How do I get where I'm going when I'm through going places?
August 19, 2013 8:23 AM Subscribe
Death and DIY-filter! My dad, who is older but is not quite elderly or in dire straits with regards to his health, has always expressed a wish to be buried in as natural a way as possible. Think '1920s home burial with family dug grave' instead of 'put me in a biodegradable box made from reclaimed, waste wood fiber next to fifi the cat in a manicured cemetery' and you'll have the gist of what he's thinking. What are the ins and outs of making this happen? Look inside for specifics regarding our family situation/location/skillset...
The recent post on the front page got me to thinking about this and I figured I'd go ahead and make an askme that I'd been kinda dreading.
It's sad that some of the best information I could find during a casual search came from a realestate value article on MSN. I also found a copy of the 2010 Alabama Public Health laws that seem to be useful. Statues that look relevant:
Title 22, Chapter 19, Section 1: Transportation, which refers to the State Board of Health Rules/Vital Statistics 420-7-1-.13 which refers to ALA CODE § 22-9A-16 (which I don't understand at all).
*arrrgh*
I'll do more looking of course, and I've been down this research road before but don't remember my dad/family making any definite arrangements, so here we are again.
Of course, I've read through the various and amazing askme responses by mefi's own coldchef on the issue and still have some questions on this, sadly way too enigmatic, situation. His previous responses regarding DIY casket building, body abandonment *shiver*, body (or parts) donation, and skull retainment are all great, but not quite what I'm looking for.
It also bears mentioning that I appreciate coldchef and do not in any way view him as one of the predatory funeral directors mentioned in the front page post. He's one of the reasons I feel good asking this sort of oddly private, very delicate thing here actually, so I hope this isn't too 'paging coldchef'-ish but, well it kinda is. Anyway, he has said before that he is not affiliated with SCI, so I'll end the coldchef-fest here and hopefully all that wasn't too stalkery... now to my details.
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Location: Alabama, rural, plenty of suitable acreage, there is a waterway near some of it but getting up to a 1/4 mile away or more shouldn't pose a problem.
Skillsets: Personal access to medium-heavy farm equipment up to and including large tractors, roll back trucks, and a small backhoe is possible. We are also no strangers to shovels, mattocks, or posthole diggers. Building a simple casket, of the oft mentioned 'rough pine box' model, is well within our means as well. No cabinetry skills per se but plenty of tool/carpentry experience as well as clean-dry-place storage in a barn. I'd actually love to help out with this and spend some time ruminating with dad as we built the damn thing. Long discussions ya'know?
Finances: Not bottomless, despite the things mentioned above most of that equipment is older, family owned/maintained, and mom and dad aren't great with their finances and... well... I'll leave it at that. Let's just say a massive legal battle isn't in the cards, nor is chartering any jets to transport remains rush to the homeplace.
Squick-factor: Low to Medium personally, with no idea about the rest of the family. While I'm sure emotions will run high, from what I've heard from dad regarding previous home burials that he remembers, the process of digging the grave and preparing the body was cathartic. However his will, if it works out, be the exception to the norm of a funeral home/cemetery burial in his generation. More on this below.
Known complications: 1) Dad now lives about 250 miles from the family farm where the interment would, ideally, occur. Zero state lines to be crossed however. 2) Time limits from moment of death to interment are exacerbated by 1) above.
Unknown complications: Unknown, *insert legalese here*.
=======================================
So, I guess what I'm asking about is two part, with most of the emphasis on the first item (for now at least)...
Question 1: What do we need to do on the legal end of things before, during, and after death? Or how can we find these things out and become confident enough to stand up and be heard when *insert doctor, administrator, official here* comes up and says "You can't do what the law says you can do because I've never dealt with it before". Time and nerves will be short and dealing with something like that, at that time and place will be far from ideal. If the answer is lawyer, that's fine I suppose as long as we aren't diving deep into the rabbit hole of never-ending expenses/retainers. We'll need to do a lawyer trip anyway if just to do a casual end of life document/wishes check.
Question 2: What concerns will we have to watch out for on the practical side of things? This ranges from squick factor things like icing the body to legal concerns regarding the grave location. I don't really know what I don't know here but if there's a guide/book out there that covers this topic well I'll gladly pick it up.
Thanks, heading out for a walk now, will respond to questions for clarifications as needed. Please, and I doubt this will be an issue, but no lectures on how the funeral industry really is great/not great or how the "old way of doing things leads to plague" or whatever, I'm really not interested in that as I'm going to assume it's not an issue when the state regs are followed, which is what I want to do to avoid an extra grief when the time comes.
The recent post on the front page got me to thinking about this and I figured I'd go ahead and make an askme that I'd been kinda dreading.
