MORTAL REMAINS

A person dies. The body is still there. Someone, somewhere, somehow must deal with the human remains.

Burial

Interment is a fine old tradition, as testified to by all the graveyards and cemeteries. Essentially, a burial is putting a body somewhere where it is likely to remain, usually undisturbed, into the foreseeable future.

  • In the ground
  • In a building: mausoleum, crypt, wall
  • At sea

FYI: Although, historically, graveyards were attached to churches and did not allow cremated remains, there is no functional difference today between graveyards and cemeteries.

In Ground Burial

The Mushroom Burial Suit, invented by Jae Rhim Lee, is threaded with mushroom spores to help the body decompose after burial.

In-ground burial usually means a cemetery and involves a funeral home/director who makes sure all requirements are met. It’s the sort of thing most of us are familiar with.

Except in California, Indiana, and Washington State, it is legal to bury a corpse on private property, although rules and regulation apply.

  • Obtain a permit for burial/transportation
  • Follow local regulations regarding zoning laws embalming, refrigeration, and burial depth
  • Get written approval. The local board of health and governing body may need to be notified in writing
  • The property must be under the control of deceased’s family

So called “green burials” are growing in popularity. Natural burial grounds, cemeteries, and preserves all bury without embalming, liners, or vaults, and use biodegradable containers, whether caskets, shrouds or nothing at all. A variety of entities own and operate these cemeteries: municipal governments, religious groups, individuals, nonprofits, for-profits, and others. Many use GPS units or non-native stone markers to mark grave sites rather than carved headstones.

Both some Native American and Jewish communities traditionally use green burials.

Indoor Burials

Some mausoleums are grander than others.

In buildings, sometimes special requirements apply.

Most mausoleums require that a licensed funeral director has embalmed the body. Caskets must meet specific size requirements, and sometimes must have a self-sealing air valve.

Mausoleums are usually located in a cemetery or other place dedicated to the dead. They shouldn’t be noisy areas and should be well-maintained.

If you’re building a family mausoleum on private property, you must abide by local zoning rules.

Crypts are typically smaller than mausoleums and are often located in religious buildings or cemeteries. Owners often reserve crypt spaces for notable people.

Where space is scarce, people often turn to ossuaries for skeletal burial. After temporary burial in the ground (typically for a pre-determined period, such as ten years), a caretaker exhumes a corpse and transfers skeletal remains to a final—much smaller—resting place. Sometimes the bones go into an ornamental container; sometimes people display them in elaborate (if macabre) artwork.

Burial at Sea

People are still buried at sea, not just out of necessity but by choice—a choice growing in popularity.

The US Navy offers free burial at sea for eligible families of service members and veterans. The Navy performs such burials for an average of 1,500 cremated remains and 15 casketed remains per year.

Anyone can choose a burial at sea. The US Environmental Protection Agency has parameters for such burials and require a permit. The burial must take place at least three nautical miles from land. The ocean waters must be at least 600 or 1800 feet deep, depending on location. And the presiding entity must take measures to ensure that the remains sink rapidly and permanently.

Burning

The word cremation stems from the Latin word ‘crematio‘, meaning ‘to burn or destroy by heat’.

The form of body burning most common in the United Sates today is the modern cremation process, defined as the burning of a corpse using a column of flames at a temperature of around 1000 degrees Celsius in a furnace powered by natural gas or oil.

After the cremation procedure is complete, what remains are typically gray fragments including ashes from the cremation container and bone particles. Pulverizing these remains is typically the last step in the process.

Besides putting the cremains in an urn or box for burial or a place on the mantle, they can be

Funeral pyre in Ubud, Indonesia

There are legal rules in many places that require a waiting period before cremation. This wait is also important for things like completing all the necessary paperwork.

Of all world religions, Islam opposes cremation the most strongly. Islamic teaching considers cremation to be an unclean practice.

Conversely, funeral pyres are an essential part of a Hindu funeral, which is why people still used traditional pyres in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Indonesia.

Water “Burning”

So called “water cremation”—aquamation—doesn’t actually involve burning. An alkaline hydrolysis machine contains a single air-tight and water-tight chamber. The chamber holds approximately one hundred gallons of liquid. A technician places the deceased into the chamber, then seals it. The contents may be subjected to heat (199 to 302 degrees Fahrenheit), pressure, and/or agitation (varying with equipment) to ensure proper cremation.

At the completion of the process, bone fragments and a sterile liquid remain. The bone fragments, now called cremated remains or hydrolyzed remains, appear pure white in color. Because the process uses water, the last step of the process is thoroughly drying the remains before pulverization.

Aquamation results in approximately 32% more cremated remains than flame-based cremation and may require a larger urn. On the other hand, it has less environmental impact (less air pollution and less energy needed).

On average, aquamation is slightly more expensive than traditional cremation because of the expense of the machines used. Typically, water cremation costs between $2,000-3,000, while flame cremation costs around $1,100-2,000. A traditional burial can cost between $7,000-12,000.

Exposure

The Lakota Sioux, Mandan, Cheyenne, Ute, and Navajo tribes often practiced tree burial, constructing platforms like a scaffold or tree to bring the deceased closer to the sky. Animals consume the body, bringing the life cycle full circle–similar to a Zoroastrian or Tibetan Sky burial.

Vultures at a Tibetan Sky Burial

In the Tibetan Sky burial, a celestial burial master chops the human remains into pieces and mixes them with barley flour. Then, a body carrier takes the mixture high into the mountains and leaves them for vultures. Everyone involved smiles and sings throughout the process to help guide the dead from darkness to the next stage. Tibetans see sky burial as a last gift to the universe — a way to show the insignificance and the impermanence of our earthly lives.

A Zoroastrian Tower of Silence holds human remains high above the ground, removing any chance of contamination. After carrion birds have stripped the bones clean of flesh, nusessalars (ritual pallbearers) transfer any remaining bones to an ossuary, mix them with lime, and allow them to disintegrate and return to the soil.

Preservation

Mummification, ancient as it is, is seldom practiced today. Natural mumification may occur, such as of people lost in the desert, but very few people choose mummification.

However, some villagers in Papua New Guinea still mummify their ancestors today. They believe that spirits will roam the earth after death unless their descendants maintain the body of the deceased. After death, family members place the bodies in a hut and smoke them until the skin and internal organs have desiccated. Then they cover the remains in red clay, which helps maintain their structural integrity, and placed the mummy in a jungle shrine. Villagers bring the bodies down from the shrine for celebrations, and loved ones visit the mummies to consult with their ancestors.

Sunflowers preserved in liquid silicone oil, by Marc Quinn

Cryogenics is, essentially, the opposite of mummification. The motivation is to preserve one’s body (or body part, typically the brain) in the hope that in the future, science will be able to correct or heal whatever the person died of, and the frozen person can live again. Today, liquid nitrogen tanks hold approximately 500 people globally for preservation, the vast majority in the United States. Around 4,000 people are on waiting lists of cryonics facilities around the world.

Useful as Well as Ornamental Remains

Some people plan before death to put their dead bodies to good use. Years ago, Mary Roach published Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Old, but still a great read!

Organ and tissue donation is well known. Just check the box on your driver’s license.

