Ed McKenna: 1918 - 2006

A number of readers have told me they were moved by the story of Ed McKenna. Ed -- or "Eddie" as his family and friends know him -- is the eighty-seven-year-old retired meatpacker from rural Salix, Iowa, who buys a plain, pine coffin from woodworker Loren Schieuer in chapter seven of Grave Matters. Ed buys Loren's no-frills coffin for his eventual funeral, but, as he told me in couple of phone conversations and later during my visit to his farm, ends up having to use it to bury his wife, Evelyn.

Eddie liked the idea of the basic wood casket, which squared with the philosophy of simplicity by which he led his life. So, a couple of months after Evelyn's death, he returns to Schieuer Woodworks (www.schiwoodworks.com) to buy another plain, pine box, for just himself this time.

Three weeks ago today, on December 29, Eddie McKenna put that coffin to its final use. Surrounded by his family, he died of lung cancer and, per arrangements he'd settled long ago, was buried in Loren's second wood casket next to Evelyn, that very same day.

The family-only funeral Mass that was held for Eddie just hours after his death and his subsequent burial in the church cemetery is a fitting tribute to this hardworking, thoughtful Irishman. In the late Depression, he farmed his hundred-plus acres and took a part-time job at the Swift meatpacking plant in Sioux City to support a family that would eventually include 10 children. For a time, Eddie farmed by day and by night worked the late shift at Swift, earning, he told me, 70 cents an hour, $28 a week. "We didn't have a whole lot coming up," he said simply, "but we never went hungry, either. And our kids all turned out well."

In part, it was the hardscabble farm existence and no-nonsense mindset of the post-Depression era that informed Eddie's view of life -- and just how to depart to the afterlife. "In those days you took life as it was. You stood on your own two feet and did the best you could," he said. Death, as unwelcome as it is, was "a part of life, another step down the road, and you just accepted it and moved on." For Eddie, his grandmother's death, home funeral, and simple burial in a wooden coffin, all of which he witnessed as a kid in 1925, was representative of that ideal and would influence the plans he'd eventually settle on for his own passing.

In our conversations, Eddie talked of how he was moved to see his family rally around Evelyn in her long decline. His girls, he told me, were particularly helpful. "They took real good care of their mother for that whole length of time," he said, "and I wouldn't trade that for all the money you could have piled up in this house." Not two years later, the McKennas, with the same love they showed Evelyn, would do the same for their father.

To the McKennas, I offer my condolences on your loss. To Eddie: I thank you for the gift of your story. May you rest in peace.

USA: Cremation Nation by 2025

In media coverage of green burial, it's whole body interment in the woodland cemetery that garners attention. Yet it's another, lesser form of natural return that's gaining the converts: cremation.

A look at the figures shows cremation's steadily rising arc. From 1876, the date of the first modern cremation in this country, the cremation rate ticks inexorably upward, accounting for less than 1% of all dispositions in the early part of the last century to more than ten percent in the 1980s. By the end of the '90's "Decade of the Environment," a quarter of all our dead are heading to the hearth; today it's nearly a third. Within the next two decades -- by the year 2025 -- the number of cremations will overtake burials for the first time in our history.

How popular will cremation become in a country where the modern funeral -- with its chemical embalming of remains which are then coffined, packed into a vault and buried beneath a ton of earth -- has defined the American way of death for the better part of the last century?

If historical precedent elsewhere is any indication, some 70% of all Americans will eventually opt for cremation's purifying fires. And not look back. "In almost every country where cremation surpasses burials and continues, the cremation rate gets to anywhere from 60 to around 70 percent and then holds," according to Jack Springer, director of the Cremation Association of North America (www.cremationassociation.org), per Great Britain (70%), Sweden (69%), and Denmark (71%). The same trend, Springer contends, will happen here.

No historical event or great awakening accounts for our turn to the flames. A recent survey points to the same impulses that are driving the popularity of green burial in general: low cost, simplicity, and environmental benefit (i.e., preserving land).

