10 Bizarre New Ways of Dealing with Death

Copyright 2016 by Gary L. Pullman

Although many might perceive funerals as static rituals, that need not be the case today. Bizarre innovations offer an array of highly imaginative, but practical, alternatives to traditional ways of mourning the deaths and celebrating the lives of our departed loved ones. Some of these innovations are possible because of technological inventions and discoveries. Others are due to changing attitudes concerning death and bereavement. Devotion to environmentally friendly green technologies and practices have made still other innovations possible. Whatever their causes, the new ways of dealing with death are apt to strike many of us as bizarre.

10 DNA Preservation

The $263 Andreason’s Cremation & Burial Service in Springfield, Oregon, charges to swab the inside of a departed loved one's cheek may seem a bit steep, but the process does allow family members to “preserve” the deceased “person's genetic record” prior to the body's cremation or burial. Besides, DNA Memorial, a DNA lab in Thunder Bay, Ontario, has to get its cut. Why would the family want to avail themselves of this service? The genetic material would confirm paternal or other family relationships. It's also a useful tool for establishing ancestry. At “room temperature,” the DNA can be stored “indefinitely.” DNA Memorial provides its service to “funeral homes in several Canadian and American cities” and to overseas municipalities in England and Scotland “and in one city in Israel.”

9 Liquid or Freeze-Dried Cremation

Recently, funeral homes have begun to offer “liquid cremation” and freeze-dried cremation services. In the former, which is also known as “chemical hydrolysis,” remains are put under pressure “in a solution of water and potassium hydrozide.” A green technology, liquid cremation is an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional cremation, substantially reducing “carbon emissions and other pollutants.” 

The deceased can also be freeze-dried by being exposed to liquid nitrogen. Then, the body is “vibrated so that it dissolves into a fine powder.” Next, water is evaporated, and mercury and other substances are extracted. “The residue can be put into a shallow grave and turns to mulch in about a year.” Like liquid cremation, the freeze-dried alternative is an environmentally friendly “green” process. 

8 DIY Funerals

Sebastopol, California's, Natural Death Care Project (NDCP) provides family members all “the information they need” to conduct a do-it-yourself (DIY) funeral for the dearly departed. The family learns “how to bathe and dress a body” and how to keep “the body on an unseen bed of dry ice while the deceased lies in state in his or her own bed.” NDCP also “offers casket-building plans.” Alternatively, family members can opt to purchase Lisa Carlson's book, Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love. For $29.95, Carlson provides instruction on “home death and home visitations, embalming, body and organ donation, burial, cremation and other practical matters.”

7 Drive-Thru Visitation

For those who are too busy to stop at the funeral home to pay their last respects, the Paradise Funeral Chapel in Saginaw, Michigan, has the solution: drive-thru visitation. Detecting the weight of the mourner's vehicle as it enters the drive-thru lane, a sensor activates a mechanism that draws back a curtain on the drive-thru window, allowing the driver and his or her passengers, if any, to view the body of the deceased as it lies “at a minor angle” to facilitate “in-car viewing.” The funeral home's owner, Ivan Phillips, said some people fear funeral homes. His innovative drive-thru visitation service, he declared, will allow them to avoid mortuaries altogether, as they pay their respects “from the convenience of their car.”

6 3-D Printing of Replacement Body Parts

In The American Way of Death (1998), journalist Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) described the challenges facing morticians back in the day. The restoration of “mutilated” or disease-ravaged bodies, in particular, required “intestinal fortitude and determination,” she observed. If a body were missing a hand, an artificial replacement could be cast “in plaster of Paris.” Actually, “only a cast of the back of the hand” was required, she added, and the mortician could simulate “pores and skin texture . . . by stippling with a little brush.” With proper training and practice, a mortician could meet even greater challenges, she assured her readers, including “decapitation.”

For today's practitioners of the art of embalming, such problems are much easier to solve. China's Longhau Funeral Parlor uses “3D printingto repair damaged bodies before they’re put on display in front of the deceased’s family members and friends. The technology can “layer material” so as to create “a three-dimensional representation of the damaged body part.” The mortuary also does hair transplants. The technology also allows the funeral industry to perform “cosmetic surgery” on remains, which can “make corpses appear younger or better looking.” 

