BETHEL — This story starts at the end. Or rather, it is about how you would like it to end.

On Oct. 4, Chuck Lakin of Waterville came to Bethel’s West Parish Congregational Church to talk about green burials and dying. About 40 people came to listen.

Toward the end of his 90-minute talk and with the assistance of Bob Iles, of Bethel, Lakin assembled a casket he’d brought. This model can be a bookcase (until you need to use it), he said.  Lakin said he can make a “quick casket” in four or five hours.

Someone in the audience said, “Got that, Bob?” (Iles hosts a wood working group, The Congo Craftsmen, at his home each week).

“Participating in the process [of a home funeral] is a very profound thing, and a very personal thing,” said Lakin. He said people often feel anxious initially but in the end say they would never do it any other way.

He noted that the average cost of a conventional funeral is $8,000 to $12,000.

Lakin said his work came out of the experience of his father’s death from metastatic lung cancer in 1979. “He was in his own bed with his wife and four kids touching him when he died … We called a funeral director who arrived promptly. Zipped dad in a body bag, about four days later we got a box of ashes in the mail.

“I hated that,” said Lakin.

Twenty years later he read a manual on dying written by Jerrigrace Lyons. Lakin said he realized he wanted people to have a better experience than his. He began giving 30 to 40 talks a year. These days he gives many fewer and only during daylight hours. “I don’t drive at night,” said the 74 year-old.

Green Burials

“You may leave today thinking that green burial is a good idea, the bad news is that we don’t have a green cemetery anywhere near here,” said Lida Iles, Bob’s wife.

People interested in exploring green burials locally signed a list that circulated during the talk. Several people took notes, too.

Green burials are the ultimate recycling, said Lakin. In Maine there are only four burial sites. Out-of-state bodies are buried in half of one of the cemeteries, he said, noting that Massachusetts has no green burial sites.

The cost to be be buried at one of the four sites is $800. and it costs another $500-700 for opening and closing of the grave. Another owner charges more: $1,800 for the plot and $1,300 for digging.

The state, said Lakin, has almost no rules regarding green burial sites other than that the cemetery needs to be held by a non-profit.

If your land falls under “rural residential,” generally municipalities don’t care, he said.

A  body buried in a green cemetery has to be inside a biodegradable container. Options could be a cardboard box, a shroud, a pine box or a quilt, said Lakin. If you are transporting the body yourself the law is that there must be a covering to keep it hidden.

Generally a flat stone with the name and dates is all that is acceptable.

He said the body should be buried about three feet deep (that’s optimal). “It’s composting yourself,” he said.

People always ask if an animal is going to dig up the body. He said he has only heard of that happening in Siberia in the winter, when animals are starving to death.

Emily Ecker, of Woodstock, asked if it is possible to dig a grave in the winter. This was a glitch she and Monica Mann faced with their proposal. Lakin said cemeteries traditionally had a vault to store a body until spring. Another idea is to put 10 bales of hay on 10 gravesites if you think 10 people will die that winter. The hay will keep the ground from freezing, said Lakin.

A manicured cemetery creates the illusion that your body is not going to decompose. “The kind of embalming a funeral director does is only intended to slow down the process for a couple of weeks,” he said.

Options

Lakin said Maine has one of the highest cremation rates in the country (80% of bodies are cremated). The South has more of a culture of celebrating funerals (with only 10-20% of bodies cremated), he said. Cremations cost around $6,000 and direct cremations cost even less. Cremation, however, is the energy equivalent of 25 gallons of gasoline and puts pollutants and Co2 into the atmosphere.

Maine’s legislature passed natural organic reduction, another option that composts a body in a month. The family can take home a cubic yard of compost. The cost is $5,000-$7,000.

A crematory in Belfast is the only place in New England that offers alkaline hydrolysis, a fairly new process also called water cremation or aqua hydration. The body decomposes completely in a cremulator after about 12 hours. No DNA is left behind.  He said the 50-80 gallons of leftover water can be fed to your garden and no pollutants go into the atmosphere.

Body donor programs have a downside. They take the body quickly, embalm it for 70 days then keep it around for up to two years to teach anatomy to first-year medical school students. A university ceremony usually doesn’t happen until much later, he said.

Loved ones

Lakin said we all know families that have broken apart over the death of a relative. He said the most important thing is to sit down and talk with your family to tell them your wishes.

A card game from www.gowish.com helps with end of life decisions.  The 36 cards have various advance directives like, “to have my family with me,” “to be able to meet with clergy,” “to not be connected to machines,” “to pray,” “to talk about what scares me.” Participants order cards by importance.

Lakin said, “it is a gift to your survivors,”  to have all your paperwork and your advance directive in order. Maine’s forms have very simple directives and should be used by Mainers, he said. There is no charge at lastthings.net 

Lakin read his own directive: “I being of sound mind and body … under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of pinhead politicians who couldn’t pass ninth grade biology or lawyers/doctors interested in simply running out the bills.”

He said if he doesn’t ask for any of the following: chocolate, sex, red wine, pizza, french fries, or ice cream he would like the attending physician to “pull the plug.”

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