I have often thought that a plain pine box and an oak tree seedling above my remains would be respectful and harmonious, but I guess I just need to get on-the-ball and update all that.
LOL. Come to think of it, it was only about a half dozen years ago when news hit of a small artist-town up in Nagano being crushed by the bureaucrats of a larger jurisdiction. It seems the locals took then Prime Minister Abe for his word in becoming more financially independent, and a couple of local artisans / musicians started growing a bit of weed to help them through the nights. Almost needless to say, that did not go over well with those who consider themselves "authorities". Scratch another would-be 'art community' off the list.
Feel free to delete this if it's too long, or old and in the way...the author's not known for brevity:
Once, on a rare sleepover with Weed at a motel in Anaheim, she awoke at a deep hour of the
night to hear tiny voices that seemed to come from Weed's sleeping face, very high-pitched, with East
Coast lowlife accents — "Hey, dat was a renege, you don't get dem points." "Ya can't meld dat one,
Wilbur, ya buried it." And "Da bidduh goes double bete, let's see da cards," at least that's what it
sounded like — the little voices faded now and then. It wasn't Weed himself — she could hear his
breathing, regular and slow, no matter what the voices happened to be saying. "Hey, Wanda! Bring us
anudduh six-pack, huh?" "Come on Wesley, feed da kitty!" What was going on? In the air-conditioned
hour without a name, she leaned over his face, trying to see lips moving, ventriloquism. . . . She
sniffed. Infinitesimal traces of cigar smoke and spilled beer. Abruptly the voices stopped, then broke
panicked into an incoherent twittering — they'd seen her, looming in, and then she saw them, just
about to shimmer out of paralysis into flight, one moment sitting by Weed's nose, curled at his nostrils, enjoying the breeze in and out, and the next all spooked and streaming down the sides of his face, nearly invisible now against the bedclothes — gaaahhh! was that one of them she felt? She rolled out onto the floor, cursing under her breath, put the lights on, and went and inspected every inch of the bed with a ball-peen hammer she happened to have in her purse. Innocent Weed slept on. She found nothing but a colorful smear on the pillow that resolved close up into a scatter of tiny patterned
rectangles, each no more than an eighth of an inch long and flimsy — her most careful breath
dispersing many of them to invisibility. In the morning they were all gone. It wasn't till years later, on
a lunch hour, somewhere inside the rusticated grandiosity of an Indiana courthouse — not too far from Brock Vond's old hometown, as a matter of fact — trying to find out, as usual, about a stipend check, that she heard, in human frequencies, the same phrases she'd heard that night, and followed the voices to a judge's chambers, sunny, wood, undusted, where nobody looked up when she put her head in. The game turned out to be pinochle, and she understood then that years ago, in Anaheim, she had seen the famous worms of song, already playing a few preliminary hands on Weed Atman's snout. (Pynchon, "Vineland") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCpCmt0OXNc
Tessa, are you aware of the current practice common in burials in which, instead of buying a plot- although it is normally still referred to as "purchasing" a plot, thanks to lax laws- now most people can only rent a plot?
Unless you have a longtime family plot (75 years+) with room left for you or absolute heaps of money, it is very, very difficult to actually buy a permanent grave.
Funeral homes do love to talk about eternity and resting places and such, but unless your family is content to pay every so often (10, 25, or 50 years are usual- the price of course rising by installment) they exhume your body and dispose of it, either by cremation or in medical waste (which is the same thing in the end but far, far less respectful.)
To be fair to the funeral homes, there is no room for permanent graveyards- we no longer have mass graves for paupers (thank God!) nor do we bury people stacked three deep. But people still do not want cemeteries near them or their businesses, as a rule, despite being quiet neighbours, and to sell permanent plots would make it absolutely unaffordable. That does not excuse the fact that the renting is often only found in the fine print of the contract.
I had not previously heard of this treatment, but it sounds like a better version of cremation. Are you familiar with green funerals, which are designed to allow the body to decompose naturally? This seems similar. I would choose this for myself, if it were affordable.
Perhaps my view seems cold- I hope not. I worked as a nurse for a fair while and I certainly know every single person has a soul & deserves to be treated with respect regardless.
That being said, I also believe that once we die, our soul has been freed, and we treat remains with respect not because of their soul, but because of ours. I remember so strongly my father's funeral, seeing his body and realising that he was not there in any way. That was not him.
