It’s illegal to have your remains decomposed naturally (or one of those cool new methods like composting or alkaline hydrolysis). You’re legally required to be stuffed full of embalming chemicals and buried in a box, or cremated, polluting the air and wasting bioavailable nutrients, to be turned into high pH, high sodium ashes.
I think this is because the laws were mainly created by Catholics (this is Louisiana, where we have parishes instead of counties), and people are still too superstitious to make sense.
Catholics weren’t really allowed to be cremated until Vatican 2, in the 60s.
We have a lot of weird hangups on dead bodies and disposal. I wish I could just be buried under a tree when I die.
This is what I want. It’s a chance to continue living, even after my consciousness has passed. My death will feed new life, and I find that beautiful.
A friend of mine has his will or whatever say in regards to his body “gut me like a fish”. And I’m with him on this. Harveat whatever organs are still usefull then just use the rest of me as fetilizer. No need for my body to stop being useful to someone somewhere or hell even being useful to the rest of nature.
I just want to be tossed in the woods and let nature do its course. No embalming, no wasting my ATP with cremation…
What better legacy than to let your body feed into a food web, and have your energy continually transfered between organisms?
Naturally recycling our bodies is kind of a beautiful process of energy exchange, and I think it should be celebrated instead of being so uncomfortable with death as a society that we want to spend all this unnecessary time and money trying to preserve a dead body and sealing it in concrete tomb. It’s just dumb…
I just want to be scavenged and fertilize the damn soil. Just toss my limp ass in the woods when I’m dead.
