From Here to Eternity Page 9

  The first corpse that Brunetti cremated was the body of a thirty-five-year-old woman placed in a brick furnace. The experiment was not unsuccessful, as the furnace did reduce her body down to five and a half pounds of bone chunks. But the method took too long for the professor’s satisfaction—four hours.

  Brunetti thought it might expedite the process to chop up the body pre-cremation. Corpse number two, a forty-five-year-old man, went into the same brick furnace in three layers: level one for limbs, level two for the head, chest, and pelvis, and level three for organs and other viscera. The cremation still took a frustrating four hours to complete, but now the bones that remained weighed only two and a half pounds.

  Katrina has considered this tactic. Multiple composting experts have told her, “If you really want to compost efficiently you’d chop up the body first.” The unsettling suggestions from experts don’t stop there. There are those who say she must add manure to the pile, and one avid composter who sent her an email reading, “Dear Ms. Spade, I am interested in your project. I have had excellent luck with my compost pile because I use leftover urine from hospitals. Have you considered that?”

  “Did you write back?” I asked.

  “I had to politely decline on the hospital urine. Is it a good source of nitrogen? Yes. Is it fast? Probably yes. Am I going to put a body into it? No.”

  Brunetti, undeterred by the thought of pulling the dead apart, decided in his next round of experiments to go hotter, putting various body parts into an altogether different furnace that produced coal gas, a substance used for electricity in the nineteenth century. This furnace was several hundred degrees hotter and took two hours longer (six hours total). But the end result was bones that were completely carbonized, zapped of all organic material. All traces of what made the human a human, including the DNA— though the professor would not have understood this at the time—were gone.

  In his 1884 paper, Brunetti wrote of cremation:

  It is a solemn, magnificent moment, which has a sacred, majestic quality. The combustion of a corpse always produced in me a very strong emotional arousal. As long as its shape is still human, and the flesh is burning, one is overcome by wonder, admiration; when the form has vanished, and all the body is charred, sadness takes over.

  By 1873, Brunetti was ready to debut the results of his experiments at the Vienna World Exhibition. His booth, #54 in the Italian section, featured various glass cubes containing the results of his experiments—bones and flesh in varying degrees of disintegration.

  Brunetti’s cremation technology represented a chance for society to skip over decomposition and incinerate the body down to its inorganic material. He hoped to industrialize the process, to do it as quickly as possible with the efficiency of a factory line. According to Laquer, modern cremation, as Brunetti saw it, “was a problem for science and technology.” The message was clear: nature, left to her own devices, was far too sloppy and inept, taking months to do what a 2,000-degree blast furnace could do in mere hours. A sign at Brunetti’s booth at the Vienna exhibit read “Vermibus erepti—Puro consumimur igni,” or “Saved from the worms, consumed by the purifying flame.”

  Almost 150 years later, both Katrina and I would disagree with Brunetti that only flames can purify. The poet Walt Whitman spoke of soil and earth as the great transformers, accepting “the leavings” of men and producing “such divine materials.” Whitman marveled at the ability of the earth to reabsorb the corrupt, the vile, the diseased, and produce new, pristine life. There is no reason to zap away your organic material with gas or flame when there is good to be done with “the leavings” of your mortal form.

  Dr. J headed back down to the tent in the parking area to upload data from an electronic logger which had been placed on the chest of John Compost to record the temperature spikes his body experienced while in the mound. That left Katrina and me to start uncovering the second mound, containing June Compost. The seventy-eight-year-old woman was emaciated by disease at the time of her death. Her mound consisted of pure woodchips and was at the bottom of the hill, uncovered, in the shade.

  As we got deeper into the pile, the dirt exposed larval beetles and grubs. The soil inside the pile was abundant and dark—compost is often referred to as “black gold.” But the presence of the insects was not ideal, as it meant there was still something inside the pile serving as a nutrition source, a feast to keep these creatures occupied. Then I hit June’s femur, covered in a thick white leftover of decomposed fat, the consistency of Greek yogurt (apologies, Greek yogurt fans). As we uncovered more, we found the woman at the very end stages of decomposition, mostly down to bone.

