?
Probably the biggest trend to shape the funeral sector in the last couple of years is this trend towards personalisation. So having a funeral ceremony, but also a memorial, a grave or a cremation or a burial, whatever it is that reflects the kind of personality and kind of authentic, I suppose, beliefs and practices of the dead in life. Making sure, for example, even the smallest things like having the food that they liked at the funeral or playing the songs that they liked and an orientation towards the individual as opposed to towards, for example, the religious tradition towards God, towards the community.
Those things exist, but personalisation has become almost the number one value of the funeral ceremony. It was a good funeral if Mum had liked it, if the person who died had approved of it.
How do I talk to my family about my wishes for when I die?
Gateway Funerals
Do people want to become trees?
It is possible to become a tree in some sense, and there are a number of companies that are now offering this. But if you’re thinking that maybe you will place a beautiful little sapling on the coffin and then put someone six feet under, you will kill the tree… I hate to have to tell people this.
… if you have a lot of ashes in a very small area, so a high concentration, the pH levels and some of the chemical composition of those ashes can probably do a little bit more harm than good to the natural environment. There are ways around that. There are different ways of treating remains.
What is a composting burial?
[Compost burial involves using organic material and microbes to speed up the decomposition process to within 30 to 60 days, essential turning the body into soil]
This is a new technology that came out of the US and is quite popular in Seattle. I think they’ve got up to nine or 10 American states where it’s now legalised. There have been some moves to legalise it, both within New Zealand and Australia.
My understanding is that this is mostly a problem of legislative change. There would have to be a legislative change in order to have that made legal. Then, there’s also another technical question: Australia and New Zealand have rather different flora and fauna, both to each other, but also to the US. So there is a question of how you would make that happen.
Can I be buried in a field or forest in a canvas sack or cardboard box?
That’s probably the “greenest” way to go. Not to be embalmed, not to have any of these other preserving techniques and to go in a biodegradable sack or whatever it is, and to be put into land. Even better would be if that grave could be recycled in, say, 20 to 30 years, when your earthly remains are no longer here.
The part of the problem we have in many places is that we have an in perpetuity system of burial. Once it’s a grave, it’s always a grave, and then you want to think about land use as part of that ecological calculation. But natural burial is a very green way to go.
Can I start up a private cemetery?
It is a lot harder than simply opening up your paddock to burials, and the number one question I often get is people wanting to be buried on their own land, on private land.
… That is generally quite a difficult thing to do because of that longevity question. So is this a grave on private land? What happens if you were to sell that land? Or what would happen if, [in] a few generations, the government wants to buy back that land or whatever it is, you have to really start thinking about those questions and that can become quite difficult.
How do I decide who to invite to my assisted dying event?
I think if you’re going to be present, you get to do the guest list. This is completely up to you. Feel no obligation to invite anyone you don’t want to.
This is just your people, the people that you want to be there. After you go, they can have a funeral, and you can invite all the colleagues and other people that you feel obligated to, but I think if you’re going to have the guts and have the bravery to have your own funeral, it really should be exactly how you want it to be.
How can I tell my family what I want when I die?
…You just need to do a little bit of pre-planning. And that can actually be you yourself going to the provider and saying, “This is what I’d like to happen for me. I’d like my family to not to have to fret about it. What can we put in place while I’m alive for that to happen?”
… This is one of the things: the more thinking about death we can do when we’re healthy and alive, and the more conversations we can have with our friends and family, the less of a burden that becomes when we do die.
What’s the latest on AI recreations of lost loved ones?
Mostly they’ve been created as one-offs for TV programmes or for research projects… [You] feed all the data that we have about you into an AI system and create a hologram where you can chat with it after death.
There hasn’t been a lot of good research about the impacts of this on long-term grief outcomes. Mostly because they’re so hard to create, and they’re also very controversial.
I would absolutely hate it – I’m trying to say this in as many public forums as possible – please do not make me into a hologram after I die. I don’t want to be brought back to life through ChatGPT. They’re quite controversial, both in regard to the dead person’s right to be dead, their right to be forgotten, their right not to be resurrected digitally, and also in terms of the family members all agreeing to it.
