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Klara Tammany's mother didn't want a typical American funeral. No embalming, no metal casket, not even a funeral home.When she died after a long illness a couple of years ago, family members and friends washed and dressed her body and put it in a homemade wooden casket, which was laid across two sawhorses in the dining room of her condo in Brunswick.Then, for two days, friends and family visited, brought cut flowers, wrote messages on the casket's lid and said goodbye."We had this wake, and it was wonderful," Tammany said.The home funeral is part of an emerging trend that some believe will change the way Americans deal with death. Send-offs like the one Tammany planned with her mother are called "green" funerals because they avoid preservative chemicals and steel and concrete tombs, all designed to keep a body from decomposing naturally.After the wake, Tammany's mother was cremated and her ashes buried near the family's camp in Monmouth.Another alternative that is just emerging in Maine is natural burial in a green cemetery: wooded graveyards that ban chemicals and caskets that won't easily decompose.Two such cemeteries are now preparing to do natural burials in Maine, in Limington and in Orrington. There are only about six operating green cemeteries in the United States, but many more are planned, according to those tracking the trend."I think it's a tidal wave that's coming," Tammany said. "The cultural way of dying and taking care of the dead is changing."Next weekend, green funerals will be the subject of the annual meeting of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maine, a nonprofit group that provides information about alternatives to modern funerals. Mark Harris, author of "Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial," will be the keynote speaker."I think it's going to change the funeral practices in our time. The demographics are just too strong," Harris said during an interview last week, referring to the baby boomers."This is the generation that brought us the first Earth Day ... that brought organic food into the grocery store," he said. "I think they'll bring the same environmental consciousness to bear to the end-of-life issues as they approach them."The idea of earth-friendly funerals is catching on as part of that broader green movement. But there are other factors, too, including distaste for the embalming process and modern commercial funerals that can cost $10,000.A green burial can cost $1,000 to $2,000, although there is no market standard. Tammany's mother's funeral and cremation cost about $350.Some also have the desire to return to a simpler, personal way of laying loved ones to rest."It's a lot more than just about the environment. It's a return to tradition. It speaks to the idea of dust to dust," Harris said. "This is the way we used to bury people, in the first hundred years of our country's history."FUNERAL DIRECTORS' OPINIONS
Around the country, Harris said, some funeral directors are opening up to the trend. Many advocates expect funeral homes and cemeteries to offer more "green" alternatives, such as preservative-free burials.But there also is resistance.Peter Neal, a funeral director based in Guilford and spokesman for the Maine Funeral Directors Association, said the trend sounds good on the surface, but presents problems when you dig into the details."The green concept is a wonderful concept. There are many areas of our lives that we can" reduce environmental impacts, Neal said. "But this one's a little bit more of a problem."In Maine, for example, the ground can freeze in winter and make it harder to dig graves. Funeral homes typically store bodies for spring burials, something made easier with formaldehyde and the embalming process. To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
