"I hope you rot in your grave."

Forgive the ostensibly rude title to this entry. Who would have thought that such a comment could actually be wishing someone well. Recently I commented to Tom that come my time, I wish I could be buried naked, perhaps covered by a simple white sheet, and placed right in the ground. If any kind of coffin is deemed absolutely necessary, then I would like one as plain and cheap as possible. I have long felt that the way we prepare the dead for their eternal rest in this country is excessively elaborate and morbid. All that formaldehyde, the makeup and stiff clothes, the puffy silk pillowing of the casket and the cement vault. Not to mention the expense and the environmental impact. It is enough to make one choose cremation. Yet, cremation, while appealing in its metaphorical suggestions of purification and liberation of the spirit from its corporeal restraints, does not speak to my cultural antecedents as someone raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Besides, while it may sound lugubrious, I would like to end up as a skeleton. Now there is a movement promoting just what my heart desires as far as the eventual disposal of my remains is concerned. As featured in the November issue of Ode Magazine, Cynthia Beal of the Natural Burial Company offers a more natural and ecologically sound option for the after life of our bodies, one that really is an after-life this side of the eternal divide. Clean and formaldehyde-free after my death, and placed in a biodegradable vessel, I will "sequester carbon, breathe out oxygen and feed the soil web." I will "return to the earth to become a tree - or bush or meadow - and create a habitat for animals and living things." This seems a far more fitting end for my bodily remains than being forgotten in a corner of a cemetery someday. And if there are those who wish to participate in some small ceremony to see me off, let them gather not in the stuffy confines of a funeral home, but in the natural cathedral of nature. Read more at Odemagazine.com/beatree.