  June Compost’s problems were the opposite of John Compost’s. There was enough moisture (which is why she had been successfully taken down to bone), but without enough nitrogen the temperature in her mound never got high enough to reconfigure her bones to soil.

  Neither John nor June Compost had been a success. But this was only the beginning of Katrina’s experiments. More bodies will come into the FOREST facility to be composted. At Wake Forest University, a law professor named Tanya Marsh is assigning her cemetery law students to comb through state laws to discover how to legalize recomposition facilities in all fifty states. At Western Washington University, a soil scientist and composting expert, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, will begin experiments with human-sized animals (small cows, large dogs, shorn sheep, the occasional pig—all predeceased). There are already studies underway on what the composting process does to mercury amalgam fillings in teeth, whose toxic release into the air is one of the biggest environmental concerns about cremation.

  “Lynne called me on the phone the other day to talk about the teeth study,” Katrina said, “and casually mentioned, ‘I dug my own grave and slept in it last night.’ She’s a pretty serious practicing Sufi.”

  “Damn, dug her own grave and slept in it,” I replied.

  “Yeah, death is part of her spiritual practice. She’s much more than just a lover of livestock composting.”

  It is worth noting that the main players in the recomposition project are women—scientists, anthropologists, lawyers, architects. Educated women, who have the privilege to devote their efforts to righting a wrong. They’ve given prominent space in their professional careers to changing the current system of death. Katrina noted that “humans are so focused on preventing aging and decay—it’s become an obsession. And for those who have been socialized female, that pressure is relentless. So decomposition becomes a radical act. It’s a way to say, ‘I love and accept myself.’ ”

  I agree with Katrina here. Women’s bodies are so often under the purview of men, whether it’s our reproductive organs, our sexuality, our weight, our manner of dress. There is a freedom found in decomposition, a body rendered messy, chaotic, and wild. I relish this image when visualizing what will become of my future corpse.

  When deathcare became an industry in the early twentieth century, there was a seismic shift in who was responsible for the dead. Caring for the corpse went from visceral, primeval work performed by women to a “profession,” an “art,” and even a “science,” performed by well-paid men. The corpse, with all its physical and emotional messiness, was taken from women. It was made neat and clean, and placed in its casket on a pedestal, always just out of our grasp.

  Maybe a process like recomposition is our attempt to reclaim our corpses. Maybe we wish to become soil for a willow tree, a rosebush, a pine—destined in death to both rot and nourish on our own terms.

  SPAIN

  BARCELONA

  The American funeral home exhibits a suspiciously uniform aesthetic: squat midcentury brick, velvet-curtained interior, uneasy aroma of Glade plug-ins (covering over the antiseptic smells from the body preparation room). By contrast, the Altima funeral home, in Barcelona, is Google-headquarters-meets-Church-of-Scientology. It is minimalist, hypermodern, projecting the potential for cultlike activity. Its three stories feature floors, walls, and ceilings of elegant whit
e stone. Wide balconies allow you to step outside and overlook the gardens. Not parking lots, gardens. One wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, exposing a panorama of the city stretching from the mountains to the sea. Stop by the espresso bar to take advantage of the free Wi-Fi.

  The Mediterranean sun streamed through the window and reflected off the white floor. Blinded by the glare, I found myself in a perpetual cross-eyed squint during conversations with Altima’s attractive, well-groomed employees, including Josep, the dashing man in a suit who ran the whole operation.

  In addition to Josep, sixty-three people work at Altima’s well-oiled facility. They pick up bodies, prepare them, file death certificates, meet with families, run funeral services. Altima handles almost one-quarter of all the deaths in Barcelona, which works out at ten to twelve bodies a day. Families choose between sepultura or incinerar (burial or cremation). Spain, thanks to its Catholic roots, has been slower to adopt cremation than most European countries; its cremation rate is at 35 percent, with urban Barcelona closer to 45 percent.

