An Altruistic Afterlife
from Rhapsody in Writing, June 2004
Unlike most newlyweds, who are, I imagine, fighting about which way the toilet paper should unroll, my husband Colin and I have actually talked about what we want done with our bodies after we die. We agree on at least one point: neither of us wants to be embalmed, casketed, and planted. And both of us, at least originally, planned for a simple cremation and a memorial service if our survivors wished to hold one. “Just spread my ashes over the water,” Colin told me—honestly, I think. Although he may have been trying to make me feel guilty for denying him the boat he so desperately hoped to buy. “If I can’t have my own 36 foot cabin cruiser,” he seemed to be saying, “at least my ashes can dance on the waves with the dolphins and jellyfish.”
I once planned for cremation, too, until I joined a carpool, started eating organically, and began reusing old toothbrushes for household cleaning projects. Somehow the environmental influence that overpowered the rest of my life led me to believe that recycling my body was a better option than just burning it up and having the ashes strewn around Whatcom Falls Park or stationed in a box on someone’s mantel. When I read about the so-called Body Farm, I was elated—a way to recycle myself and help a worthy cause. “Just ship me to Tennessee when I die,” I told Colin. “I want to donate my body to science.” “You want to do what?” he asked. And then he laughed. But I was dead serious.
The “Body Farm,” as it has been dubbed by novelists and movie makers, is the nickname for the University of Tennessee’s Anthropological Research Facility—a three acre plot of land, fenced and neatly privatized with shrubbery that serves to train college students hoping to become forensic anthropologists. Founded by Dr. William Bass in 1971, it is the only research facility of its kind anywhere in the world: the only location where cadavers are routinely strewn on the ground, submerged in murky ponds, stuffed in suitcases and trunks, hung from gallows, or buried in shallow graves and later studied by earnest learners in protective clothing. Led by instructors, students at the Body Farm investigate the impact of the elements on bodies in order to determine the cause and probable time of a person’s death. Insect activity, including the age and amount of fly larvae (maggots), as well as the rate and time of putrefaction of the flesh, offer important clues that can be essential in solving murders. Experts from the Body Farm have been asked to analyze remains from mass graves in the Balkans, solve mysterious homicides around the world, and train FBI agents.
Of the more than 200 bodies that have been used at the Body Farm in the past thirty years, some were unclaimed or unnamed bodies, and some were individuals who donated their bodies vaguely to “science.” An increasing number are people who specifically asked that their remains be given to the Body Farm when they died. I’m one of them. Less than a year ago, I downloaded the University of Tennessee’s Body Donation Document, filled it out and had it witnessed by my husband, Colin, and our friend, David. The secretary at work notarized it—only after fixing me with a long, penetrating stare and an impressively acrobatic eyebrow raise. I filled out the required Body Donation Questionnaire—height? weight? blood type? handedness?—and Colin took two photos of me for inclusion in the donation packet. I made some photocopies, licked a few stamps, and sealed my eternal fate. Then I crossed it off my to-do list.
The American funeral industry, with its spendy coffins, costly preparations, and assortment of expensive, “traditional” rituals, is the antithesis of post-life environmentalism. Embalmers drain bodily fluids and replace them with chemicals (which, despite industry claims, is not required by law in any U.S. state) that do little to prolong decomposition and eventually seep out of the body and poison the earth. Caskets, typically, are made of either metal or processed wood that degrades slowly or not at all, take up thousands of acres, and waste resources. The primary function of these “services”? To prepare dead bodies for public viewing in open-casket funerals—to put remains on display and allow for so-called “closure”—a supposed part of the grieving process for which there is little empirical evidence. In fact, many claim that the familial care and preparation of a loved one’s remains are more therapeutic rites of grieving than a funeral prepared and conducted by strangers. It seems wasteful and irresponsible to bury my remains when another use could be found for them.
In The American Way of Death Revisited, Jessica Mitford reveals that the majority of funeral homes in the United States are now operated by a few multi-national conglomerates, Service Corporation International, Loewen, and Stewart, which are basically the McDonald’s, Burger King, and Carl’s Jr. of the death care industry. Folks who are persuaded to entrust their remains to the care of embalmers and funeral directors succumb to pressures exerted by this powerful triad to invest in silk-lined, mahogany coffins—the SUVs of the afterlife—and extend wasteful consumerism into their graves. The typical cost of a funeral, including embalming, casketing, and ceremony, along with the cost of a cemetery plot, is now about $8000—and prices get jacked up every time one of the big boys buys another locally owned funeral parlor. I, personally, don’t want my survivors burdened with a multi-thousand dollar bill for a load of non-biodegradable junk; if they want to spend that much money on me, they should do it while I’m still around to enjoy it.
