Steve Lyons

By Steve Lyons

When you die, how do you want your kin to dispose of your body?

Anthropologists believe that early humans disposed of their dead the same way they got rid of animal carcasses, by leaving them out in the open for scavengers to knaw on or drag away, or by putting them in the refuse pile. At one excavation in Germany, archaeologists found that early Neanderthals carried the bodies of fallen comrades to an isolated cavern at the back of their cave and unceremoniously tossed the bodies into a deep crevasse there.

But somewhere along the line, men and women made a connection with a life beyond the physical: later Neanderthals and early Cro Magnons began to lay their deceased on the ground in the fetal position (suggesting rebirth), sprinkle them with ochre powder, and leave tools and food offerings nearby. Pollen remains indicate they placed flowers and medicinal plants on the corpse before covering it with dirt.

We’ve come a long way since then, and around the globe differing cultures have come up with varied ways to honor the spirits exit and to deal with the earthly remains.

Tribes in Malaysia, for example, boil the cadaver until the flesh comes easily off the bones. The flesh is burned. The bones are then wrapped in cloth and placed in a special spot in the rafters of the house. The families believe the spirits of their ancestors stay close by to protect and bless them.

Zoroastrians, followers of a religion popular in western Asia, and Tibetans, routinely give their dead a “sky burial,” a practice also known as excarnation. If you saw the movie Kundan, you’ll remember the scene in which Tibetan men, high on a rocky plateau, swing meat cleavers to hack apart the body of the recently deceased father or the Dali Lama as a flock of impatient vultures look on. In the traditional sky burial, a man cuts open the belly of the cadaver and with bare hands scoops out the viscera and sets it nearby. A few deft slices of the knife cut out the recalcitrant organs--lungs, heart, and liver. The bones and flesh are hacked into manageable pieces, pounded between rocks until they turn to paste and then, amid prayers and ritual, all is fed to the waiting birds. To have one’s body devoured by birds is believed to help the spirit soar up to the heavens.

Here in the west, the most common burial practice is to drain the blood from the corpse, and replace it with preservative fluids to slow down the natural decomposition process, dress up the body, and then to put it into a finely crafted, almost indestructible box and bury it six feet in the ground on a plot of land laid aside solely for boxed corpses.

The other option is to burn the body. Of course cremation has been around a long time, too, and has been used the world over, from the funeral pyres for saints and beggars along the sacred Ganges in India, to Viking princes consumed by the flames of the burning ship they once commanded, to the state of the art crematoriums found today in every major city in the United States. About 15% of Americans choose this option.

Traditionally, professionals deal with human remains in the U.S. These experts have the skills, knowledge and connections to facilitate an internment or cremation, arrange the ceremony, and do the paperwork. It’s no surprise most people go this route, particularly when the death is unexpected. However, you might be surprised to know that, if you live in unincorporated Delta County, Colorado you have other, do-it-yourself options.

When I called the Delta County Health Department to find out what those options are, they faxed me a document entitled Human Internment. If you have your heart set on having your boiled bones resting on that special shelf in the loft of your child’s house, or would like our local ravens and eagles to devour your flesh on a rocky peak overlooking the North Fork Valley (Audubon members?), you’ll be happy to know that the Delta County Health Department regulations allow it. As a matter of fact, there are no specific standards for body preparation, burials or cemeteries. The department wants to avoid, as much as possible, interfering with the deceased’s wishes. The only requirement is that you obtain a burial permit from the State’s Vital Statistics Office.

“Dig a hole in the yard; put my body in it, unembalmed and without a coffin; cover it with dirt...and plant a vegetable garden," my wife told me when I asked her what she wanted done with her cadaver. She spoke half in jest and half not, but according to the Delta County Health Department, I can honor her request as stated.

The regulations allow you to bury your dead on private property; you need not treat the corpse with preservatives or use a coffin or any other type of container. As far as the department is concerned, speedy decay is the healthy option. The department has only the one already mentioned requirement, but it does make several recommendations--and they are pretty much common sense.

Graves must be at least 100 feet from any spring, well or other drinking water source, and four feet above ground water, for obvious reasons. They ask that you cover the body with at least four feet of compacted soil. Dogs, coyotes and other scavengers have a keen sense of smell. If Rover trots up to your neighbor’s porch with a dangling human arm in his jaws, not only will it appear disrespectful of the dead and initiate a lively dialogue between you and your neighbor, it could also be dangerous if the deceased died of a communicable disease.