  To understand the death rituals of Barcelona, you must understand glass. Glass means transparency, unclouded confrontation with the brutal reality of death. Glass also means a solid barrier. It allows you to come close but never quite make contact.

  Altima boasts two large oratorios (chapels) and twenty family rooms. A family can rent one of these rooms and spend the entire day with their dead, showing up first thing in the morning and staying until the doors close at 10 p.m. And many families do. The catch is that the entire time, the body will be behind glass.

  You have options as to the manner of glass you’d prefer be placed between you and your loved one. If you select a Spanish-style viewing, Altima will display your loved one in their coffin, surrounded by flowers, behind one large pane of glass, akin to a department store window. If you prefer the Catalan-style, Josep and his team will slide the open coffin into a Snow White display case in the center of the room. Either way, Altima can maintain a steady temperature around the body of 0–6 degrees Celsius (32–42 degrees Fahrenheit).

  Behind the scenes, there were long corridors where the bodies in wooden coffins awaited their big moment. Pint-sized Alice in Wonderland metal doors opened to allow Altima staff to slip the body into its display or glass casket.

  “What makes the glass casket Catalan-style?” I inquired.

  My interpreter was Jordi Nadal, head of the publishing company that released my first book in Spain. Jordi was a Zorba the Greek character, dropping carpe diem–themed bon mots at every opportunity, keeping your wine glass full and squid and paella on your plate.

  “Our Catalan families want to be closer to the dead,” was the answer.

  “By putting them behind the glass like a zoo exhibit? What trouble are the corpses planning on causing, exactly?” is a thing I did not say.

  The fact was, I had spent the whole week in Spain doing interviews with the national press on the ways modern funeral homes keep the family separated from the dead. Altima had read those interviews. That they had allowed me to make this visit at all was a miracle, and showed a willingness to engage on alternative methods that no American funeral corporation had ever shown me. I didn’t want to push my luck.

  That’s not to say there wasn’t any tension. One employee, an older gentleman, asked if I was enjoying my time in Barcelona.

  “It is gorgeous, I don’t want to leave. Perhaps I will stay here and apply for a job at Altima!” I said in jest.

  “With your views we would not hire you,” he joked back, not without a slight edge to his voice.

  “Do you have this phrase in Spanish, ‘Keep your friends close and enemies closer?’ ”

  “Ah, yes.” He raised his eyebrows. “We’ll do that.”

  The people I spoke to in Barcelona (regular citizens and funeral workers alike) complained of how rushed the process of death seemed. Everyone felt the body should be buried within twenty-four hours, but nobody was quite sure why. Mourners felt pressure from funeral directors to get things completed. In turn, the funeral directors protested that families “want things fast, fast, fast, in less than twenty-four hours.” Everyone seemed trapped in the twenty-four-hour hamster wheel. Theories for this time frame ranged from historical factors like Spain’s Muslim past (Islam requires bodies to be buried swiftly after death) to the warm Mediterranean weather, which would allow bodies to putrefy more quickly than elsewhere in Europe.

  Prior to the twentieth century, it was not uncommon to believe that the corpse was a dangerous entity that spread pestilence and disease. Imam Dr. Abduljalil Sajid explained to the BBC that the Muslim tradition of burial in the first twenty-four hours “was a way to protect the living from any sanitary issues.” The Jewish tradition follows similar rules. Such fear across cultures inspired the developed world to erect protective barriers between the corpse and the family. The United States, New Zealand, and Canada embraced embalming, chemically preparing the body. Here in Barcelona they placed the body behind glass.

  The shift toward removing those barriers has been slow-going, even though prominent entities like the World Health Organization make clear that even after a mass death event, “contrary to common belief, there is no evidence that corpses pose a risk of disease ‘epidemics.’ ”

  The Centers for Disease Control puts it even more bluntly: “The sight and smell of decay are unpleasant, but they do not create a public health hazard.”

