Often, we don’t start thinking or talking about this until we are faced with the actual need for burial services. The good news is, we have more options now than we’ve had in the past 50 years. So there’s no time like the present to consider how you want to complete the cycle of a particular life.
The multimillion-dollar funeral industry in North America is, of course, still going strong, but not everyone wants to have traditional caskets and headstones, and there are now a growing number of people considering, demonstrating and offering other options. Here are a few:
- Check out what a small community in Australia is doing
- People in North America are trying to take command of this passage of our lives as well
- Green Burials
- Home Burials
- “What is the single most prevalent fear for humans? Death. And what is the single most healing act available to humans? Love. In caring for the dead, we love. As an act of love, we are able to transform our overwhelming fear into something that fills us with awe.” Visit http://www.crossings.net/ for more info.
- A New Kind of Compost
- “Armed with a prestigious environmental fellowship, Katrina Spade, a 37-year-old Seattle resident with a degree in architecture, has designed a building for human composting that aims to marry the efficiency of this biological process with the ritual and symbolism that mourners crave.”
- Trading Tombstones for Trees
- This Italian company is proposing a new way to mark the passing of a loved one and redo the idea of a cemetery