Why don’t I just select one of the other eco-friendly post-death alternatives? It’s still possible to donate one’s remains to “science”—in which case, one’s corpse typically winds up as the featured guest on a metal slab in a university anatomy class—or to be cremated and have one’s ashes strewn about the countryside to mingle with the butterflies and daisies. Another alternative for someone who doesn’t want to be planted in a box is the environmentally friendly “green burial,” currently offered by two U.S. organizations. Families can have their loved ones interred in a park-like setting on land that is maintained naturally, without fertilizers. According to Memorial Ecosystems, which manages the “Ramsey Creek Preserve” outside the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western South Carolina, “Memorial nature parks are memorial parks specifically designed to save and restore significant wildlands. These parks will be a convenient, economical, beautiful, [and] environmentally responsible.” Besides green burials, Eternal Reefs of Decatur, Georgia, will incorporate your ashes into a concrete ball and sink it off the coast of Florida, where it will become the foundation for a new coral reef, a choice already made by over 100,000 people. And Eternally Yours Memorial Art will use your cremains to create an original painting for your loved ones to enjoy for anywhere from $950 for a large, deluxe painting to $350 for a small, standard painting.
I like forests. I like coral reefs. And I like art. But I’m looking for a little more adventure in the after-life. I’m something of a competitive, Type A, obsessive-compulsive, overachieving multi-tasker. Why just be dead when I can be dead AND accomplishing something while? You may have a to-do list for next week, but I already have a list of stuff I’m gonna do after I die. Sure, it’s not quite the same as driving, talking on the cell phone, listening to Fresh Aire simultaneously, but I can still achieve a great deal after I’m dead. Donation to the body farm doesn’t preclude organ donation, so my eyes, kidneys, heart, lungs, and (possibly) my liver can be used by a car accident victim or diseased person. The rest of my body will be used to help forensic experts, including anthropologists, entomologists, botanists, and scores of others, maybe for years (depending on whether they encase me in concrete or stuff me in a car trunk). AND, after my body has been consumed by insects and animals, researchers will still be able to use my skull to practice facial reconstruction and photographic superimposition, and the rest of my skeleton will be used to study the effects of various weapons and elements on bones. Depending on what discoveries are made through the use of my corpse, it’s possible I’ll actually accomplish more after I’m dead than I did when I was alive.
I’ve always been fascinated with forensic science, traceable to the sixth grade Stephen King horror novel reading frenzy that seemed to be part as much a part of puberty in 1982 as wearing bell-bottomed James Jeans and too much black eyeliner. Since then, fueled by late nights alone watching X-Files and too many true crime books, I’ve generated a mild obsession with unsolved murders, listening eagerly to the headlines that pulsate daily with mysterious disappearances and deaths: Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy, JonBenet Ramsey. I’m a sucker for every one. As much as these mysteries engage and taunt me, I imagine how the exasperating, unyielding search for answers must torment their families. I’d love to quit my day job and fly to Quantico for a new career with the FBI, but there’s been objection to that from my husband, who I think has just seen Silence of the Lambs one too many times. If I can’t help solve them while I’m alive, I might as well volunteer to help after death. Maybe mine will be the cadaver that surrenders the clue that ends the quest and offers some relief for a family like this. Maybe mine will be the body that finally reveals the identity of JonBenet’s killer or chases O.J. off the golf course in shame.
When I told my mother about my plans, she scrunched up her nose and said. “Ewww.” “Are you sure?” she asked. “That’s really what you want? Well…all right.” My husband was happy that I’d chosen an earth-friendly death, and he couldn’t care less about maggots consuming me. He was more worried about the money. “Now, wait a second,” he said. “I have to pay for you to give your body away?” It’s true that the families of donors who die more than 200 miles from the Body Farm are responsible for shipping the remains, but it is still less expensive than a traditional burial. When I called American Airlines for an estimate, she guessed that it would cost about $508 to fly a cadaver from Seattle to Tennessee, “Plus the cost of the Ziglar Unit.” “The what?” I asked. “It’s a fiberboard box that the Jewish people use—and other people who don’t do the embalming and stuff,” she explained.
With the added cost of the Ziglar Unit, as well as the packaging of the body, the price of donating myself increases slightly, but it still doesn’t compare to the cost of burial. When I relate this to Colin, he was still concerned. “Can’t I just drive you there myself?” he asked. “I don’t know,” I told him, a little miffed. “I don’t know what the laws are regarding inter-state cadaver delivery.” I envisioned the Bundren family from Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying transporting the body of wife and mother Addie across Mississippi. I imagined Colin hoisting my corpse into a Hefty bag, loading me into the Subaru, and heading east on I-90, a cloud of flies buzzing above the ski rack. He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Five hundred and eight bucks is kind of a rip-off. And with that extra thing, that Ziegfried--” “Look,” I said, interrupting. “I’ll find out if you can get frequent flyer miles for it. Will that make you happy?” He just smiled.
Even if they have to haggle with the airlines for a better fare, or rent a refrigerated van, my survivors will be doing everyone a favor if they ship my remains off to the Body Farm, just as I’ve instructed, and suspend their concerns about whether they’re getting a better bargain than they would if they incinerated or cremated me. I don’t want my cremains tossed into the wind like a cloud of dandelion spores. I don’t want my body deposited somewhere and labeled like a rare species of flower or petrified fish with a costly brass plaque. If my survivors want a way to remember me, maybe they could name a library in my honor (one with a large true crime section, I hope) or establish a scholarship for aspiring forensic students. Either way, my legacy lives on, regardless of where my skeleton resides.
Cathy Belben, currently alive and well, lives and writes in Bellingham, Washington.
Carlson, Lisa. Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love. Hinesburg: Upper Access,
Inc. 1998.
Mitford, Jessica. The American Way of Death Revisited. New York: Alfred a Knopf.
1998.