  With this in mind, I asked Josep, the owner, if they would allow the family to keep the body at home, sans protective glass boxes. Though he insisted Altima rarely received such a request, Josep promised they would allow it, sending their employees out to the home to “close the holes.”

  We took a freight elevator downstairs and stepped into the body preparation area. In Spain, bodies are so swiftly sent off sepultura or incinerar that they are rarely embalmed. Altima did have an embalming room, with two metal tables, but they only perform full embalmings on bodies that are being transported to a different part of Spain or out of the country entirely. Unlike the United States, where aspiring embalmers must pursue the overkill combination of a mortuary school degree and an apprenticeship, in Spain all training is done in-house, at the funeral home. Altima boasts of importing embalming experts from France to train their staff, “including the man who embalmed Lady Di!”

  In the body prep room, two identical older women, in identical button-up sweaters with identical crucifixes around their necks, lay in identical wooden coffins. Two female Altima employees leaned over the first woman, blow-drying her hair. Two male employees leaned over the second, rubbing her face and hands with heavy cream. These bodies were on their way upstairs, destined to repose in glass coffins or behind glass walls.

  I asked Jordi, my publisher, if he had ever seen dead bodies like this, without the glass barrier. With his typical verve, he allowed that although he hadn’t, he was ready for the encounter. “Seeing the truth like this, is always elegant,” he explained. “It gives you what you deserve as a human being. It gives you dignity.”

  JOAN WAS A more salt-and-pepper version of his brother Josep. He ran Cementiri Parc Roques Blanques (“White Rocks”), one of Altima’s cemeteries. All Spanish cemeteries are public, but private companies like Altima can contract to run them for a designated length of time. The electric golf cart buzzed up and down the rolling hills, passing above-ground mausoleums and columbaria. Roques Blanques resembled many American cemeteries, with bright bursts of flowers laid out on flat granite headstones.

  One aspect, however, was drastically different. Joan radioed one of the cemetery’s groundskeepers to join us at the top of a hill. There were no graves up here, just three discreet manhole covers. The groundskeeper bent down to unlock the heavy padlocks and slid back the metal circles. I squatted beside him and peeked in. Beneath the covers were deep holes carved into the hillside, filled to the top with bags of bones and piles of cremated remains.

  Someone from North America might recoil at the
idea of an idyllic cemetery harboring mass graves, filled with hundreds of sets of remains. But this was business as usual at this Spanish cemetery.

  The dead at Roques Blanques start out in a ground grave, or in a wall mausoleum. But the dead haven’t purchased a home at the cemetery as much as they have rented an apartment. They have a lease, and their time in the grave is limited.

  Before a body is placed into a grave, the family must lease a minimum of five years’ decomposition time. When the corpse has decayed down to bone, they will join their brethren in the communal pits, making way for the more recently deceased. The only exceptions are made for embalmed bodies (again, rare in Spain). Those bodies may need more like twenty years for their transition. Joan’s crew will periodically peek in on embalmed bodies, and say, “Oh, okay, buddy—not done!” The corpse will have to stay in its grave or wall crypt until it is ready to join the collective bone club.

  This “grave recycling” is not just a Spanish practice. It extends to most of Europe, again baffling the average North American, who views the grave as a permanent home. In Seville, in the south of Spain, they have almost no available cemetery land. The cremation rate there is 80 percent (very high for Spain), because the government subsidizes cremation down to a cost of only 60–80 euro. It is economically prudent to die in Seville.

  Over in Berlin, German families rent graves for twenty to thirty years. Recently, the cemetery land has become not only prime real estate for the dead, but for the living. With so many choosing cremation, long-standing cemeteries are being converted into parks, community gardens, even children’s playgrounds. This is a hard transition to reconcile. Cemeteries are beautiful spaces of cultural, historical, and community value. By the same token, they possess great cultural and restorative potential, as this Public Radio International piece reported:

  Then there’s the Berlin graveyard, mostly cleared of headstones, that is now a community garden, including a small Syrian refugee garden with tomatoes, onions, and mint.