If you record your consent in the donation register, you can specify which organs or tissue you would like to donate. Several factors determine whether organs or tissue are actually useable for transplant, like their quality and whether or not a donor died in a hospital.

The donor must die in a hospital to be able donate organs. Organs need a supply of oxygen-rich blood to remain suitable for transplantation. After death, doctors hook up the donor’s body to artificial respiration to keep the heart beating, so that oxygen-rich blood continues to circulate.

By contrast, tissue donation is often possible if the donor dies in a non-hospital setting.

Not all organs and tissue types are suitable for transplant. Organs eligible for transplant are the heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, pancreas, and intestines. The skin, bone tissue (including tendons and cartilage), eye tissue, heart valves and blood vessels are transplantable forms of tissue.

Even if you are a registered donor, transplant teams may reject your organs or tissue after your death for medical reasons, for instance if you:

  • Had blood poisoning (sepsis)
  • Had an active viral infection
  • Acquired a tattoo or piercing in the 6 months before your death

There is no general age limit on donation. Although the heart of an 80-year-old person would be too old for transplantation, their skin or corneas might still be suitable.

Medical Education

“Muscles of the back: partial dissection of a seated woman, showing the bones and muscles of the back and shoulder”
Color mezzotint by J.F. Gautier d’Agoty, 1745/1746

Medical students use whole bodies for education. None of the tissue goes for transplant into a living person (which distinguishes whole body donation from organ donation). Physicians, EMS personnel, even dental healthcare professionals practice their skills through studying donated bodies.

Some specialized educational purposes require “fresh” bodies or parts. For example, plastic surgeons cannot use embalmed heads in the course of their education.

But typically, when a donated body reaches the end of its usefulness, it goes for cremation. Upon request, the family might then receive the cremated remains.

Science

Some medical conditions or circumstances of death can make a body unacceptable for scientific study. Depending on the nature of the research, these include:

  • Obesity/emaciation
  • Amputations
  • Unhealed open wounds
  • Contagious diseases

For example, real human bodies were/are necessary to calibrate crash test dummies accurately for impact tolerance. Similarly, the military studies effects of bullets and bombs.

Whole body donation is not possible after an autopsy has been performed.

The Body Farm

The Body Farm is a special case of donating one’s body for science. The University of Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center is commonly known as the Body Farm.

At the Body Farm, students intentionally leave corpses out in the elements to study what happens as the body decomposes. The placement might expose the body to air, submerge it in water, bury it in a shallow or deep grave, allow access to scavenging animals, or any other circumstance. The goal is always the same: to simulate crime scenes so that students can document decay and learn to identify future victims (or the time and circumstances of their death).

Just as you can become an organ donor when you die, you can also choose to donate your body to the Body Farm. Medical examiners who cannot identify a corpse or locate next of kin are also primary providers of bodies to the facility. Since the inception of the Knoxville, TN lab, body farms have sprung up in Illinois, Texas , Colorado, Illinois, Florida, and North Carolina—and even exist outside the U.S. Facilities have opened in Australia, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom!

Bottom Line: Something will be done with your mortal remains. If you care, make provisions before you die, and tell your next of kin of your wishes!

KILLING ON MY MIND

“Axes, chisels, whetstones and a black stone bracelet from a Neolithic Macedonian settlement at Olynthus, excavated by Mylonas in 1928. Archeological Museum, Thessaloniki, Greece”
Michael Greenhalgh

I can’t help it.  The evening news is full of local drive-by shootings and the massacre happening in Ukraine. I’ve been thinking about killing (not planning it, just considering the varieties of ways and means).

I’ve mentally pursued two paths: the category of killing and the method of killing.

Categories of Killing

Execution: the carrying out of a sentence of death on a condemned person within the confines of a legal system. Over time, many methods have been embraced. For more information, look here, here, or here.

  • Firing squad
  • Hanging
  • Electrocution
  • Lethal injection
  • Drawing and quartering
  • Drowning
  • Burning at the stake
  • Beheading (whether by axe or guillotine)
  • Exposure (on the ice, in the desert sun, adrift at sea)
  • Disembowelment
  • Crucifixion
  • Gibbeting
  • Keelhauling
  • Suffocation

Murder: the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. The methods are infinitely variable. 

  • Felony murder (in some jurisdictions):
    • Killing someone during the commission of a dangerous or enumerated crime.
    • The killer and also all accomplices or co-conspirators may be found guilty.
    • It doesn’t matter whether the killing was intentional or accidental.

Homicide: the deliberate and unlawful killing of one person by another. The point here is lack of premeditation or planning. Killing in the heat of the moment by whatever means would count. 

  • Justifiable homicide: the killing of a person in circumstances which allow the act to be regarded in law as without criminal guilt.
    • Examples include self-defense, capital punishment, and police shooting.
  • (Note: police shootings are not automatically judged  justifiable.)

Manslaughter: the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.  

  • Involuntary manslaughter: the person who commits the crime had no intention of causing or even expecting the possibility of death.

NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE

Different jurisdictions define these categories of killing differently, and some times interchangeably. If you want to be precise, know your local laws.

Euthanasia (a.k.a. mercy killing): the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or an irreversible coma.  Note: the practice is illegal in most countries.

Ritual sacrifice: offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or person.

Suicide: death caused by injuring oneself with the intent to die. 

Assassination: 

  • In law: any murder committed by an assassin, understood to be committed for money, without any provocation resentment given by the person against whom the crime is directed.
  • In dictionary.com: to kill suddenly or secretively, especially a prominent person; premeditated.

Wartime Killing

War: a state of arms conflict between different nations, states, or different groups within a nation or state.

Soldiers killing soldiers during a war between nations or states are generally considered justified and legal; incidental killing of civilians are generally considered collateral damage, regrettable but not subject to punishment.

Not all wartime killing is internationally acceptable.

The Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) and Geneva Conventions (1864, 1949 [pt 1, 2, 3, and 4], and 1977 [protocol 1 and 2] and 2005) focus on the protection of people not or no longer taking part in hostilities.  There is no single document in international law that codifies all war crimes. However, lists of war crime can be found in both international humanitarian law and international criminal law treaties, as well as international customary law.

  • War crimes (for a more complete list, see the United Nations, and the International Red Cross, and Wikipedia):
    • Intentionally killing civilians
    • Intentionally killing prisoners of war
    • Torture
    • Taking hostages
    • Unnecessary destruction of civilian property, often with the aim of causing starvation or death by exposure
    • Deception by perfidy
    • Wartime sexual violence
    • Pillaging
    • Use of chemical or biological weapons
    • Conscription of children into the military
    • Granting no quarter despite surrender
    • Flouting the legal distinctions of proportionality and military necessity  
  • Crimes against humanity:
    • Specific cries committed in the context of a large-scale attack targeting civilians, regardless of their nationality.
    • E.g., murder, torture, sexual violence, enslavement, persecution, enforced disappearance, etc.
    • Chemical, biological, and radioactive weapons are often considered specifically crimes against humanity in addition to being war crimes.
  • Genocide/ethnic cleansing:
    • The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.
    • Forced sterilization and sexual violence may be included here the aim is to disrupt or preemptively remove future generations.

War between groups within a nation or state = gang war: a “small” war between two (or more) groups feuding over territory or vendetta, not generally related to international legal standing.

