Précis:
Chapter four of Grave Matters is about a method of taking care of the dead that has been practiced since as long as man has been sailing in the oceans of this world. Burial at sea is scattering the cremated remains of a person or dropping the corpse of a person in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the Gulf of Mexico. There are certain restrictions put in place by EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, which prohibit the scattering of ashes closer than three miles of a shoreline. If someone wants to consign the entire body, the body must be taken three miles out and drop the body over an area where the water is shallower than six hundred feet. The total cost of burial at sea is from $100 to $2000, depending on how big of a boat you want and how many people will accompany the dead body to its final resting place. Chapter five of Grave Matters discusses the practice of using Memorial Reefs. This is another form of burial at sea but it is not as popular among the general public as is using a biodegradable casket or a biodegradable urn. Cremated remains are placed in memorial reef balls and sunk into the ocean near an artificial reef. The memorial reefs can potentially create a habitat for the marine life around the artificial reef. There are certain spots for memorial reefs to be deployed, and those are: coastlines of Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, and Sarasota. The prices for memorial reef balls range from $2500 to $6500 which depends on the size of the reef ball. In chapter six of Grave Matters, the scene is shifted from sea to land. In a Home Funeral, the body is brought to the home of the deceased either most of the time from the hospital and sometimes even from the spot that someone died on. The body is then washed or clothed by the family members and a funeral is held for family and friends to gather and see the body off to either a crematorium or a cemetery. Family members can also used chemicals that retard decomposition to make the environment of the dead body as hospitable as possible.
Quotes:
- “High seas burial was most often conducted in times of war; it was given to unknown numbers of U.S. troops as recently as World War II.” (Harris, 75)
- “You’ll need to prepare the body in a way that ‘ensures that the remains sink to the sea bottom rabidly and permanently.’” (Harris, 83)
- “With daily changes of dry ice, a body can be laid out for days” (Harris, 111)
- “Crossing and Final Passages offer workshops around the country on home death care ($150 for Crossing’s, $350 for Final Passages’.” (Harris, 119)
Analysis:
The whole idea of memorial reefs is simply hysterical. After having read almost half of the memorial reefs chapter, I decided that I could not continue reading without knowing what a memorial reef actually looked life. I Google’d it and realized it was the same thing Dr. Troyer was talking about in his lecture. I also found the fact that you can assign GPS coordinates to one of the memorial reefs so you can go back and visit it and pay respect to the person’s remains that is contained inside of it. Burial at sea should be something like, removing oneself from the chaotic and industrialized world and finally rest in peace under the calm water where not a lot of men have ventured. In all of the stories Harris talks about in the Burial at Sea and Memorial Reefs chapters, the family members of the deceased are always upset that they would not be able to visit the one that they lost because he would be so far away and one would need to go through a lot of hassle in renting a boat and what not, which made visiting the deceased an every-other-month-or-longer deal and even possibly an annual thing. I found it sad that some families changed their minds after they realized that they wouldn’t be able to visit the deceased quite as often, since burial at sea seems like the perfect way to go, to me at least. Much better than burials in a cemetery or even cremation because both of those are industrial process, and as we have learnt so far in this unit: Industrial = Bad.
