St Martin's Press

For her book Making an Exit, published last week by St. Martin’s Press, Sarah Murray traveled around the world researching death rituals past and present. (See her profile for OnEarth of an inventor seeking to give poor countries and disaster victims better, more affordable burial options.) We sat down with the author in her Greenwich Village home to find out which rituals are the best -- and worst -- for the world we leave behind, and how she'd like to go when her time comes.

What was your inspiration for writing this book?

There were two things, really. One was that there are all those books about a thousand things to see before you die. I thought, “Well, where are the ten best places to go after you’re dead?” So I let this be a sort of guidebook for the dead.

More than that, it became very personal. We’d always talked about death as a family. Even when we knew my father had cancer, we talked a lot about it. He had this very minimalist approach: “When I’m dead and gone, that corpse will not have anything to do with me. You just get rid of the organic matter in the most efficient way possible. No funeral. No gathering.” And then he asked to have his ashes scattered in this very beautiful part of Dorset, near a churchyard, which was strange because he’s an atheist. And I just got to thinking, if even to my very minimalist, secular father this is important, then maybe it’s something I need to look into.

In the book, you mention Sir Henry Thompson, an early advocate of cremation. How does his belief that the dead are basically poison to the living translate to current green-funeral trends?

The green-funeral movement is mostly about not putting bodies in the earth that are pumped full of formaldehyde that will eventually leach out into the ground. This wasn’t what they were talking about in the 19th century, but in some ways it’s a similar idea. Anybody who’s interested in sustainability will tell you it doesn’t make sense to put this stuff into the ground. You cannot imagine the range of things you can buy at the big funeral expos. You look at these huge, seven-gauge steel coffins lined with silk and nylon with special drawers for your mobile phone, and you realize it’s all just going into the ground. As one environmentalist put it, essentially, a cemetery is a landfill. So there’s a slightly different approach from the Victorian fear of being contaminated by the dead, but there is a contamination of sorts involved.

Did any of the distant cultures you visited incorporate similar themes?

In Iran, I visited the towers of silence. What happens is they take the bodies up and they leave them out for the birds. It’s interesting, because it has to do with their belief in the sacredness of the earth. So it goes back to this contamination issue. The earth’ s sacred, so you can’t contaminate it with dead bodies. And the sky and the atmosphere are sacred as well, so you can’t burn and send all these fumes into the atmosphere. The idea is that you return the body to nature through living creatures.

What are some of the emerging green trends in death rituals?

There is a growing trend toward what some people call “natural burials.” A lot of those places won’t let you be buried if you’ve been embalmed. And you’re supposed to go in a very simple cardboard box or something that’s biodegradable.

In England, there are a few companies having what they call “woodland burials.” They go into partnership with estate owners who have huge amounts of land. Basically it’s a field, and you’re in the middle of trees. And the nice thing about it is that they give you the whole day to spend there if you want. You can have the burial ceremony, but also families can go and sit there, and have a picnic. So it’s not just this one-off ceremony and then we all go home. It’s very much a feeling of sitting out there in nature in the place where the person is buried. I think that’s rather a lovely idea. There’s a very strong need to have a burial place -- people need a burial place. That’s something the woodland burials have come to terms with. A few of them don’t allow grave markers, just a very simple stone, with the initial on it.

I think – at least I hope -- that the next generation is going to be thinking differently about this. They’re prepared to talk about it much more. There are all these websites now where you can put up what sort of music you want, what poems you want read. I don’t think the next generation is going to all want to go off in a huge mahogany box. At some of the funeral expos I’ve been to, there were a small group -- but they are growing -- of wonderful coffins made of wool, of wicker, of bamboo. There’s another nice trend of people who are using their coffins as furniture before they die, so there are a few carpenters now making these rather beautiful bookshelves.

Do you think the idea of being buried in cardboard could catch on?

There’s a little packaging-solution company in the UK that came up with these cardboard coffins. Obviously, they are reinforced cardboard, so they’re strong enough to lift a body. You can have simple cardboard versions, or you can have a plain white version, and all the grandchildren can draw pictures on it and stick photographs, and decorate it in a very personalized way. So I would say there is a trend to a much more personal approach to this. And I think that’s wonderful.

What is the worst death ritual you’ve encountered, in terms of its effect on the environment?

The embalmed body going into the ground in an eight-gauge steel coffin. On all fronts, you’re manufacturing a huge amount of stuff that’s just for nothing.

Is cremation as eco-friendly as most people think?

It’s certainly not. Unfortunately, we turn into carbon emissions. And there are things like mercury emissions from the fillings in your teeth, so it isn’t actually the greatest way to go. Interestingly, though, in Sweden, and in some crematoriums in the UK as well, they’re trying to recapture the heat for other purposes. That would be fine by me, if I get recycled to heat somebody’s house for a couple of days.

What is the best body-disposal method available today?

For my last chapter, I had to think about what I want done with myself, and part of that was to think about how I was going to have my body disposed of. I was always thinking cremation, but having read all this stuff about how bad it is, now I’m not so sure -- unless it’s in Sweden and I can heat houses.

There’s this new technique that a couple of states are doing. One company is calling it ”resomation.” Another calls it “alkaline hydrolysis.” Essentially, you go into an alkaline bath, and it dissolves your body. It’s what would happen if you were just buried in the ground, but it does it in a bunch of hours. And it doesn’t use all the energy it takes to cremate you. You’re not being embalmed, so it doesn’t use all the chemicals. You’re not being buried with a huge steel box. It does leave you with some ashes, so if you still want to have a scattering ceremony, there are bone fragments. And then the mortar into which you’ve been dissolved can be used as fertilizer. So you can put me out on the fields to fertilize a few crops. That sounds kind of promising.