  • Characterized by sanctioned and unsanctioned killing
  • Gun violence
  • Street violence
  • Joining a gang may be involuntary
  • Leaving a gang—and surviving—may be next to impossible
  • All gang activity is illegal in the US, although being a gang member per se isn’t

Methods of Killing 

There are far too many to list, but here are a few methods to think about.

  • No weapon (strangulation, broken neck or back, beaten to death with fists, thrown off a cliff, etc.)
  • Weapon of convenience (for example, branch, bookend, poker, scissors, axe—anything found at the scene)
  • Physical weapon brought to the scene (for example, cutting implement, gun, garrote, automobile, whatever)
  • Animal weapon (for example, dog, venomous snakes or insects, predatory animals such as bears, big cats, trampling by elephants or horses)
  • “Soft” weapon such as poison, gas, or medication overdose


Bottom Line: Killing is everywhere and always has been. Think about it! When—if ever—and under what—if any—circumstances would a character think/feel that killing could be acceptable. 

BETTER KNOW YOUR CHARACTER: POTENTIALLY DEADLY

How would your character respond to potential death? Throughout time, people have faced illnesses and situations from which they knew, expected, or feared they might die. The possibilities are nearly limitless. Here are a few examples.

Situations
  • Prisoner of war-torture-prisoner on death row
  • Slavery
  • Famine/starvation
  • Exposure to extreme heat or cold
  • Domestic violence
  • Lost in the wild
  • Having a stalker
  • Being old
Illnesses
  • COVID/epidemic/pandemic
  • Bubonic plague
  • TB/consumption
  • Smallpox
  • HIV/AIDS
  • Malaria
  • Seasonal influenza
  • Cholera
  • Rabies
  • Pneumonia
  • Infectious diarrhea
  • Ebola
  • Variant Creutzfeldt
  • Jakob disease
  • Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)
  • Leprosy
  • Cancer

Common Responses

A glance at these examples reveals that deadliness depends, not only on what but also on location, time period, and resources (medical and otherwise). As with so many things—all things?–responses vary. Here are some of the most common responses.

Denial

The label says nearly everything. The person, one way or another, says, “It just ain’t so.” Symptoms are ignored, dismissed as symptoms of something less serious. If actually diagnosed, the person thinks that a mistake has been made. 

For example, a woman attributes her shortness of breath to asthma or pneumonia. When referred for X-rays, she doesn’t follow through. One Sunday, when she doesn’t make it to church, other congregants find her unconscious and call the volunteer EMT squad and take her to the emergency room. The preliminary diagnosis is pneumonia. Five days later, she dies of lung cancer that has metastasized to her brain and other soft organs.

Resignation

This is, basically, what will be, will be. Not motivated to seek or follow medical treatment. There are some religious sects that chew medical treatment, on the belief that God will heal or not, “His will be done.” Often life is carried on as close to normal as possible, sometimes the person does as little as possible, waiting for the outcome.

Resistance and Endurance

The epitome of this response would be Senator John McCain, a war hero who survived years of imprisonment and solitary confinement.

Fight

For a disease, this person would actively seek treatment, the latest treatment, even alternative treatment. 

An example would be a man diagnosed with lung cancer who agrees to participate in an experimental trial. After two seizures in which he nearly dies of heart attacks, he leaves the trial, takes what ameliorating treatments he can find, and dies a year later, looking like an Auschwitz survivor.

For events such as exposure to heat or cold, it means physically fighting to survive, calling on whatever skills are available

Make the Best of It

This is a person who accepts the diagnosis, looks at the data on prognosis with various treatments, and moves forward. Here are a couple of examples of women with breast cancer.

  • The first had an optimistic outlook. She had a lumpectomy, radiation, one infection followed by another, a second surgery, followed by months of treatment for a persistent non—healing wound. During those treatments, she spent hours a day, five days a week in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber. A year after the original diagnosis, she was offered plastic surgery to repair the surgical scars. After a year of life bound by the medical establishment, she opted to redecorate instead: she had the scarred area tattooed. Eventually that original tattoo was expanded and entirely encircled her torso. She reveled in reclaiming her time and her body, and celebrated five years of without a recurrence.
  • The second woman, in her early fifties, had a less positive prognosis. There was evidence that the cancer had metastasized, so she embarked on a course of chemotherapy, every three weeks for months. Her approach to coping was to take a few days before each chemo treatment—while she felt the best—to check something off her bucket list.- Six years before her best friend’s body had been cremated, and she had promised to scatter the ashes in Arizona, so she flew from Massachusetts to Phoenix and fulfilled her promise. She went zip-lining in Costa Rica, spent time at the beach, danced on the beach at night and went skinny-dipping, went hang gliding off the cliffs in California. Not able to take a safari to Africa, she took her children on a private safari at the local zoo, went parasailing in the Bahamas, and got a tattoo—not to be seen in public
Try to Stay in Control

Sometimes the anxiety of the unknown and feeling out of control of one’s own time and body leads to an attempt to take control of the unknown by committing suicide.

Self Medication

Trying to avoid the reality, and/or pain, alcohol and/or drugs can make the wait time more bearable.

Questions for writers: What situation would—most reasonably—be potentially deadly for your character? And how would your character handle it?

SIX FEET UNDER—OR NOT (LEGAL EDITION)

“Fantasy Coffins” are currently a very popular method of burial in Ghana.

Death is a big deal, both in real life and in fiction. And where there is death, there is (usually) a body to be disposed of. Most of us have a pretty clear idea of what happens when someone in the family dies.

In my family, the body is taken from the hospital to a local funeral home. It is embalmed and displayed in an open casket, sometimes a half casket. Relatives and friends gather to reminisce and grieve together during viewing hours at the funeral home. A memorial service is held at the funeral home or the deceased’s church, according to religious preferences. Everyone is then invited to proceed to the cemetery for a brief graveside service and burial in a family plot.  Friends and family are often invited to gather at a relative’s home to eat, drink, and be memorializing.

Fluffy white collars are the standard uniform at medical schools today.
(The Anatomy Lesson by Dr. Sebastiaan Egbertsz by Aert Pietersz)

But families differ. My father-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law all donated their bodies to medical schools. There was a memorial service near the time of death. When the cremains (cremated remains) were returned to the family (maybe as much as two years later!), there was a graveside service when the ashes are buried in a family plot, attended by immediate family and intimate friends.

I’ve also been involved in scattering the ashes of two friends, one on Cape Cod and one on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In both cases, there was a memorial service soon after death and the ashes were scattered weeks or months later.

There is a growing trend in some places (Puerto Rico and New Orleans, for example) for “Extreme Embalming.” Rather than being laid out in a casket, the deceased is dressed and posed to be as lifelike as possible. These elaborate presentations are often the main attraction at huge, rowdy parties celebrating the deceased.

Party on!

In my personal experience, dead bodies have been disposed of in pretty unspectacular ways.

But Wait! There Are Options!

The first option comes before the body is actually disposed of: the body can be taken home until time for permanent disposal, as long as it can be kept cool, for example using dry ice.

WAYS TO DISPOSE OF A BODY LEGALLY

Artificial reef made with human ashes.