The department also recommends you place a gravestone or some other kind of permanent marker over the grave and indicate the spot on legal documents. Otherwise, years down the line, someone digging for a new water pipe might come up with a shovel full of bones, freak out and have the yard wrapped with crime-scene tape. The ensuing investigation would not be the best use of tax dollars.

Cremation eliminates the above problems, and the Delta County Health Department gives residents a fair amount of leeway for do-it-yourself funeral pyres on private property. They have two major concerns. The first is that the cremation site be as private as possible. If too close, the smell of burning flesh, and particulate fallout, might cause neighbors distress.

A personal anecdote illustrates the other concern: having adequate BTUs: Years ago, during my traveling days, I was bumming around northern India and one morning stumbled upon a secluded glade on a river bank outside of a small mountain town. In the clearing at the edge of the woods lay a large concrete slab with foot-long pieces of metal bar sticking vertically out of it. The steel bars formed a coffin-shaped rectangle. I was trying to puzzle out what it was used for when six swarthy men dressed in an assortment of dhoti’s and vests, loose cotton pantaloons and open shirts, with turban-like hats of swaddled rags upon their heads, walked single-file down the trail. The two leading men carried a corpse wrapped in white muslin upon their shoulders, the following four carried firewood. They lay their wood in the rectangle--the metal bars held it in place--and set the body on the wood. The deceased must have been a beggar, since no family members were present and the men worked with the impassive, efficient movements of those accustomed to handling the dead.

Since I was the only other person present, the headman, a big fellow with a thick, droopy black moustache, asked me if I would like to take part in a small ceremony to honor the departed soul. I agreed. Amid our chanting prayers the headman touched his lighter to the kerosene--soaked logs. The flames spread and as evening darkened the sky, we sat on the grass and watched the pyre burn.

Out of curiosity, I returned the next day and found one man still tending the fire, occasionally using a long pole to push burning logs that had fallen away back up against the skeleton, which was now fully exposed. Blackened patches of skin clung to the whitened skull, as it did here and there, along with globs of smoldering flesh, on the bones of the legs, pelvis, arms and ribs. The ribcage, somewhat protecting the organs within it from the flames, held a puddled mass of soft, lumpy, gray brown glop that bubbled like a simmering stew and gave off a nauseating smell. I guessed it would take at least another half-day and more fuel to finish the job. It was during the monsoon season and the wood must have been damp.

You get the point: you need lots of heat and ample time to complete a cremation. Be sure to do a clean and thorough job: the Delta County Health Dept. warns that on-site cremations could become a Public Nuisance. If that happens they’ll have no recourse--they’ll be forced to regulate.

A modern crematorium furnace can reduce a body in two to three hours. But to call what is left "ash," although popular, isn’t accurate. “Cremains" is the proper term and it’s composed mostly of bone fragments. Crematoriums pulverize the bones with a machine. For the do-it-yourself cremation, you’ll need to crush the bones enough so that no identifiable body parts remain. Putting them in a cotton sack and beating them with a sledgehammer would probably do the job.

You can do just about anything you want to with cremains. The two most popular choices are to put them in an urn, or to scatter them at a spot that was important to the deceased. At my father’s service, my mother, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and I, each took a handful of his cremains and scattered them as we saw fit. Some spread them around the base of trees my father had planted, or in the vegetable garden he had tended, or threw them to the breeze above the waves and sandy beach of Lake Michigan behind the house (cremains don’t blow away in the wind, as most people assume, they are heavy and drop quickly like fine gravel).

There are other ways to deal with cremains, like the man who had his put into the hollowed horn of a trophy rhino he had shot and stuffed, or the couple who had the cremains of their daughter put into a teddy bear made out of the daughters clothing. Entrepreneurs are picking up on what may be a new trend. One company offers blown glass spheres in which cremains form swirling patterns. Another offers hikers a walking stick hollowed to hold remnants of the loved one.

An Oregon-based company makes yard-sized sculptures of bears and mountain lions, as well as rocks and boulders, to serve as urns. For the ecologically minded, another company uses the cremains to build a living reef. They mix the cremains with a special concrete, which is textured to attract marine life, and drop the conglomeration in specially designated spots in the ocean, along with the remains of like-minded others, and it becomes part of a thriving ecosystem of mollusks, crustaceans, fish and turtles. The company offers relatives videos of the reef as it matures.

Me, I like the way the ancient Galatians, a Middle Eastern culture, did it: They mixed the cremains with food and wine and held a feast. They felt it was an honor and a sacred duty for the family and friends to eat the dead.

Oh, by the way, would you like an invitation to my farewell party?