I like your comment and the one above. I can’t trust the powers that are behind this and I think the name tells the disrespect regards our souls and ancestors “composting”. If the procedures were intended to respect the dead it wouldn’t be called composting. Composting is chucking everything in a bin. They are using part of a concept - returning life to life - to hide something and it’s probably the respect element.
I hear where you're coming from. I think perhaps it has gotten this name not by choice- after all, I see they also call it "natural organic reduction"- but simply because it would be difficult to explain the process simply in any other way.
As a fervent gardener & the daughter, grand-daughter & great-granddaughter of gardeners & farmers, I will just add that I used to think of compost as waste & couldn't understand my mother's seeming obsession with her composting methods, but now I understand that it is a thing of beauty, turning what was disgust or decay into crumbly black gold. I love turning over my compost heap to see beautiful rich soil.
The instant I mentioned this article to my husband, in fact, he laughed and said "Well, seems like you've found our perfect plan." I have already inflicted on him a composting toilet (which has worked out great!) as well as cat litter that can go in our composting toilet (so long pathogens!) My husband really is a gem.
He told me, in fact, that if we can organise this after we pass and mix our dirt together that would suit him just fine. It would suit me as well, and I hope we grow something lovely.
I agree with most posters here that human dignity matters quite deeply. One reason I follow Tessa is that we do seem to have similar outlooks.
Based on my previous researches into funeral arrangements (being a forward planner) I find this kind of innovation has been direly needed, although I certainly agree a better name for it would preserve people's dignity, as well as make it more palatable, in a world that does little composting. I concur that most think of it as you do & that is not how we should think of disposing of remains.
I'm going to offer a little contrarian information to this discussion.
First, noting the states and cast of characters behind this "human composting" effort I'm pretty confident the agenda fits in with a Soylent Green vision for our remains. Which I do not support and I identify as evil.
That said, having paid more attention to the funeral process in recent years than I ever had cause to before the current practices seem very sterile and removed from how I envisioned a burial to look. It's not a wood casket in the ground that decomposes and becomes a part of the life cycle of the natural world. There's not microbiological activity that returns the organics to the environment.
The reality is in modern burials our bodies remain in stasis, isolated in a chamber, desiccating, mummifying. Laws to prevent malodorous gases and the leaching of remains into soils and the water table are in nearly every community. Fear of disease and such, for "public health." Probably something to it. So when they dig a hole they line all sides with thick concrete slabs, like a crypt, then lower a casket into it and cap it with another slab. Some caskets are made of metals that will never degrade even if placed directly in soil. Others are made of wood. But without soil contact it will only dry out in the crypt, possibly become brittle. But the body inside has no possible way to become a part of the organic world ever again. No life will ever spring from it. No gift of life passed on to any other life form. This seems wrong at many levels to me.
Cremation has become widely accepted as an alternative to burial. Partly/mostly because of the high cost of burial it's a more affordable alternative. But Jewish law for thousands of years has prohibited cremation, I'm not a Jewish scholar to know why, but I suspect it has to do with the reasons I share above, the cycle of life is broken. And at least the ash and smoke that is emitted into the atmosphere and any ground it's ever sprinkled on does become a part of this organic world. I remember the funeral home telling us that in recent years Jewish law has been revised, declaring cremation acceptable before God. I don't trust any religious institutions of our time, and especially repeals of thousands of years of Jewish law at the whim of current leaders. Who have a habit of discarding all things traditional and holy for the sake of modern conveniences and mores. My connection to God tells me they are wrong. And corrupt. And acting against God. That's not how it works. Maybe a Jewish scholar weighs in here to disabuse me of my notions. They can make their case. I still won't trust or believe they heard differently from God in our lifetimes.
Bringing all of this background and reasoning back to the current topic of "human composting" I struggle with reaching any conclusion about it. I know the intentions of those supporting it are evil, not in alignment with my values and ideas about humanity and the role of our matter, our organics in this world, that which perpetuates the cycle of life. Though in a perverse and repulsive way it sort of is that.
