(Dis) Solving A Life

Graph from Backyardnature.net

   When it comes to an end of life one has to wonder where does it all go.  Of the billions of birds and insects that pass away hourly, what happens to their bodies?  Even after a heavy rain when earthworms almost litter the sidewalks and streets (and it's not because they might drown since they "breathe" in an entirely different fashion than we humans) by the time the sun appears they too have virtually disappeared (at one time I collected well over 100 of them and eagerly added them to my vermipost pile, which turned out to be for naught since such worms are the wrong type of worms for this version of composting).  In my life I can recall seeing perhaps a few dozen decaying birds at most, and virtually no insect carcasses, much less cats or dogs; as for those bleached bones of cattle and horses and such, I have run across a total of zero which relegates them into the world of trusting photos which others have taken.  And yet, the world is filled with such life (including us); said the children's site Wonderopolis:  Scientists have recently estimated that there are approximately 8.7 million species on Earth.  They believe that 1-2 million of those species are animals.  And what do we know about all those species?  Not much!  The same study estimates that 86% of all land species and 91% of all sea species have not yet been discovered or described!  And in case you missed it, those are species and not actual numbers within those species (a quick peek at the graph will show you that that tiny 1% sliver is us and every other animal and mammal with a backbone...the other 99% basically makes up the rest of what we know as "living beings").

   In several years I will be leaving my 60s;* this will be the second time I will have witnessed and watched the "60s" fade away, all of its hopes and aspirations, the radical and the fanatical, the exuberance and the silence, the acted-on and the things given up.  We all have our version of time and how it moves by.  Said author Alexandra Fuller in her book Leaving Before the Rains Come: ...we tend to believe that everything happens over time, the way the seasons ease their way around the globe steady and measurable and relaxed.  But the truth is, most of the things that change the course of our lives happen in fleeting unguarded moments; grief buckling us at the knees; fear shattering through us like buckshot; love pulling us out on an unseen table.  And finding ourselves in the grip of these overpowering emotions, we then invent reason based on the flimsy evidence we have accrued why they have happened, trying to make sense of the insensible with armloads of self-justification, distortions, and deliberate misinterpretations.  The German poet Rainier Maria Rilke put it a bit more succinctly, writing: At present you need to live the question.  Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.  But we are children, fidgeting in our seats and wanting to know how the "trick" we call life was done instead of just enjoying the show; and then it ends, life ends, and we leave puzzled and pleased and almost wanting to get a ticket for the next show...that is, if there ever will be a next show.

   Andrew O'Hagan wrote his reflection of this in the London Review of Books about funeral services and how they seem to pass as quickly as the life of the person being remembered: I wondered if the challenge of throwing away these old booklets is a bit like the one of zapping the names of dead people from address books or from the contacts list on your phone. (I just can't do it.)  An order of service is often the last thing you have of a person.  They are gone after that, and, as you walk from the church, the document can feel like a relic.  To some greater or smaller extent, we are defined by our friends.  When they go, what's left of you?   Some friends and people, of course, choose to go on their own, a topic reviewed in another LRB piece which noted that suicide rates have actually dropped when compared to the period late-1600s to the 1900s (when it was noted: Upper-class Englishmen began to take their own lives in droves towards the middle of the 18th century --in 1759 Lady Montagu called it a "fashion"...).  But we still come back to the main issue, what happens to the bodies?

   When did being buried in a churchyard go out of fashion (or space) asked another piece in The New York Review of Books (partially reviewing the same book as that done by LRB above and a topic covered in an earlier post when the books came out); on quoting one of the books by Thomas W. Laqueur the article said: The dead body matters “because the living need the dead far more than the dead need the living.  It matters because the dead make social worlds.  It matters because we cannot bear to live at the borders of our mortality.”  The human mind cannot help treating the dead human body as if it were something other and more than a lump of lifeless matter.  The Work of the Dead is an extended meditation on this singular fact.  But burials and space  for such internments is basically just real estate and prices are climbing, said an earlier piece in Bloomberg Businessweek, noting that the "prime" locations in areas can often climb out of reach quickly.  $47,000 at London Cemetery (no, you don't own the land but lease it and, with a new law, can be dug up again to make way for new "occupants" after 75 years said the article), Rome's Verano cemetery $32,000, New York's Marble Cemetery $350,000; it should be noted that these are the extreme prices and the average burial is far less, even in London.  Insurance companies tend to peg the average cost of a funeral at $10,000 (yikes!) with cremation being far less (often just over $1,000).  A report from the BBC elaborated on this a bit: Around the world, 150,000 people die every day, and the number is rising as the world’s population increases.  Today there are 7.5 billion of us on Earth, but by the end of the century it’s thought there will be more than 11 billion.  In some countries, space for graves is running out.  In the UK, it is estimated that half of cemeteries will be full in the next 20 years.  In parts of London, the council no longer offers a burial service, and the city has started re-using grave space, lowering bodies further into the ground and placing new ones on top.  The use of land for burial - and the constant upkeep of that land - has an environmental impact.  And so enters liquid cremation...or alkaline hydrolysis.