5 Funeral Webcasting

Thanks to webcasting, it's possible to have the funeral come to the mourners' homes rather than having them visit the funeral parlor. Some who couldn't attend a funeral in real-time can attend online. Having begun to webcast funerals in October, 2008, Matthew Fiorillo, the owner of the Ballard-Durand Funeral Home in White Plains, New York, now conducts as many as five online funerals each a month. He aims to make the webcasting experience as authentic as possible. “We place the speaker stand close to the head end of the casket, so viewers can see both,” he said. “Web viewers can post photos, videos, and condolence messages on a password-protected memorial page for the deceased created by the funeral home. They can also view the funeral 'on demand’ for up to five years if the family wishes.” Fiorillo isn't the only mortician to offer the service. Webcasting funerals have caught on in Hong Kong, India, and the Philippines. John Reed, the owner of the Dodd & Reed Funeral Home, in Webster Springs, West Virginia, predicts that, eventually, “services” will “include two-way communication for people who want to speak at a service they couldn’t attend in person.”

4 Video Headstones

Sergio Aguirre, owner of Serenity Panel, makes it his business to sell solar-powered video headstones as a way for the bereaved to “celebrate the life of a lost loved one.” Once visitors flip the solar panel on his durable Vidstone device, 5 to 7 minutes of “special moments . . . compiled by . . . friends and relatives of the deceased” or by “funeral homes” plays. The device comes with “two standard headphone jacks,” and “the solar panel protects the screen from sun damage and charges a battery inside.” The 7-inch LED video screen comes with a one-year warranty, is “shatter-resistant,” is “vandal-resistant,” and can endure a temperature range between 0 and 48.9 degrees Celsius (32 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit.)”

3 “Reef Ball” Fish Habitats

For those who want literally to feed the fishes after their demise, Eternal Reefs offers just the service. The Sarasota, Florida, company will transform a person's cremains into a “'reef ball' where fish can hang out.” Some of his clients are people who have used traditional cremation services but find “they don't know what to do with their 'shelf people.'” If they come to Eternal Reefs' “manufacturing hub,” family members can have a hand “in making the ball.” The reef balls allow the deceased to contribute to the world that spawned him or her. George Frankel, the chief of the company, which is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, said his service is not only “green,” but it also “actually helps the environment by giving fish a new habitat.”

2 Online Funeral Arrangements

Departing LLC, a company in Irving, Texas, is the first in the funeral industry to initiate online funeral arrangements, allowing customers to “pre-pay funeral expenses in today's dollars,” saving themselves money when, otherwise, future inflation would increases fees. By “streamlining” the funeral planning process, the company intends to simplify it while it remains both “more private and more personal.” The “secure website” will offer users an array of services from which to select, payable through “pre-need funeral insurance policies” that can be retired “in three to five years.” When the time comes, the family calls Departed LLC and is notified “which funeral home the loved one selected and paid to handle the funeral and service.”

1 Design for Death Competition

Other ideas for innovative services in the funeral industry may come from the Design for Death Competition “supported by the National Funeral Directors Association and sponsored by Lien Foundation and ACM Foundation.”

In the competition's Eco-Green Deathcare category, the third-prize went to the United Kingdom's Harry Trimble and Patrick Stevenson-Keating, both age 24, for “I Wish to Be Rain,” which called for cremains to be loaded “into a balloon” that produces rain as it collides with clouds. The cremains are “increasingly pressurized” as the balloon rises, so that the “capsule” containing them “bursts, dispersing the ashes into the clouds below.”

The category's second prize was awarded to South Africa's Ancunel Steyn, age 29, for her “Design for Death (& Living).” Steyn envisioned combining cemeteries with community activities, such as early childhood development centers, “coffee shops, restaurants and tea houses”; “therapy consultant rooms”; “self-serviced kiosks”; and a “yoga studio.” 

Pierre Reviere, age 27, and Enzo Pascual, age 25, of France received first prize in the category for their “Emergence,” which features the growth of a tree from a “biodegradable coffin or urn.” Another contestant, Jae Rhim Lee, age 37, of the United States, won the category's Special Jury Prize for suggesting “a jumpsuit of edible mushrooms.” The mushrooms weren't intended to be eaten. They were meant “to reduce the toxic chemicals that seep from the deceased body, allowing for natural decomposition.” (LINK 16)