I am purposely avoiding the subject of our souls, the eternal energy force they are made of in this discussion, since this is about our corporeal being and energy. I do not wish to help build the infrastructure for a Soylent Green dystopia to emerge, what human compositing is undoubtedly for as I see it. But I don't support the current burial practices that are so far removed from the cycle of life that bodies are forever interred as freeze-dried mummies in dark, cold chambers. I don't have an answer for this conundrum. But offer this merely to share what modern burial practices are as a comparison with what most imagine it to be. And draw some comparisons and contrasts to consider.
What does the "...Natural organic reduction (NOR)..." process actually entail? What are the minimum recommended technical procedures? What are the minimum specifications required for establishing a "..."Natural organic reduction facility,..." ? Where can final internment of NOR human remains be located? Public or private property? Seems a new corporate controlled industry is emerging from Blackrock think tanks!
Oh, if their God were Earth, they would be respecting the Earth, which they don't. They want to rape it and rape us. They are just vampiring loveless creatures. Earth is in no conflict with God, we are of spirit and earth.
As we know from experience, this is just the start to get us used to an idea and then they gradually expand on it and push it further - but not too quickly as it could repulse and scare the sheep and then they may stampede. So, Tessa, where do you see this all going, please?? Is it to mass graves in dug trenches - if bird flu jabs do the job they hope it will? Will our bodies be fed to pigs and we get transformed into bacon? Some may weigh up the question and decide it tastes better than crickets. If they use the human remains to fertilize crops, can vegetarians still, in good conscience, call themselves vegan? And, how do they speed up the corpse decomposition in the frozen months of winter, eh? Maybe just stack them in a big freezer till summer. Tessa, we need your vision for our future possibilities, please.
Although I would never choose to be embalmed - greatful to the embalmers and others who are speaking about about the new pathology white fibrous "blood clots" they are discovering in those who died, as well as in the living in cath labs.
Let's hope to stay alive until November 5th for the US general election. And in my beloved Chinada, for the ousting of the incompetent Liberal-NDP coalition. Let's take a moment to pray God.
I have a lot of exposure to the manipulations of the funeral industry and standard western-world burial practices through my wife’s work as a celebrant and researcher into caring and loving afterdeath care ( of both loving and dead) . I have no issue with terramation ( human composting) or aquamation. These are natural processes which will ease the pressure on land intensive cemeteries on a land base that is shrinking relative to compounding populations, and more importantly give the bereaved some meaningful remnants ( yes, even utilitarian) of their loved ones, to share around even, just as one can do with cremated remains. I have attended a free talk by one of the Seattle area companies and they are good people- the other one seems more interested in design than human relations but I haven’t met them. People
Are so squeamish about death and this is part of reclaiming it from the funeral conglomerates who have made it all very expensive- especially in America where big business has crept into every corner of life - and death. So though I understand your initial concerns, I think you will come to see it as more than just another “climate-friendly” staged alternative. Cremation is itself very wasteful
of energy. It’s far more “industrial”, and sanitized -if that’s your concern, than terramation. And it’s a very cut and dried process. I watched my mom get cremated and it was altogether an unholy experience in the messy concrete back room of a funeral home, done with the push of a red button…. Oh “thanks for the honour of being able to click my mothers body into instant oblivion. “
I have often thought that a plain pine box and an oak tree seedling above my remains would be respectful and harmonious, but I guess I just need to get on-the-ball and update all that.
;-/
I would a million times rather that than the standard embalming burial.
Or being recycled / reincarnated into a generously shared spliff. 😂
lol though
Alas, I don't think here in Japan has ever had their version of Cheech and Chong.
I think I still have Big Bambu in my records, but nobody seems to have that big rolling paper that came in it, nobody...
(I'm pretty sure I bought it at the Yokosuka naval exchange in 1974. I had a retired-dependent ID card, and could get on base.)
Wow.
"Like, WOW!" , right?
;-)
LOL. Come to think of it, it was only about a half dozen years ago when news hit of a small artist-town up in Nagano being crushed by the bureaucrats of a larger jurisdiction. It seems the locals took then Prime Minister Abe for his word in becoming more financially independent, and a couple of local artisans / musicians started growing a bit of weed to help them through the nights. Almost needless to say, that did not go over well with those who consider themselves "authorities". Scratch another would-be 'art community' off the list.
And oh my god, the world is coming to an end!
At least according to this "Dead cat found in the middle of the road" headline from last year ... 😂https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2023/08/af0263e6b27a-police-search-nihon-university-gridiron-team-dorm-over-cannabis.html#google_vignette
(looking at your bio) Wow, you would know!