It's sad that some of the best information I could find during a casual search came from a realestate value article on MSN. I also found a copy of the 2010 Alabama Public Health laws that seem to be useful. Statues that look relevant:
Title 22, Chapter 19, Section 1: Transportation, which refers to the State Board of Health Rules/Vital Statistics 420-7-1-.13 which refers to ALA CODE § 22-9A-16 (which I don't understand at all).
*arrrgh*
I'll do more looking of course, and I've been down this research road before but don't remember my dad/family making any definite arrangements, so here we are again.
Of course, I've read through the various and amazing askme responses by mefi's own coldchef on the issue and still have some questions on this, sadly way too enigmatic, situation. His previous responses regarding DIY casket building, body abandonment *shiver*, body (or parts) donation, and skull retainment are all great, but not quite what I'm looking for.
It also bears mentioning that I appreciate coldchef and do not in any way view him as one of the predatory funeral directors mentioned in the front page post. He's one of the reasons I feel good asking this sort of oddly private, very delicate thing here actually, so I hope this isn't too 'paging coldchef'-ish but, well it kinda is. Anyway, he has said before that he is not affiliated with SCI, so I'll end the coldchef-fest here and hopefully all that wasn't too stalkery... now to my details.
============================================
Location: Alabama, rural, plenty of suitable acreage, there is a waterway near some of it but getting up to a 1/4 mile away or more shouldn't pose a problem.
Skillsets: Personal access to medium-heavy farm equipment up to and including large tractors, roll back trucks, and a small backhoe is possible. We are also no strangers to shovels, mattocks, or posthole diggers. Building a simple casket, of the oft mentioned 'rough pine box' model, is well within our means as well. No cabinetry skills per se but plenty of tool/carpentry experience as well as clean-dry-place storage in a barn. I'd actually love to help out with this and spend some time ruminating with dad as we built the damn thing. Long discussions ya'know?
Finances: Not bottomless, despite the things mentioned above most of that equipment is older, family owned/maintained, and mom and dad aren't great with their finances and... well... I'll leave it at that. Let's just say a massive legal battle isn't in the cards, nor is chartering any jets to transport remains rush to the homeplace.
Squick-factor: Low to Medium personally, with no idea about the rest of the family. While I'm sure emotions will run high, from what I've heard from dad regarding previous home burials that he remembers, the process of digging the grave and preparing the body was cathartic. However his will, if it works out, be the exception to the norm of a funeral home/cemetery burial in his generation. More on this below.
Known complications: 1) Dad now lives about 250 miles from the family farm where the interment would, ideally, occur. Zero state lines to be crossed however. 2) Time limits from moment of death to interment are exacerbated by 1) above.
Unknown complications: Unknown, *insert legalese here*.
=======================================
So, I guess what I'm asking about is two part, with most of the emphasis on the first item (for now at least)...
Question 1: What do we need to do on the legal end of things before, during, and after death? Or how can we find these things out and become confident enough to stand up and be heard when *insert doctor, administrator, official here* comes up and says "You can't do what the law says you can do because I've never dealt with it before". Time and nerves will be short and dealing with something like that, at that time and place will be far from ideal. If the answer is lawyer, that's fine I suppose as long as we aren't diving deep into the rabbit hole of never-ending expenses/retainers. We'll need to do a lawyer trip anyway if just to do a casual end of life document/wishes check.
Question 2: What concerns will we have to watch out for on the practical side of things? This ranges from squick factor things like icing the body to legal concerns regarding the grave location. I don't really know what I don't know here but if there's a guide/book out there that covers this topic well I'll gladly pick it up.
Thanks, heading out for a walk now, will respond to questions for clarifications as needed. Please, and I doubt this will be an issue, but no lectures on how the funeral industry really is great/not great or how the "old way of doing things leads to plague" or whatever, I'm really not interested in that as I'm going to assume it's not an issue when the state regs are followed, which is what I want to do to avoid an extra grief when the time comes.
Is the goal here to keep outsiders out of the process? Or to get family members in on it as much as possible?
For instance: if you knew there was a funeral director who would permit you and your family to build your own casket, dig your own grave, and maybe even participate to some extent in preparing the body — would you hire him? Or would your reaction still be "No, that's bringing in someone from outside the family, that's precisely what we don't want to do"?
(It seems to me like there's an analogy with the home-birth-vs.-hospital-birth question. Some people who want a home birth, their first priority is staying outside the mainstream health care system altogether. But for a lot more people, they don't care about whether they've technically been admitted to a hospital or not, it's just that they want a particular style of attentive, low-key care — and it turns out that if they can get that sort of care in a hospital setting, from a doctor who shares their goals and ideals, then that's by far the easiest thing to do. So it's important for the parents to have clarity on whether they care more about doing it off-the-grid and outside-the-system, or whether they care more about getting to be involved in certain ways. I suspect it will be important for you to have a similar sort of clarity in this situation.)