Watery Graves

  • Burial at sea, traditionally, meant a body wrapped in sailcloth and tied with weights to make sure it sank. Modern whole body burial at sea still occurs, and it involves the entire un-embalmed body being sunk in the ocean to great depths. Laws vary by jurisdiction.
  • Ship burial is a form of burial at sea in which the corpse is set adrift in a boat.
  • Reef casting, for example using Eternal Reefs, involves  mixing ashes with environmentally safe concrete. The resulting reef is placed in the ocean, where it becomes a habitat for sea life. Reefs range in price from $3,000 to $7,500, and there are locations for reef casting along the east and gulf coasts of the U.S.

Cremation And Its Alternatives

  • Traditional cremation is king, in the US and internationally. Although rare in the developed world until the late 19th century, it gained popularity following WWI. The body can be taken directly from the place of death to the crematorium. After the cremation, there are numerous options. Cremains can be scattered, buried, or neither (see below). 
  • Alkaline hydrolysis (aka water cremation): boiling water washes over the body constantly until the flesh, muscle, and organs liquefy. A chemical catalyst, usually potassium hydroxide, causes the decomposition. When complete, bleached bones and liquid human runoff remain.  After the body has been dissolved, the remaining bones are crushed into ash and returned to the family, much like the remains are returned after traditional cremation.  The system is 100% pollution free. It uses 1/10th the electricity of a traditional cremation. Because nothing is burned during the procedure, no toxic gases or air pollutants are produced, according to the Mayo Clinic, which uses the procedure in their anatomy department in Rochester, Minnesota. Check for current availability by state. For example, this option will be available in California in 2020.
Watch your loved ones explode!

Ashes To Ashes… Or To Something Else

  • Cremains from either method can be sent heavenward at a specified place in a biodegradable balloon. The balloon freezes at about 30,000 feet and bursts, releasing the ashes.
  • Cremains can be mixed with gunpowder for fireworks.
  • Bodies donated for medical education benefit physicians, dentists, nurses, and physical therapists. In addition, medical researchers use cadavers to develop surgical procedures. To the best of my knowledge, when the educational possibilities are exhausted, the remains are always cremated.
  • One can chose a facility that recycles heat generated by cremation to generate electricity.
  • Ashes can be launched into space if one has enough money and doesn’t mind contributing to space junk polluting the atmosphere.
Cremation art and jewelry from artists at Sands of Time
  • A portion of the cremains can be heated and pressed to make a diamond, costs varying by size, color, and cut of the stone. 
  • Turn human ashes into a vinyl record for about $3K. AndVinyly will use music or audio of your choice, with or without a photo on the cover.
  • Ashes can be incorporated into handcrafted glass art: jewelry, sun catchers, paperweight, etc., with or without ash showing.
  • Ashes can be stored in an urn or sculpture that looks like the dead person. 
  • Special tattoo techniques will allow a person to embed the ashes of a cremated loved one under their skin.
  • Artists can mix the cremains with paint or graphite to create portraits or murals honoring the deceased.

Buried, But Not Traditionally

  • “Burial” above ground is called immurement. For example, in New Orleans the high water level precludes ground burial; bodies are entombed above ground. But immurement occurs across the country in mausoleums.
  • Burial on private land is legal, but check local zoning laws. A funeral director is usually required to oversee the burial. If the person died of a contagious disease, embalming may be required.
  • “Green” or natural burial means the un-embalmed body is interred in biodegradable coffins or shrouds. There are no headstones, crypts, or even landscaping. Unlike a traditional burial, there are no plastic cushions, metal coffin parts, or embalming chemicals. Many green cemeteries even require metal tooth fillings, screws or plates on bones, pacemakers, etc. to be removed from the body.
  • Un-embalmed bodies can be buried in a suit made from mushrooms and other biodegradable organisms, allowed the corpse to become compost, with zero waste. You can get the suit or the shroud for $1500 or so and be buried in a biodegradable coffin or no container at all.
  • The remains of a cremated body (traditional or water cremation) might put into a biodegradable urn that is then buried with a tree seedling: dig a hole in a sunny place, fill with soil, wood chips, and the seedling. If you use Living Urn’s BioUrn, the urn comes with a proprietary growth agent and the seedling of your choice. Compatible trees include olive, birch, cherry, eucalyptus, and oak.
  • Promession—coming soon? Patented by a Swedish company and touted as an “ecological funeral,” it involves freezing the body with liquid nitrogen, vibrating it into small particles, freeze drying the particles, separating any metals, and placing the dry powder remains in a biodegradable casket in top soil.

Not Buried At All

  • Bodies donated to a body farm (aka outdoor forensic anthropology lab) for research purposes are sometimes not buried at all, but left to decompose naturally above ground. When they are buried, it’s likely to be atypical: for example, wrapped in plastic. The results of their studies help law enforcement agencies determine time and manner of death. They are also used to train cadaver dogs and search and rescue teams. There were seven body farms in the U.S. as of 2017.
  • Plastination is a process by which the body’s water and fat are replaced by plastics, which results in total preservation (i.e., the body doesn’t decay). Such bodies are often used in medical education, much as described above. Recently, hoards of people viewed the exhibit BodyWorlds.
  • Having the body cryonically frozen includes the possibility that, when medical science advances enough, the person can be thawed and revived.
  • Sky burials let animals eat the body. Dead bodies are placed on a mountain top to be eaten by scavenging animals or to decompose naturally. Traditionally practiced by some Native American groups using wooden scaffolding or tree limbs, it is currently common in parts of China, Tibet, Nepal, and parts of Northern India. Vajrayana Buddhism follow this practice because adherents believe the body has no use after death and might as well feed animals.
  • Composting a human body involves putting the body in a mix of wood chips, allowing thermophile microbes to decompose the flash and parts of the bones. At the time of this writing, in the U.S. it is legal only in Washington State.
Talk in class, and he may open the closet door.
  • Taxidermy is chosen by a few people: for example, the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who had his dead body stuffed. His head, however, was mangled in a botched attempt at New Guinea mummification techniques and is now stored separately from the body. In accordance with his will, Bentham’s stuffed body (with a wax head) was posed and kept in a closet at University College of London.

Historic Means Of Disposal

Roman Catacombs
  • Mummification
  • Dismemberment, in which the body is divided. Historically, this was a form of execution, but sometimes body parts were separated and disposed of individually.
    • Catholic saints were occasionally dismembered so that multiple holy sites could store a piece of the saint’s body, usually in finely crafted reliquaries.
    • Members of the Habsburg royal family were entombed in the Capuchin Crypt with hearts and heads often stored separately.
    • Several ancient catacombs, including those under Paris and Rome, separated skeletons after death and stored bones by type.
  • Mass graves resulting from war, genocide, or natural disasters.
  • Plague pits to try to stop the spread of disease.

Be Aware Of Restrictions

Jewish funeral law requires that every corpse be buried.
  • Various religions and cultures have funeral rites that govern the disposal of a body. For example, some require that all parts of a body are buried together. Among other things, members of these groups cannot be organ donors.
  • Many jurisdictions have laws regulating the disposal of human bodies. Although it may be legal to bury a deceased family member, the law may restrict the locations in which they can be buried. In some cases, burials are limited to property controlled by specific, licensed institutions.
  • In many places, failure to properly dispose of a body is a crime.
  • In some places, it is a crime to fail to report a death and to fail to report the disposal of the body.

