I recently paid for my dead body to be turned into mulch when I die. It’s called human composting, and I’m weirdly excited about it. I also didn’t realize how much stress I was carrying, not knowing what I would be leaving behind for my heirs to deal with while also grieving. I (hopefully) still have decades ahead of me, but I’ve had enough close calls in my life that death isn’t always far from my mind.
Both my parents are dead and had the foresight to pre-plan their cremations. It was an incredible gift to those of us who survived them. For myself, I decided I didn’t want my last act on this earth to add to its destruction and the ill health of those who work in crematoriums. The cremation process generates 535 pounds of net CO2 emissions, in addition to harmful gases and heavy metals, including mercury. And, unlike aquamation, which dumps wastewater into the sewer system, “earth soil transformation” is used for land restoration. The costs are basically on par with typical cremation costs and far less expensive than traditional burial.
No judgment on whatever you or others choose. I just know that it doesn’t feel right for me.
I recently came across this poem that speaks to me as both a Buddhist and an atheist. In Buddhism, there is the concept of reincarnation. People often assume that reincarnation means that a person dies and is then reborn as a new person. While some Buddhists certainly hold this view, I take a much broader perspective. According to well-established scientific principles, the conservation of energy demonstrates that energy is never truly lost or destroyed. It can, however, change and transform. I believe this is very much akin to what I would describe as reincarnation. We are never truly lost or destroyed, even after we die. We simply transform into something else. What that something else is, of course, is open for debate. However, the reality is that our energy continues to exist in the universe after we release our physical body. In that sense, I honestly do believe that we are reborn anew after we die.
Inscription For A Gravestone
by Robinson Jeffers
I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That’s gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.
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