   There are more and more states and countries shifting to this "method" of cremation, said WIRED, partially in response to the 800,000 gallons of toxic embalming fluid that accompanies bodies into burials, the amount of wood which is used to make coffins (said a piece from 2015 in Business Insider: According to the Berkeley Planning Journal, conventional burials in the US every year use 30 million board feet of hardwoods, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 104,272 tons of steel, and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete.  The amount of casket wood alone is equivalent to about 4 million acres of forest and could build about 4.5 million homes.), or the amount of energy used in cremation (reportedly each cremation uses enough natural gas enough to heat a home in Minnesota for an entire winter).  Liquid cremation avoids much of this and is slowly gaining in popularity as an more environmentally friendly and less-expensive form of cremation (I'll let you read more about it on your own but the linked articles give you a rather quick summary of the process which basically leaves the same results as both burial and cremation, which is only your bones).  And then there's promession. 

   Developed by Swedish biologist Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, the method seemed promising, that of nitrogen-freezing a body, vibrating the result into a powder within minutes, dehydrating the remaining powder and having the result being biodegradeable...very little energy use, very little waste, and virtually no harm to the environment.  But the problem was that it apparently sounded too good to be true; the process is still ongoing but a working model has yet to be developed (liquid nitrogen can prove dangerous if not handled properly**).  Which isn't to say that people aren't wanting and waiting for this; said Lucinda Herring in her book: Because approximately 80 percent of Swedes are cremated today, the Swedish funeral industry does not yet feel threatened by Promession's "promise."  And yet, more that 70 percent of Swedes interviewed about Susanne's system claim that they will choose Promession over cremation if and when it becomes available to them...Susanne prefers to follow the principles of nature, which for her means continuing to bury human bodies, but to do so in ways that follow nature's way of decomposition, and that rebuild carbon-rich soil for the future.

   Of course there are many other alternatives (which Herring's book explores), from vigils at home to eco-pods and back-to-nature burials.  But whether ashes to ashes or dust to dust, we will disappear just as surely and as easily as those billions of birds and insects which died but which we somehow can't see.  Here and gone, one might say, but to what purpose?  Oprah Winfrey has a new book out which begins with this: The simple act of asking "What is my purpose?" on the Internet has the power to elicit nearly one billion responses.  That's a staggering commentary on the way so many people feel about who they are and how much they long for an existence that matters.  On the surface, typing those four little words ...what-is-my-purpose... and pressing Enter may seem trivial, but it's really a profound reflection of an intimate prayer rising from the deepest part of the heart.  So after all of this, one has to jump back to that reality of being here and gone; we will be gone, that is for certain.  But more importantly is the beginning part of that phrase...the word "here."  We're here now and that is what we should be celebrating.  If there's something that comes after we die then great; and if we can make it easier for those handling our bodies and services and wishes when that happens, then equally great.  But all that we can know for certain is that all that we have is what we have now, at this moment.  The here and now, the present as just that, a present.  Make plans for sure and get your affairs in order, but turn around now and look outside...the world awaits and it is yours, right in front of you, at this moment.  It might be a fleeting moment, or an eternal one as when you see something and fall in love...said Fyodor Dostoevsky: After all, you do grow up, you do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into fragments.  And if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of these fragments.


*As with all things in life, this is a bold assumption.  Nothing is a given, as they say; but I am thankful to have made it this far and hopeful to continue the exploration for a bit longer.

**Said a piece in the BBC: For laboratory personnel in particular, there is also the risk of asphyxiation if liquid nitrogen --which is colourless, odourless and tasteless-- is used or spilled in a confined space.  Lab worker James Graham died from asphyxiation in 1999.