Bottom Line for Writers: Before you kill off a character, consider how you’ll get rid of the body. When I started this blog post, I envisioned a few headings, each with a few bullets below. But it just grew! I hope it held your personal interest and/or generated some plot ideas!

Coming Next Week: How to get rid of a body illegally!

DEATH TRAP

Who doesn’t want people to be safe in their homes? Writers!  Injury and death are bread and butter for writer. But even if you aren’t a writer, you should read what follows to help protect yourself and your family from these dangers. I’ll start with the more innocuous or less common hazards. Consider the following.

Accidents

  • Extension cords:
    • Extension cords cause about 3300 residential fires each year, injuring or killing more than 300 people. If used continuously, insulation deteriorates fast. Even if not in use, extension cords left lying around can present a hanging or choking hazard for children.
  • Mothballs:
    • They are actually little balls of pesticide. They can cause a breakdown in red blood cells in children with certain genetic diseases (such as Glucose-6 Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency). In addition, exposure can lead to nausea, vomiting, dizziness, fatigue, headaches, and eye and nasal irritation in humans; kidney and liver damage in pets.  
    • Mothballs can be huffed for a brief high caused by the dichlorobenzene or naphthalene, either of which can lead to addiction, brain damage, and death.
    • NB, not as common in homes as they used to be.
  • Humidifiers: 
    • Water left to sit in the humidifier for long periods of time become rife with mold spores, fungus, and bacteria.
    • Ultrasonic humidifiers can be particularly dangerous, because they aerosolize and disperse as a mist everything that might be in water, including chemicals, minerals, bacteria, and mold.
  • Pressed wood: 
    • Products made from hardwood plywood, particleboard, or fiberboard are often made with formaldehyde. Prolonged exposure can cause watery eyes, burns ins eyes and/or throat, asthma attacks, and cancer in animals and perhaps in humans.
This little party crasher might be hanging around in your living room.
  • Carpeting:
    • New carpet can emit potentially dangerous chemicals  called volatile organic components. Any carpet can trap dust mites, pet dander, mold, dirt, etc., all of which are hard on respiratory systems.
  • Lead:
    • Lead poisoning occurs when lead builds up in the body, often over months or years. Even small amounts of lead can cause serious health problems.
    • Lead paint was commonly used in homes built before 1978. Toys and furniture made in countries with less stringent health safety protocols may still be covered in lead paint.
    • In very old houses (1920s and earlier), original plumbing may be made of lead, causing all the water coming into the house to be contaminated.
    • Children younger than 6 years are especially vulnerable to lead poisoning, which can severely affect mental and physical development. At very high levels, lead poisoning can be fatal.
  • Polycarbonate plastics:
    • This is most dangerous when used to make food storage containers. The problem is the degradation of the chemical bisphenol (BPA) when it comes in contact with water. Health agencies have gone back and forth on the dangers of BPA, but studies have linked it to disruptions in the endocrine system and ultimately to cancer.
  • Flame retardants, which seem like they are good things, actually have a downside: most contain toxins that have been linked to cancer, birth defects, diminished I.Q., and other problems.
  • Space heaters:
    • More than 25,000 home fires every year, especially those that don’t have an emergency tip-over feature and don’t have eating element guards. They are especially dangerous for children and pets.
  • Houseplants:
    • Many common varieties of houseplants, kept for air purification, beautification, or even medicinal purposes, are toxic to humans and animals in the wrong context. While most adults can be trusted not to eat the leaves, chew on the roots, or drink the water from random pots around the house, the same may not be true of children and pets.
    • Philodendron, peace lilies, oleanders, pothos, and caladium are among the most common houseplants, and all are poisonous to humans and pets.
  • Christmas trees:
    • The combination of dry winter air, hot light bulbs, and paper or wooden ornaments make for a perfect storm of conflagration. Add in tinsel, paper-wrapped boxes, and the tendency of many families to leave the tree lights on overnight, and it’s surprising that there aren’t even more house fires and deaths every year.
    • Fires caused by Christmas trees are among the most deadly house fires: approximately one out of every 34 home fires caused by a Christmas tree results in a death.
    • Decorative or scented holiday candles can be quite deadly as well. The top three days for fires caused by unsafe candles are Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day.
Asbestos removal is a very complicated process.
  • Other possibilities: 
    • Asbestos, carbon dioxide, radon, cuts, slip and fall accidents, carbon monoxide, unbalanced heavy furniture, stairs, throw rugs, icy walkways, mixing up the sugar and the rat poison…
I’m not sure if this counts as a home injury or a vehicle accident.

Leading Causes of Unintentional Home Injury

Children and the elderly are at greatest risk.

  1. Falls: more than 40% of nonfatal home injuries; more than one third of unintentional home injury deaths.
  2. Poisoning: most unintentional home poisoning deaths are of adults and are caused by heroin, appetite suppressants, pain killers, and narcotics. Other frequent poisons are amphetamines, caffeine, antidepressants, alcohol, motor vehicle exhaust gas, etc.
    • Children under 5 have the highest rates of non-fatal poisoning, often from exposure to substances not typically thoughts of as poisonous.
    • “Hidden” poisons can be found in household and cleaning products; personal care and beauty products; medicines, vitamins, plants, and lead paint.
  3. Fires/burns: the third leading cause of unintentional home injury and death. Death rate is highest among senior citizens and —again—children under five. A huge percentage of burns are from hot water. Depending on water heater settings, tap water can be hot enough to cause second-degree burns.
  4. Choking and suffocation: the leading cause of death for infants under the age of one. An average of one child a month dies due to strangulation from a window chord.
  5. Drowning/submersion: 80% are children under age 4, mostly in bathtubs and swimming pools. Because they are top-heavy, a toddler can drown in a bucket, in as little as two inches of water.
Two inches of water or six feet of bubbles!

Intentional Harm

People are more likely to be killed by people they know than by a stranger, and it will probably be in the victim’s home. 

As of 2017, 12.3% of homicide victims were killed by family members, 28.0% were killed by someone they knew other than family, and only 9.7% were killed by strangers. In 50% of cases, the relationship between the victim and the offender were unknown. Chances are, at least some of those were family or acquaintance homicides.

Approximately 39% of victims were murdered during arguments or as a result of romantic triangles. Another 24.7% of murders were committed in conjunction with another crime such as rape, robbery, burglary, etc.

More than 72% of the known weapon homicides involved firearms, primarily handguns.

  • Violence against women—Domestic violence is the #1 cause of injury to women, more than all the rapes, muggings, and car accidents in a given year.
    • One out of every four women in the U.S. will be injured by a husband/lover during her lifetime.
    • 64% of women killed each year are murdered by family or lovers.
  • Violence against children—Calls to Child Protective Services received 3-4 million reports of alleged abuse in 2011: 79% neglect, 18% physical abuse, 9% sexual abuse.
    • Babies under the age of one were assaulted most often. Of child victims in 2011, 82% were younger than four.
    • Children in violent homes have sleeping, eating, and attention problems.
    • Abused children are more withdrawn, anxious, and depressed than non-abused children.
Pictured above: not a neglected or abused child. Still, railings are a good thing.