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 9:08 AM on August 19, 2013
For instance: if you knew there was a funeral director who would permit you and your family to build your own casket, dig your own grave, and maybe even participate to some extent in preparing the body — would you hire him? Or would your reaction still be "No, that's bringing in someone from outside the family, that's precisely what we don't want to do"?
(It seems to me like there's an analogy with the home-birth-vs.-hospital-birth question. Some people who want a home birth, their first priority is staying outside the mainstream health care system altogether. But for a lot more people, they don't care about whether they've technically been admitted to a hospital or not, it's just that they want a particular style of attentive, low-key care — and it turns out that if they can get that sort of care in a hospital setting, from a doctor who shares their goals and ideals, then that's by far the easiest thing to do. So it's important for the parents to have clarity on whether they care more about doing it off-the-grid and outside-the-system, or whether they care more about getting to be involved in certain ways. I suspect it will be important for you to have a similar sort of clarity in this situation.)
posted by Now there are two. There are two _______. at 9:08 AM on August 19, 2013
Some states allow green burials in specified cemeteries but not at home. If Dad would be okay with the process in a different spot there are a few options. Here's one
posted by janey47 at 9:11 AM on August 19, 2013
posted by janey47 at 9:11 AM on August 19, 2013
Funeral directors can be surprisingly flexible in what they can do, luckily we were in a small town with a very friendly open minded director who was amazing at getting us just what my Dad and us wanted. We decorated my fathers coffin with stickers, drew pictures wrote things on it, and actually during the service people could come up and add things to the coffin decorations if they wanted, we also put some of his favourite things in the coffin with him. My brother wanted to build the coffin and would have been allowed to but it would have taken too much time and my mother didn't want to wait.
My father wanted to be cremated so we didn't have to dig the grave, but we had a area that we buried his ashes in and then my brother set and laid the headstone/plaque. Our local cemetery had an area we could do this, and were going to build gardens that people could do this in, but we were the first people to want this so we ended up building our own garden in our "area" too and you can legally use it for the remains of up to 8 family members for the one cost, of course if you had your own land this would be even less of a problem. A lot of people thought we were weird but strangely being able to do constructive physical things to contribute to his burial was more cathartic (as your dad put it) than I can explain and I would highly recommend it.
TL;DR If your father would consider cremation what you can do with the remains gets a lot less tied up in red tape. Get in contact with a Funeral Director before needed, that's what my Dad did (he had a long terminal illness), they can help you with so much of this, despite what you might think yours will not be the weirdest thing they have heard.
posted by wwax at 9:28 AM on August 19, 2013
My father wanted to be cremated so we didn't have to dig the grave, but we had a area that we buried his ashes in and then my brother set and laid the headstone/plaque. Our local cemetery had an area we could do this, and were going to build gardens that people could do this in, but we were the first people to want this so we ended up building our own garden in our "area" too and you can legally use it for the remains of up to 8 family members for the one cost, of course if you had your own land this would be even less of a problem. A lot of people thought we were weird but strangely being able to do constructive physical things to contribute to his burial was more cathartic (as your dad put it) than I can explain and I would highly recommend it.
TL;DR If your father would consider cremation what you can do with the remains gets a lot less tied up in red tape. Get in contact with a Funeral Director before needed, that's what my Dad did (he had a long terminal illness), they can help you with so much of this, despite what you might think yours will not be the weirdest thing they have heard.
posted by wwax at 9:28 AM on August 19, 2013
this from Alabama Green Burials:
A home burial is an alternative to disposition in a cemetery. It’s allowed by almost all counties, but most require a minimum number of acres and often the filing of a plat map with the planning department.
posted by Lucinda at 10:23 AM on August 19, 2013
A home burial is an alternative to disposition in a cemetery. It’s allowed by almost all counties, but most require a minimum number of acres and often the filing of a plat map with the planning department.
posted by Lucinda at 10:23 AM on August 19, 2013
This pamphlet (warning, PDF) states:
There are no laws that specifically permit or prohibit burial on your own land. A good practice is 150 feet from a water supply and 25 feet from a power line with two or three feet of earth on top. You should draw a map of the land where the family cemetery is and have it recorded with the deed. Landowners have a legal obligation to permit descendants and interested others to visit graves on private property.
posted by Lucinda at 10:27 AM on August 19, 2013
There are no laws that specifically permit or prohibit burial on your own land. A good practice is 150 feet from a water supply and 25 feet from a power line with two or three feet of earth on top. You should draw a map of the land where the family cemetery is and have it recorded with the deed. Landowners have a legal obligation to permit descendants and interested others to visit graves on private property.
posted by Lucinda at 10:27 AM on August 19, 2013
Response by poster: Thanks for the responses! Some replies for clarification:
NtatTat: if you knew there was a funeral director who would permit you and your family to build your own casket, dig your own grave, and maybe even participate to some extent in preparing the body — would you hire him? Or would your reaction still be "No, that's bringing in someone from outside the family, that's precisely what we don't want to do"?
