part 1

Those of us in the right to die (RTD) movement want to take charge of our own deaths should we be faced with unwanted suffering, either immediately or in the foreseeable future.  Some of us who are supported by our families and friends might also like for those same family members and friends to take care of what happens to our bodies after death–a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to funerals.  Others of us won’t care or we may favor a commercial disposition option.

Usually, we have limited choices for body disposition: burial (either in the ground or in a mausoleum), cremation, body donation (followed by cremation by the receiving facility/organization).  

There are more exotic options, most of which are not accessible to the average person: decomposition by alkaline-hydrolysis (which leaves bone that can be pulverized to resemble cremated remains), sky burial (practiced primarily by Zoroastrians in the Indo-Iranian region and Tibet), donation to a forensic research program (colloquially referred to as a “body farm”–after studying decomposition in various circumstances, bones are kept in perpetuity in a secure facility for future reference), cryogenic disposition (very expensive and not considered a final disposition), dissolution in sulphuric acid (usually to hide a death, especially by mobsters in popular literature), human composting (described here), open-air cremation (also termed a funeral pyre described here and here). That’s about it for methods of body disposition.

The primary option available to families that want to handle the disposition arrangements for their loved ones is some form of burial.  Generally, this can be burial on land outside of a city, burial in a typical cemetery, or burial in a green burial park or cemetery.  Burial on one’s own land is the simplest method.  The deceased’s body can be cleaned if desired.  This can be thorough or more of a ritual cleaning.  Some people like to use fragrances, herbs, flowers, etc. for aesthetic reasons, sometimes depending on whether there will be a delay in burial, perhaps to allow time for all friends and family members to attend the interment.  In these cases, dry ice can be used to slow the body’s decomposition.

Bodies can be buried in clothing, a shroud, a body bag, a home-made or craftsman-made casket, a cardboard box (these are readily available for cremation or found at appliance stores), or a commercial casket bought online from Costco or Amazon, a casket retailer, or funeral home.  Some casket retailers and all funeral homes have locations where a person can browse through casket options, or casket models can be viewed online.

Let me share two personal experiences.  Around 1997, I decided to build a plain pine-box casket to find out what that would cost.  After spending about $65 on wood and screws (double that amount today), I had a functional, though not elegant, wooden casket.  It sat around in my garage for two or three years before a friend mentioned that he wanted a simple burial in the Quaker style, with a plain wooden casket.  I gave him my home-made casket in which he was buried a year later in a rural cemetery near where he had grown up.  

In 2000, I received a call from someone unknown to me at the time, whose elderly father had died overnight of apparent heart failure.  She wanted to transport his body to a crematory for cremation without the expense of using a funeral director.  I had several cardboard cremation containers in my storage shed and took one to her.  The Justice of the Peace, who serves as coroner in most Texas counties, was not familiar with families handling their own arrangements.  I provided her with a copy of the laws in Texas and she signed off on the burial transit permit and the death certificate.  After receiving those approvals late in the afternoon, I helped the family and a couple of friends load the body in the container and place it in the family van for transport to the crematory.

These kinds of family-involved dispositions are not uncommon, but if the details of handling a funeral seem overwhelming, there is help available.  Some religious congregations have burial committees that help with the burial process.  And there are books and other resources on the topic:

• Ernest Morgan’s “Dealing Creatively With Death: A Manual of Death Education and Simple Burial,”  now in its 14th edition, published by Upper Access Press in Vermont

•  “Caring for Your Own Dead” by Lisa Carlson (1987); available through a free lending library for limited periods at Internet Archive

•  “Caring for the Dead:  Your Final Act of Love” by Lisa Carlson (1998)

•  “Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death” by Lisa Carlson and Joshua Slocum

•  A website on the topic maintained by Lisa Carlson and Joshua Slocum

•  “We’ve Never Regretted a Private Burial” an article by C. J Jenkins in Mother Earth News

•  Free advice and other assistance is provided by the Funeral Consumers Alliance and its affiliates around the country

In Part 2, I will discuss services provided by home funeral guides and end-of-life assistants.