Hi Iris.
Though I've been here long enough for rigor mortis to set in, John beat me by a few years. His Yokosuka story sounds spot-on! 😂
Hahah, that's funny! I'd enjoy reading about why you have settled in Japan if you have written about that anywhere?
Soilent Green comes to mind.
Note: the movie, not the book.
That's the next step.
Feel free to delete this if it's too long, or old and in the way...the author's not known for brevity:
Once, on a rare sleepover with Weed at a motel in Anaheim, she awoke at a deep hour of the
night to hear tiny voices that seemed to come from Weed's sleeping face, very high-pitched, with East
Coast lowlife accents — "Hey, dat was a renege, you don't get dem points." "Ya can't meld dat one,
Wilbur, ya buried it." And "Da bidduh goes double bete, let's see da cards," at least that's what it
sounded like — the little voices faded now and then. It wasn't Weed himself — she could hear his
breathing, regular and slow, no matter what the voices happened to be saying. "Hey, Wanda! Bring us
anudduh six-pack, huh?" "Come on Wesley, feed da kitty!" What was going on? In the air-conditioned
hour without a name, she leaned over his face, trying to see lips moving, ventriloquism. . . . She
sniffed. Infinitesimal traces of cigar smoke and spilled beer. Abruptly the voices stopped, then broke
panicked into an incoherent twittering — they'd seen her, looming in, and then she saw them, just
about to shimmer out of paralysis into flight, one moment sitting by Weed's nose, curled at his nostrils, enjoying the breeze in and out, and the next all spooked and streaming down the sides of his face, nearly invisible now against the bedclothes — gaaahhh! was that one of them she felt? She rolled out onto the floor, cursing under her breath, put the lights on, and went and inspected every inch of the bed with a ball-peen hammer she happened to have in her purse. Innocent Weed slept on. She found nothing but a colorful smear on the pillow that resolved close up into a scatter of tiny patterned
rectangles, each no more than an eighth of an inch long and flimsy — her most careful breath
dispersing many of them to invisibility. In the morning they were all gone. It wasn't till years later, on
a lunch hour, somewhere inside the rusticated grandiosity of an Indiana courthouse — not too far from Brock Vond's old hometown, as a matter of fact — trying to find out, as usual, about a stipend check, that she heard, in human frequencies, the same phrases she'd heard that night, and followed the voices to a judge's chambers, sunny, wood, undusted, where nobody looked up when she put her head in. The game turned out to be pinochle, and she understood then that years ago, in Anaheim, she had seen the famous worms of song, already playing a few preliminary hands on Weed Atman's snout. (Pynchon, "Vineland") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCpCmt0OXNc
"Human Composting" Has Been Legal in the United States Since 2019"... and illegal in Mexico since the 1980's.....cartels 'n such....
Everyone should go buy some land and put a small 60X60 cemetery on it. NO PROPERTY TAXES FOREVER. Cemeteries don't pay taxes. California:
https://www.boe.ca.gov/proptaxes/cemetery_exemption.htm
Shhh................don't tell nobody. Alright?
:))
Tessa, are you aware of the current practice common in burials in which, instead of buying a plot- although it is normally still referred to as "purchasing" a plot, thanks to lax laws- now most people can only rent a plot?
Unless you have a longtime family plot (75 years+) with room left for you or absolute heaps of money, it is very, very difficult to actually buy a permanent grave.
Funeral homes do love to talk about eternity and resting places and such, but unless your family is content to pay every so often (10, 25, or 50 years are usual- the price of course rising by installment) they exhume your body and dispose of it, either by cremation or in medical waste (which is the same thing in the end but far, far less respectful.)
To be fair to the funeral homes, there is no room for permanent graveyards- we no longer have mass graves for paupers (thank God!) nor do we bury people stacked three deep. But people still do not want cemeteries near them or their businesses, as a rule, despite being quiet neighbours, and to sell permanent plots would make it absolutely unaffordable. That does not excuse the fact that the renting is often only found in the fine print of the contract.
I had not previously heard of this treatment, but it sounds like a better version of cremation. Are you familiar with green funerals, which are designed to allow the body to decompose naturally? This seems similar. I would choose this for myself, if it were affordable.
Perhaps my view seems cold- I hope not. I worked as a nurse for a fair while and I certainly know every single person has a soul & deserves to be treated with respect regardless.