Bottom Line For Writers: whether accidental or intentional, injury and death are fertile ground for tension, emotion, and upping the stakes. 

This definitely looks intentional.

BURIED ALIVE

 
Fear of being buried alive is called taphephobia.  Also known as live burial, premature burial, and vivisepulture, it’s been around forever—and is with us still!  Those buried alive often die of asphyxiation, dehydration, starvation, or hypothermia.  If fresh air is available, the buried person can last days.

 

This guy seems pretty happy about the situation.

Fear of being buried alive reached a peak in 19th century England.  More than 120 books in at least five languages were written about it, as well as methods to distinguish life from death.  (See below.)

 

Harry Clarke’s illustration for Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe

A Fine Literary Tradition
 
Consider Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” The Fall of the House of Usherand Berenice.  More recently, Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery includes Paul Sheldon’s Misery’s Return, a book within a book.

Farinata and Cavalcante de’ Cavalcanti in Level 6 of the Inferno, painted by Suloni Robertson

Dante’s Inferno references several classes of sinners punished with some form of eternal burial:

  • The Sullen in Level 5 are kept just below the waters of the River Styx, forever near drowning.
  • The Heretics in Level 6 are trapped in flaming tombs.
  • Murderers in Level 7 are covered by a river of boiling blood.
  • In Level 8 (where all types of fraud are punished)
    • Flatterers are encased in human excrement.
    • Simonists are buried head-first while flames burn their feet.
    • Fraudulent Counselors are encased in flames.
  • The Treacherous in Level 9 are buried in ice of varying levels depending on their sin.
Accidental or Unintentional Burial
 

It’s easier to handle if you bring a buddy along.

Reports of being buried alive date back to the fourteenth century.  In spite of hype and hysteria, as late as the 1890s patients have been documented as being declared dead and accidentally sent to a morgue or encased in a steel box, only to “come back to life” when the coffin is dropped, the grave is opened by grave robbers, or embalming  or dissection has begun.

 

“Life preserving coffin in doubtful cases of actual dead,” a safety-coffin model by Christian Eisenbrandt

During centuries when embalming wasn’t common practice, coffins were mostly for the rich, and rapid burial was the norm especially during major pestilences such as cholera, bubonic plague, and smallpox.  In these cases, rapid burial was an attempt to curb the spread of the disease.

 

The Great Plague by Rita Greer

Several medical conditions can contribute to the presumption of death: catalepsy, coma, and hypothermia.

 

How to Know When Someone Is Really Dead

 

Snoring is a pretty good sign. (This is actually the Fourpence Coffin flophouse, the first homeless shelter in London.)

Jan Bondeson, author of Buried Alive, identified methods of verifying death used by 18th and 19th century physicians.  (Personal reaction: shudder!)  The methods were any acts the physician thought would rouse the unconscious patient, virtually all imaginatively painful.
  • Soles of the feet sliced with razors
  • Needles jammed under toenails
  • Bugle fanfares and “hideous Shrieks and excessive Noises”
  • Red hot poke up the rectum
  • Application of nipple pincers
  • A bagpipe type invention to administer tobacco enemas
  • Boiling Spanish wax poured on patients’ foreheads and warm urine poured into the mouth
  • A crawling insect inserted into patient’s ear
  • A sharp pencil up the presumed cadaver’s nose
  • Tongue pulling (manual or mechanical) for at least three hours

 

The traditional Irish wake was (and is) an occasion for family and friends to celebrate the life of the deceased while watching the body for signs of movement.

Most agreed that the most reliable way to be sure someone was dead was to keep an eye on the body for a while.  To that end, waiting at least 72 hours from apparent death to burial was mandated.  In the mid-1800s, Munich had ten “waiting mortuaries” where bodies were stored awaiting putrefaction.  Each body was rigged to bells to summon an attendant should the corpse come back to life.

 

Waiting morgues, like this one in Paris, were often left open to the public for macabre entertainment

We presume that modern science has surpassed this sort of mistake, defining death as brain death.  Even so, earthquakes and other natural disasters often result in people being accidentally buried alive.

 

Victims of the 2018 tsunami in Nepal were not so fortunate.

But Wait: Sometimes People Are Buried Alive on Purpose!

From the Museum of Torture in Venice

Sometimes live burial is a method of execution.  Documented cases exist for China, German tribes, Persia, Rome, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine, and Brazil.

Confucian scholars were buried alive while their books were burned in 3rd century BCE

Interestingly, most of the laws demanding live burial as a form of execution were for crimes committed by women.  Men convicted of comparable crimes were more likely to be beheaded.

 

Vestal Virgins were sealed in caves for breaking their vow of chastity, as shown in this painting by Pietro Saja

When death was not enough, often a spike was driven through the body of the person executed by live burial, perhaps as a way to prevent the person from becoming an avenging, undead Wiedergänger.

 

In some parts of the world, live burial is still practiced as a means of execution.  Often, the victim is buried upright with only their head above ground.  In these cases, death is very slow and painful, often the result of dehydration or wounds caused by animal scavengers.

 

And sometimes live burials are another horrific act of war.

Codice Casanatense, a Portugese artist, recorded this scene of a Hindu widow being sent alive to her husband’s grave.

Very rarely people willingly arrange to be buried alive, for any number of reasons.  Sometimes it is to demonstrate their ability to survive it.  The Indian government has made voluntary live burials illegal because the people who try it so often die.  In 2010, a Russian man was buried to try to overcome his fear of death, but was crushed to death by the weight of the earth over him.

Four “lucky” contest winners

There are even performances in which people have an opportunity to be buried alive for fifteen or twenty minutes.  As a publicity stunt for the opening of the 2010 film Buried, a lottery was held for a few fans to have a very unique viewing experience.  Four winners were blindfolded, driven to the middle of nowhere, and buried alive in special coffins equips with screens on which they could watch the film.  (A 2003 episode of “Mythbusters” demonstrated that, even if a person buried alive was able to break out of a coffin, they would be crushed or asphyxiated by the resulting dirt fall.)

There is now a monument to Mick Meaney on Kilburne Street.

Irish barman Mick Meaney remained buried under Kilburne Street in London for 61 days in 1968, mostly to win a bet.  Tubes to the surface allowed air and food to reach him in his temporary, underground prison.

Parents are often unwillingly volunteered for vivisepulture on the beach.

Bottom line for writers: consider a character being buried alive—or being threatened with it—as a way to up the tension. 
 
Live burial isn’t the only attention-worthy aspect of dead bodies.  For more, check out books such as these.

OCTOBER IS FOR HORROR: VAMPIRES

Drawn by shamad

A friend recently told me that the horror villains we fear are subconscious stand-ins for things we’re afraid of in real life.  Vampires stand for a fear of change; zombies for a fear of crowds or strangers.  Fear of clowns is a sign you’re a normal, well-adjusted, perfectly rational person.

 

The anthropomorphic personification of EVIL!

Inquiring minds want to know!  I started with vampires—and I never got past vampires!

 

When I went online to learn what it means if we fear vampires, what popped up was an article by Ralph Blumenthal, “A Fear of Vampires Can Mask a Fear of Something Much Worse.”  He was writing in 2002 about villagers in Malawi believing that the government was colluding with vampires to collect human blood in exchange for food.

