Do you have to buy a hideous coffin for a dead relative? Or for that matter any coffin?
“The funeral industry does a great job of having you believe their requirements are the same as state laws,” my friend Jane Hillhouse, the founder of both Colorful Coffins and Final Footprints (www.finalfootprints.com ) tells me. “The only requirement for a casket is to have a lid.”
Ten years ago, when she was still living in the UK, Hillhouse gazed in horror a funeral procession: the pomp, the ugly casket. Lightning struck.
“I swore I would never be buried in that kind of casket, and never be transported in those black limos,” she continues. “In this country, we bury the equivalent in steel of the Golden Gate Bridge — every year! Andthe equivalent of a two lane highway from New York to Detroit in concrete.”
What to do instead? Think of burying people you love (or for that matter, yourself) in other materials, she suggests. Woven bamboo produces no emissions when a body is cremated. A pine box is just fine (and relatively cheap!).
And always remember, she concludes — and I concur — you never have to be embalmed. And no law says you do.