That being said, I also believe that once we die, our soul has been freed, and we treat remains with respect not because of their soul, but because of ours. I remember so strongly my father's funeral, seeing his body and realising that he was not there in any way. That was not him.
Just my two dollars- I did go on a bit, lol!
I like your comment and the one above. I can’t trust the powers that are behind this and I think the name tells the disrespect regards our souls and ancestors “composting”. If the procedures were intended to respect the dead it wouldn’t be called composting. Composting is chucking everything in a bin. They are using part of a concept - returning life to life - to hide something and it’s probably the respect element.
I hear where you're coming from. I think perhaps it has gotten this name not by choice- after all, I see they also call it "natural organic reduction"- but simply because it would be difficult to explain the process simply in any other way.
As a fervent gardener & the daughter, grand-daughter & great-granddaughter of gardeners & farmers, I will just add that I used to think of compost as waste & couldn't understand my mother's seeming obsession with her composting methods, but now I understand that it is a thing of beauty, turning what was disgust or decay into crumbly black gold. I love turning over my compost heap to see beautiful rich soil.
The instant I mentioned this article to my husband, in fact, he laughed and said "Well, seems like you've found our perfect plan." I have already inflicted on him a composting toilet (which has worked out great!) as well as cat litter that can go in our composting toilet (so long pathogens!) My husband really is a gem.
He told me, in fact, that if we can organise this after we pass and mix our dirt together that would suit him just fine. It would suit me as well, and I hope we grow something lovely.
I agree with most posters here that human dignity matters quite deeply. One reason I follow Tessa is that we do seem to have similar outlooks.
Based on my previous researches into funeral arrangements (being a forward planner) I find this kind of innovation has been direly needed, although I certainly agree a better name for it would preserve people's dignity, as well as make it more palatable, in a world that does little composting. I concur that most think of it as you do & that is not how we should think of disposing of remains.
I'm going to offer a little contrarian information to this discussion.
First, noting the states and cast of characters behind this "human composting" effort I'm pretty confident the agenda fits in with a Soylent Green vision for our remains. Which I do not support and I identify as evil.
That said, having paid more attention to the funeral process in recent years than I ever had cause to before the current practices seem very sterile and removed from how I envisioned a burial to look. It's not a wood casket in the ground that decomposes and becomes a part of the life cycle of the natural world. There's not microbiological activity that returns the organics to the environment.
The reality is in modern burials our bodies remain in stasis, isolated in a chamber, desiccating, mummifying. Laws to prevent malodorous gases and the leaching of remains into soils and the water table are in nearly every community. Fear of disease and such, for "public health." Probably something to it. So when they dig a hole they line all sides with thick concrete slabs, like a crypt, then lower a casket into it and cap it with another slab. Some caskets are made of metals that will never degrade even if placed directly in soil. Others are made of wood. But without soil contact it will only dry out in the crypt, possibly become brittle. But the body inside has no possible way to become a part of the organic world ever again. No life will ever spring from it. No gift of life passed on to any other life form. This seems wrong at many levels to me.
Cremation has become widely accepted as an alternative to burial. Partly/mostly because of the high cost of burial it's a more affordable alternative. But Jewish law for thousands of years has prohibited cremation, I'm not a Jewish scholar to know why, but I suspect it has to do with the reasons I share above, the cycle of life is broken. And at least the ash and smoke that is emitted into the atmosphere and any ground it's ever sprinkled on does become a part of this organic world. I remember the funeral home telling us that in recent years Jewish law has been revised, declaring cremation acceptable before God. I don't trust any religious institutions of our time, and especially repeals of thousands of years of Jewish law at the whim of current leaders. Who have a habit of discarding all things traditional and holy for the sake of modern conveniences and mores. My connection to God tells me they are wrong. And corrupt. And acting against God. That's not how it works. Maybe a Jewish scholar weighs in here to disabuse me of my notions. They can make their case. I still won't trust or believe they heard differently from God in our lifetimes.
Bringing all of this background and reasoning back to the current topic of "human composting" I struggle with reaching any conclusion about it. I know the intentions of those supporting it are evil, not in alignment with my values and ideas about humanity and the role of our matter, our organics in this world, that which perpetuates the cycle of life. Though in a perverse and repulsive way it sort of is that.