Well that's a question for dad but my understanding is that all of the above would be fine actually IF it still allowed for burial on our property AND it still avoided embalming and other invasive procedures, neither of which are specifically things you asked about. At which point, combined with the other things we'd not mind and/or prefer to do ourselves, I can't help but believe the added benefit of a director approaches nil. I'm prepared to be wrong, and would present evidence to the contrary to dad if indeed that is the case but, without diving too deeply into the other replies yet, don't see it.
For what it's worth, and only because you mention it, he was born at home and his soon to be grandchild is on track to be born outside of a hospital as well. It's odd to have these two things come up at the same time but I most certainly see the parallel.
janey47: See my response above, my take is that being buried at home, if legally possible (which I think it is), is high on his priority list, if not right at the very top.
wwax:If your father would consider cremation what you can do with the remains gets a lot less tied up in red tape. Get in contact with a Funeral Director before needed, that's what my Dad did (he had a long terminal illness), they can help you with so much of this, despite what you might think yours will not be the weirdest thing they have heard.
Last I talked to dad cremation wasn't in the cards for him, I think he'd rather lean towards embalming between those two if push came to shove. But I completely agree that it'd be easier if that were on the table. *sprinkle on the homeplace*, memories, cue curtain. That said, I, for one, am not averse to talking to a funeral director and this askme is likely a bit of a precursor to that so that we can go in armed instead of ignorant. Thanks for confirming that idea.
Lucinda: That's perfect! A great starting place, now to find a "GBC-approved funeral home" to start asking questions to. I admit this may be simpler than it seems but knowing what hoops need to be jumped through, doubly so for things like any transportation issues that could arise if he's away from home and time limits, concern me. That really does look great and seeing some hard info, even if not cited directly, is reassuring. I'll be passing this on to him for perusal right now.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:33 PM on August 19, 2013
NtatTat: if you knew there was a funeral director who would permit you and your family to build your own casket, dig your own grave, and maybe even participate to some extent in preparing the body — would you hire him? Or would your reaction still be "No, that's bringing in someone from outside the family, that's precisely what we don't want to do"?
Well that's a question for dad but my understanding is that all of the above would be fine actually IF it still allowed for burial on our property AND it still avoided embalming and other invasive procedures, neither of which are specifically things you asked about. At which point, combined with the other things we'd not mind and/or prefer to do ourselves, I can't help but believe the added benefit of a director approaches nil. I'm prepared to be wrong, and would present evidence to the contrary to dad if indeed that is the case but, without diving too deeply into the other replies yet, don't see it.
For what it's worth, and only because you mention it, he was born at home and his soon to be grandchild is on track to be born outside of a hospital as well. It's odd to have these two things come up at the same time but I most certainly see the parallel.
janey47: See my response above, my take is that being buried at home, if legally possible (which I think it is), is high on his priority list, if not right at the very top.
wwax:If your father would consider cremation what you can do with the remains gets a lot less tied up in red tape. Get in contact with a Funeral Director before needed, that's what my Dad did (he had a long terminal illness), they can help you with so much of this, despite what you might think yours will not be the weirdest thing they have heard.
Last I talked to dad cremation wasn't in the cards for him, I think he'd rather lean towards embalming between those two if push came to shove. But I completely agree that it'd be easier if that were on the table. *sprinkle on the homeplace*, memories, cue curtain. That said, I, for one, am not averse to talking to a funeral director and this askme is likely a bit of a precursor to that so that we can go in armed instead of ignorant. Thanks for confirming that idea.
Lucinda: That's perfect! A great starting place, now to find a "GBC-approved funeral home" to start asking questions to. I admit this may be simpler than it seems but knowing what hoops need to be jumped through, doubly so for things like any transportation issues that could arise if he's away from home and time limits, concern me. That really does look great and seeing some hard info, even if not cited directly, is reassuring. I'll be passing this on to him for perusal right now.
posted by RolandOfEld at 12:33 PM on August 19, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by oflinkey at 8:35 AM on August 19, 2013 [1 favorite]