 

Mobs of vampire hunters killed dozens in Malawi

At the time, Malawi was in the grip of starvation, a severe AIDS epidemic, and political upheaval.  He cited Nina Auerbach, author of Our Vampires, Ourselves, to the effect that stories of the undead embody power ”and our fears of power.”

David J. Skal, author of The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror claims that a fixation on demons often accompanies periods of national stress.  “In times of social upheaval, the vampire asserts itself.”

 

 

In nearly every culture in the world, there is a legend of some variation of vampire-like creatures—the dead who reanimate and come back to feed on the living.  And there is general agreement that the roots of vampire legends are in the misunderstanding of how bodies decompose and of how certain diseases spread.

 

The Chinese Jiangshi hunts by “hopping” because of rigor mortis.

In an October 26, 2016 article in National Geographic titled The Bloody Truth About Vampires, Becky Little wrote, “As a corpse’s skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer.  And as internal organs break down, a dark ‘purge fluid’ can leak out of the nose and mouth.  People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse had been drinking it from the living.”

Paul Barber, author of Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality, made several telling points in the introduction to his book.  One is that there is little similarity between the vampires of folklore and the vampires of fiction.
Modern images of vampires are pretty stereotyped: fangs that bite the necks of victims; drinking human blood; can’t see themselves in mirrors; can be warded off with garlic, killed with a stake (or silver nail) through the heart; are aristocrats who live in castles and may be sexy.  This image was popularized by Bela Lugosi’s portrayal of Count Dracula in the 1931 film adaptation of the Broadway show of the same name.  Unlike Bram Stoker’s description of the monster in the 1897 novel Dracula as a repulsive old man with huge eyebrows and bat-like ears, Lugosi showed audiences a mysteriously elegant gentleman in evening dress.

 

 

The 1922 film Nosferatu (on left), though an unlicensed adaptation, portrayed the vampire as described in Stoker’s novel.

 

In European folklore, vampires typically wore shrouds, and were often described as bloated, with a ruddy or dark countenance.  Specific descriptions varied among regions: sometimes male, sometimes female, might have long fingernails, a stubby beard, the mouth and left eye open, a permanently hateful stare, red eyes, no eyes, etc.  Fangs were not always a prominent feature, and blood was generally sucked from bites on the chest near the heart rather than the throat.

Polish strzyga

But perhaps the most important theme of Barber’s book is that, lacking a scientific background in physiology, pathology, or immunization, the common response of ancient societies was to blame death and disease on the dead.  To that end, the interpretations they came up with—while wrong from today’s perspective—nevertheless were usually coherent, covered all the data, and provided the rationale for some common practices that seemed to be otherwise inexplicable.

 

A manananggal from the Philippines will send its detached head and torso to hunt.

Should you ever be pursued by a vampire, fling a handful of rice, millet, or other small grain in its path.  The vampire will be compelled to stop to count every grain, giving you time to escape.  I found no information on how vampires came to be associated with arithmomania, but it endures: remember The Count von Count on Sesame Street?

 

He’s the color of a rotting corpse, but cloth fangs are pretty harmless.

At this point, I realize that getting into methods of identifying vampires, protecting against vampires, ways to destroy vampires, and cross-cultural variations on vampirism is way beyond the scope of this blog.  Instead, I refer you to books such as this:

 

 

And should vampires show up in your dreams, according to DreamBible: the answers to all your dreams, pay attention.  Their appearance could mean many things.
  • Seeing a vampire in your dream symbolizes an aspect of your personality that is parasitic or selfishly feeds off others.
  • Alternatively, a vampire may reflect feelings about people you believe want to pull you down to their level or convert you to thinking negatively in a way similar to theirs.
  • To dream of being a vampire represents a selfish need to feed off others.
  • To dream of being bitten by a vampire represents feelings about other people using you or feeding off you and being unable to stop it.
  • Vampires may be a sign of dependence, problems with addiction, social pressure, or ambivalence.
  • A dream vampire might be telling you that you need to start being more independent and relying less on others resources or accomplishments.
  • To dream of killing vampires represents overcoming dependence on others.
  • Repeated dreams of vampires hovering over your shoulder and correcting your spelling or suggesting topics for research and expansion is almost certainly a sign that you are writing a blog entry about vampires.

The yara-ma-yha-who in Australia drains a victim of almost all blood before swallowing and regurgitating the body, which then becomes a copy of its killer.

Bottom line for writers: consider whether a vampire is a fit metaphor for your character.
 

The soucouyant appears in the Caribbean by day as a harmless old woman, but she sheds her skin at night to hunt as a ball of fire.

DEAD BUT NOT GONE

Holding onto your loved one after death

Making Death Mask Edit 4
Two men making a death mask, New York, circa 1908. Making_death_mask.jpg: Bain News Servicederivative work: AutoGyro at en.wikipedia [Public domain]
 

In various times, in various places, and for various reasons, people have—and do—cling to the dearly departed. Consider death masks, sarcophagi, grave markers. Or perhaps, more personally, the loved one’s name is carved into a garden bench or painted on a rock. Today, one can get a “Poetree” Cremation Ash Tree, a circular planter containing the deceased ashes that encircles the trunk of a young tree planted in that person’s honor, and fertilizes it. The planter can be inscribed to make a custom cremation cultivation.

 

Perhaps most frequently, people keep tokens of the deceased—something  owned, worn, or loved—a ring, a photo, an antique car, an autographed football, a piece of furniture or art.

 


Quilts made by Elsie Rich
Quilts made by Elsie Rich – Library of Congress

01/01/1996

 

A step beyond keeping a token is repurposing a token. One example would be making a quilt or throw from the dead person’s clothing. Beyond that, a piece of clothing could be framed, used to make a wine cozy, a pillow to hug or a stuffed animal for a grandchild.

 

As cremation becomes more popular, there is a whole industry in cremains urns. Using modern technology and pictures of the deceased, a head sculpture of the deceased can be created as a container for the ashes.

Cylinder Cremation Jewelry
Cylinder Cremation Jewelry from Stardust Memorials

In addition, there is a plethora of small containers for ashes, typically in the form of a gold or sterling pendant. Cremains are relatively voluminous. At least in theory, everyone who wants a bit of ash in a pendant could have it.

Please note: Catholics are forbidden from keeping the ashes of cremated loved ones at home, scattering them, dividing them among family members, or turning them into mementoes—i.e., they must be buried.

Victorian Hair Mourning Jewelry 2
Thayne Tuason [CC BY-SA 4.0]
And that brings us to mementos involving body parts. From the 1850s onward, hair art became popular for those in mourning: by cutting a lock of hair from the loved one after death and weaving it into designs for brooches, rings, watch fobs, bracelets, and necklaces, the bereaved could keep the dead one close.

 

In a more goth period of history, a loved one’s teeth can be turned into jewelry: molar rings, earrings, a necklace with 10 or more teeth on a silver or gold chain—even a denture bangle bracelet.

 

back tattoo

If the loved one had a tattoo, the tattooed skin can be removed and preserved in a frame suitable for display.

 

If actual, unchanged body parts are too ghoulish, consider transformation. Ashes can become many things.