The funeral industry has fought our growing preference for cremation, which represents lost sales on the very goods and services that boost its bottom line -- embalming, metal coffin, the burial vault. Though it's starting to come around, however reluctantly. Witness the line of handsome urns being cranked out by coffin manufacturers, the addition of cremation services on the funeral director's General Price List. Even cemeteries are catering to the coming Cremation Nation. A recent newsletter from one memorial park heralded the opening a "nature trail" on its grounds, where cremated remains can be buried beneath a tree, along the trail or beside a pond.

New York State's First Natural Cemetery

At the end of May, I spoke at the dedication of the Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve. The fifth natural cemetery in this country, Greensprings takes root on 100 acres of rolling meadowland that adjoins thousands of additional acres of protected forest just outside Ithaca, New York. Like its inspiration, Ramsey Creek, Greensprings offers the best of natural return: a green burial (vaultless and embalming-free) in a green setting, with plans to use the woodland cemetery scheme to not only protect this bucolic site from development but to restore it to ecological health.

At the dedication, I spoke with Michael d'Estries, managing editor of GroovyGreen.com, a vibrant web outlet for environmental issues. The video he shot that day -- above -- offers a compelling, inside look at the genesis of Greensprings and the growing green burial movement it's giving rise to.

For more information on Greensprings, visit the group's web site: www.naturalburial.org

I'm on vacation through next week, back with a post on January 3rd. Happy holidays!

Natural Burial via the Local Funeral Home

The modern funeral can't help but work at cross-purposes with the aims of natural burial. Chemical embalming of the dead, metal caskets sealed against the elements, the burial vaults that serve, in the words of one manufacturer, "as a last line of defense against mother nature," all seek to preserve the body from the dissolution that's a natural part of the life cycle -- and from the very goal of natural return.

So, don't expect the local funeral director to cheer your request for a green burial. Particularly, as it represents the lost sale of the very goods and services that provide such a boost to his bottom line.

But that may soon change. A handful of funeral directors around the country, recognizing that there are still profits to be gained by giving families what they want, are adding green burial options to their General Price List of offerings. One of them is Steve McCowen. A licensed funeral director based in Michigan and manager of a family-friendly funeral planning organization called the Today Center (www.todaycenter.com), McCowen works with sixteen funeral homes in the state that give families just what they ask for -- and no more -- hassle-free. "We'll pick the body up from the place of death, and bring it wherever the family wants, including their home, for home funerals," says McCowen. "They can even file the death certificate on their own." Families can skip embalming and choose from a cloth-covered, pine or cardboard coffin. Cost of the basic package runs less than $4,000, roughly half as much as the standard sendoff.

You can find other family- and eco-friendly funeral providers like McCowen by contacting the Green Burial Council (www.decentburial.org). A non-profit group that's working to advance the cause of natural burial in this country, the Council directs families to providers that offer the group's green "Burial Package," which prohibits vaults and formaldehyde-based embalming, and permits only biodegradable caskets.

So far, the Council has approved providers in seven states: California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, New York and Wisconsin. For contact information, e-mail the Council at: info@greenburialcouncil.org.

You don't have to work through the funeral home to arrange a natural burial, of course. In most cases, you can do it yourself. But for families that prefer the assistance of the local funeral parlor, the Council's burial package identifies those that understand the tenets of the eco-friendly burial -- and will help families arrange it.

By making inroads into the funeral industry, the Council hopes over time to change it for the greener. The Burial Package is one small step in that direction. Still, as McCowen himself has found, the road is long. "I called the three-county area recently to find a cemetery that would allow one family to bury their dead without a vault, and couldn't find one," he says. In that case, McCowen arranged for the dead to be transported to a natural cemetery in another state. He has also successfully pursued another option that legally allows for vautless burial in Michigan: helping families designate a parcel of their rural property as a private burial ground.