Thursday’s Trifles

Thursday’s Trifles are based on what I’ve read in our local newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden.

Dust to dust… Would you like to be diluted or freeze-dried?

For some reason Death seems to feature a lot in the Thursday’s Trifles. I’m sure it’s not an omen and I’m not morbid. I read an interesting story in, you’ll never guess, the Dagblad van het Noorden, about how you can be environmentally friendly, even after your death. Of course you’ll have to be taken to the place of your choice by bicycle (not by motorcycle, see the previous Thursday’s Trifles) to diminish your carbon footprint even more. But hey, that’s not what this article was about. It was about the following, and I’m telling this in my own words, so don’t get angry at the DvhN for being disrespectful or whatever.

so, Would you like to be diluted or freeze-dried?

Resomation and Cryomation are more environmentally friendly ways of removing your body from the Earth (perhaps I should add ‘after your death’ just to be clear) than cremation (they didn’t take burial into the equation, not sure if that would be more or less ‘green’. Sorry that I can’t enlighten you on that point. You’ll have to take a guess.)

Resomating a body means that it is placed in a bath of water and alkaline fluid, which is brought to a temperature of 180 degrees Celsius. A chemical reaction dehydrates the body and it decomposes in about three hours. Remains the skeleton and that is grinded to a fine dust. Voila.

Resomation produces significantly less CO2 than cremation and it uses less energy. Another benefit is that mercury and other harmful contaminants will not get into the atmosphere. (Mercury already is up there, isn’t it? Somewhere between the Sun and Venus?) Also the powder remaining after the resomation process is much finer and whiter than that what’s left after cremation, but if it was me, I’m sure there would be a big grey, or even worse – brown, blob in the pure white powder. I’ve never been able to keep white white. And I don’t think there are any coke-sniffers among my family and friends, one can never be sure though, so I’ll probably be safe and not end up in someone’s nose. The things one worries about…. Vacuum cleaners for instance.

(Which reminds me; one of our friends was home alone one evening and saw a huge, great big, elephant sized spider in a corner of the room. With no one around to rescue her, she grabbed the vacuum cleaner and sucked up the creepy crawly. Next evening, home alone again, she saw the same enormous spider in another corner of the room. She got the vacuum cleaner out and sucked up the spider again. Third evening, not home alone, there it was again! So her hubs came to the rescue, picked up the spider and put it outside. After which we came to the conclusion that spiders go ‘WHOOHOOOO!’ when they get sucked up and yell ‘AGAIN!’ when they get out. Vacuum cleaners are a spider’s roller coaster ride.)

Back to what this was about, being diluted or freeze-dried. Another option is Cryomation. Also fun! A lot colder though. Your body will be kept for 10 days at minus 18 degrees Celsius. After that it is immersed in Liquid Nitrogen until it’s brittle. A light shake and all that’s left of you is a little pile of powder. I hope no one sneezes. Cryomation is the greenest method of disposal. No CO2, mercury or dioxin emissions at all. And, according to www.cryomation.co.uk you get all the person back. ‘With traditional cremation techniques, approx 2.5% of the body is returned in the form of crushed calcified bone (ash), with Cryomation you get all the person back (less the moisture of course) in powder form and ready to be planted or interred.’

Now, that’s a relief! I’d like to be planted and let another one of me grow from my cryomated remains. How green can you get?

My parents live quite close to a crematorium. My father often mentions that he hopes the wind direction will be good, so that he will be home in time for dinner when he’s cremated.