 

Blue Spiral Teardrop Pendant with Infused Cremation Ash
Blue Spiral Teardrop Pendant with Infused Cremation Ash from Spirit Pieces

 

  • consider a titanium band with ashes, $183.20
  • glass cremation necklaces and pendants, $84 and up to a few hundred
  • similar processes can produce paperweights, tree ornaments, and suncatcher spinner, $99 and up
  • a cremation ash painting in which a loved one’s ashes are mixed into the paint for a portrait, landscape, or other painting

 

Diamond created from ashes
Diamond created from ashes by Tomorrows Traditions, photo: Roger Blake (CC BY 2.0)

 

  • several companies specialize in turning a loved one’s ashes into diamonds
  • as with natural diamonds, these can be rings, pendants, earrings, etc.
  • creation time ranges from 35 to 150 days
  • length of process is related to color: brown, red, pink, gray, blue, green, violet, purple, yellow, orange, and clear
  • the longer the creation time, the higher the price
  • price depends on clarity, color, carat weight, and cut
  • price includes making, cutting, and polishing the stone—no setting (which can range from $200 to $2200 and more)
  • so prices could be as low as $300 for a pendant of chips to more than $17,000 for a one carat white stone

 

Relic of Longinus
Relic of St. Longinus, photo: TrappistMonkStuff [CC BY-SA 4.0]
I’ve focused on personal, emotional reasons to hold on to parts of dead loved ones. However, Ward Hazell has identified 10 Reasons for Keeping Human Body Parts After Death. 

10) Relics of Catholic saints. Other religions have preserved Buddha’s tooth and the beard of Muhammad

9) War trophies. The most common one being scalps for Greeks and Native Americans.

8) Decoration. See above. Also bones carved to form ceremonial aprons in Tibet, bone sculptures, etc.

7) Medical science and education. Enough said.

6) Just plain weird. Find out about Jeremy Bentham, who directed his body dissected and the skeleton used to create an auto-icon still held at University College London.

5) To prevent death. In parts of Uganda, the blood and body parts of dead children are used to ward off disease and death and bring prosperity.

4) Made into objects. See above. Also, skulls used as drinking vessels many places.

3) (A kind of) Magic. Juju priests use menstrual blood, hair, nail clippings, body parts, and blood taken from childbirth to create spells which bind believers to the priest and do whatever they are told.

2) As room fittings. The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic, Our Lady of the Conception of the Capuchins in Rome, the chapel in Czermna, Poland, every inch lined with bones.

1) Proof of kill, often when a warrior was paid according to the number of kills made. For example, Samurai warriors cut off noses and sometimes ears of slain Koreans.

 

Poland - Czermna - Chapel of Skulls - altar with skulls 03
Chapel of Skulls in Czermna, Poland. Photo: Merlin [CC BY 3.0]
A while back I visited Cuzco, Peru. I was fortunate to see a skull altar in a private home. In Cuzco—and perhaps in other parts of Peru—people  take the skull of an ancestor or family member into their homes to keep and to honor. This may come from Inca influences. In any event, this particular ancestor alar was a shelf carved into the stone wall, surrounded by partly burned candles and dried herbs and flowers. People say the skulls are good company—draw love, memory and affection—and are expected to do important things around the house, such as watching over the house and making sure things go well for the family. They protect from thieves and bad energy—and they have a sense of humor.

 

BOTTOM LINE FOR WRITERSDead isn’t necessarily gone. Think outside the casket. 

Mrs. S. Nesselhauf in casket covered with flowers 1915 (3191580392)
Snyder, Frank R. Flickr: Miami U. Libraries – Digital Collections [No restrictions]

Embracing Death

embracing death
People have practiced death rituals as long as they have been people—and perhaps longer. Animals from elephants to crows observe the death of a comrade in particular ways, so why not pre-humans? Death is as important as birth—perhaps more so for writers!
embracing death: Bible, Shakespeare, Sophocles

 

Writing death is a fine old tradition, from the ancient Greeks (think Medea killing her children) to the Bible (e.g., Cane and Abel) to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

 

The human fascination with death, dying, death rituals and what happens after death is well documented. I advise writers to steep themselves in death to have the material at hand when it is needed. To that end, I recommend any or all of the following books.

Death: A History of Man's Obsessions and Fears
Death: A History of Man’s Obsessions and Fears

In this book, Wilkins vividly documents our worst fears: premature burial, posthumous indignity, bodily disintegration, being forgotten. The fear of being buried alive led to a proliferation of waiting mortuaries. Bodies presumed dead rested on zinc trenches filled with antiseptics and camouflaged by flowers. A complex system of cords and pulleys attached to fingers rang a bell in the porter’s lodge if the presumed corpse moved. Could a person be buried alive today?

embracing-death-michael-kerrigan
The History of Death

Kerrigan starts with ideas of an afterlife. He addresses the issue of the demanding dead, ancient funerary rites, death rituals, and death present and future. The least demand the dead make is dealing with the body, which may be left for animals to scavenge. But gifts ranging to flowers for the burial to daily feeding of the spirit of the departed are common around the world. The ultimate is a demand for a sacrifice, ranging from a goat in Benin to the Indian custom of the widow throwing herself on the funeral pyre. Consider the demands inherent in Memorial Day ceremonies. How might your character feel about the demands of the dead?

Earthly Remains
Earthly Remains

Chamberlain and Pearson tour preservation and decay: bog bodies, mummified bodies, frozen bodies and more. Wonderful pictures throughout add richness to the written word. What would a person do, suddenly confronted with one of these bodies?

When We Die
When We Die

Cedric Mims presents a broad view of the topic, and might be the single best resource. He covers everything from the definitions of death—and yes, I meant that to be plural—to causes of death, including suicide, euthanasia, and murder. Being stung to death by a scorpion happens about 1000 times a year, whereas more than 4 million a year die of accidents and violence. I especially like the section on the use and abuse of corpses. Writers can effectively exploit either the rare or the common. 

The Oxford Book of Death
The Oxford Book of Death

In addition to the more common discussions of definitions, attitudes, graveyards, and funerals, there is a section on revenants—i.e., whether the spirit of the dead can appear to the living, and if so why. Also, there is a section on epitaphs, requiems, and last words, for example, “Poorly lived, And poorly died, Poorly buried, And no one cried.” That alone could lead to a heart-wrenching story!

Remember Me
Remember Me

Last but not least, Remember Me is a fascinating display of modern variations on death and burial. She has a chapter on funeral mishaps, including the case of the tragic dove release. She talks about “green” burials to make bodies biodegradable, about turning ashes to diamonds, and being buried at sea. People have been buried in caskets shaped like boats, tomatoes, airplanes, and snakes—and there’s a whole subdivision on cars. If you prefer death lite, this book is for you!

 

With death, the first thought is likely to be emotional—sorrow, grief, mourning—or possibly glee, relief, or just acceptance. But as you consider death, remember the other aspects: the potential social, political, financial, or historical impact. And as Cullen says, “Death is a disruptive event; it interrupts planned road trips and imperils baby-sitting.” So don’t forget the inconvenience and irritation side effects. Be sure you are writing a well-rounded death.
 

Catrina 3
By Paolaricaurte (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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