I am purposely avoiding the subject of our souls, the eternal energy force they are made of in this discussion, since this is about our corporeal being and energy. I do not wish to help build the infrastructure for a Soylent Green dystopia to emerge, what human compositing is undoubtedly for as I see it. But I don't support the current burial practices that are so far removed from the cycle of life that bodies are forever interred as freeze-dried mummies in dark, cold chambers. I don't have an answer for this conundrum. But offer this merely to share what modern burial practices are as a comparison with what most imagine it to be. And draw some comparisons and contrasts to consider.
Goes along with the idea of us drinking 'wastewater' instead of actual water... fucking lunatics.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/29/recycled-water-for-drinking-should-be-considered-for-sydney-new-strategy-finds
That's an insult to the fucking lunatics community,* they usually stick to tap water and cheap hooch!
(*paraphrasing Capt. Malcolm Reynolds)
What does the "...Natural organic reduction (NOR)..." process actually entail? What are the minimum recommended technical procedures? What are the minimum specifications required for establishing a "..."Natural organic reduction facility,..." ? Where can final internment of NOR human remains be located? Public or private property? Seems a new corporate controlled industry is emerging from Blackrock think tanks!
Their god is the Earth, hence the human composting. They are unlike us in most ways. They have no souls.
Oh, if their God were Earth, they would be respecting the Earth, which they don't. They want to rape it and rape us. They are just vampiring loveless creatures. Earth is in no conflict with God, we are of spirit and earth.
Beings without soul-connection to the Divine...
;-(
there god is the self.
As we know from experience, this is just the start to get us used to an idea and then they gradually expand on it and push it further - but not too quickly as it could repulse and scare the sheep and then they may stampede. So, Tessa, where do you see this all going, please?? Is it to mass graves in dug trenches - if bird flu jabs do the job they hope it will? Will our bodies be fed to pigs and we get transformed into bacon? Some may weigh up the question and decide it tastes better than crickets. If they use the human remains to fertilize crops, can vegetarians still, in good conscience, call themselves vegan? And, how do they speed up the corpse decomposition in the frozen months of winter, eh? Maybe just stack them in a big freezer till summer. Tessa, we need your vision for our future possibilities, please.
I would prefer this over cremation. Cremation horrifies me. No hyperbole, to me it’s horrific.
I would prefer it to standard burial practice of embalming. That is truly disgusting.
Although I would never choose to be embalmed - greatful to the embalmers and others who are speaking about about the new pathology white fibrous "blood clots" they are discovering in those who died, as well as in the living in cath labs.
https://laurakasner.substack.com/p/the-clots-are-still-being-found-a
It’s people … … meat!!
People will eat this stuff up, they'll LOVE it. It's too late - they have already been socially engineered for their whole lives. :(
Consider this:
The elites are watercraft. The richer, the bigger; all are buoyant.
The little people are the body of water. As long as the water is calm, watercraft have a pleasant cruise on their horizon.
Let's hope to stay alive until November 5th for the US general election. And in my beloved Chinada, for the ousting of the incompetent Liberal-NDP coalition. Let's take a moment to pray God.
I have a lot of exposure to the manipulations of the funeral industry and standard western-world burial practices through my wife’s work as a celebrant and researcher into caring and loving afterdeath care ( of both loving and dead) . I have no issue with terramation ( human composting) or aquamation. These are natural processes which will ease the pressure on land intensive cemeteries on a land base that is shrinking relative to compounding populations, and more importantly give the bereaved some meaningful remnants ( yes, even utilitarian) of their loved ones, to share around even, just as one can do with cremated remains. I have attended a free talk by one of the Seattle area companies and they are good people- the other one seems more interested in design than human relations but I haven’t met them. People
Are so squeamish about death and this is part of reclaiming it from the funeral conglomerates who have made it all very expensive- especially in America where big business has crept into every corner of life - and death. So though I understand your initial concerns, I think you will come to see it as more than just another “climate-friendly” staged alternative. Cremation is itself very wasteful
of energy. It’s far more “industrial”, and sanitized -if that’s your concern, than terramation. And it’s a very cut and dried process. I watched my mom get cremated and it was altogether an unholy experience in the messy concrete back room of a funeral home, done with the push of a red button…. Oh “thanks for the honour of being able to click my mothers body into instant oblivion. “