Another Home Alternative

MacKenzie has written about home birthing before, but this NY Times article covers the other end of things: home burial. The article focuses a lot on actual burial of people on private property, but I think the more interesting part is about the care of a body in the day or two after death. Just like we've lost touch with the natural aspect of giving birth, we've done so with dying. People just don't know what to do in either situation, because we're used to just calling someone else to take care of it. Just as people have become more interested in birthing alternatives, they are thinking about after-death alternatives:

Advocates say the number of home funerals, where everything from caring for the dead to the visiting hours to the building of the coffin is done at home, has soared in the last five years, putting the funerals “where home births were 30 years ago,” according to Chuck Lakin, a home funeral proponent and coffin builder in Waterville, Me.

Not only does this seem to be a more intimate, personal experience than the funeral home method, it's much less expensive. Plus, much of modern burial seems wasteful. Why pay for an expensive coffin and vault, just to stick them in the dirt? And why pump a body full of chemicals to make it look good for an extra day or two? Charles Lindbergh had something like this done when he died.

But just like medical groups go to state legislatures to try to restrict competition from midwives, funeral directors are trying to restrict alternatives:

Recently, some states, with the backing of the funeral industry, have considered restricting the practice of home funerals. Oregon legislators last month passed a bill that would require death midwives to be licensed, something no state currently does.

Most people who do this go the cremation route, it seems. As far as I can tell, most cemeteries won't let you be buried without a vault, unless you can find a "green cemetery" that is set aside for natural burials.

I think this is an intriguing idea, one that I hope I don't have to consider anytime soon.