A Sense of Doubt blog post #2851 - Death Series #009: Burial at Sea

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2851 - Death Series #009: Burial at Sea

So, in looking for pictures, I found this: 

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2011/05/bin-laden-burial-at-sea/

As a subscriber to Mother Jones, I thought I should share it.

The passage is below.

I have to say that I chose it as much for the mention of Margaret Drabble, a favorite writer, as the content.

THE DEATH SERIES - POST #009 OF 10

In a series of ten posts over 12-13 days, I am presenting a fact a day about death from the book I am reading titled Advice for Future Corpses by Sallie Tisdale. I hope the thought provoking facts that I share will enrich your life as much as they have enriched mine.

LOW POWER MODE: I sometimes put the blog in what I call LOW POWER MODE. If you see this note, the blog is operating like a sleeping computer, maintaining static memory, but making no new computations. If I am in low power mode, it's because I do not have time to do much that's inventive, original, or even substantive on the blog. This means I am posting straight shares, limited content posts, reprints, often something qualifying for the THAT ONE THING category and other easy to make posts to keep me daily. That's the deal. Thanks for reading.


TODAY'S PASSAGE:

"I live in a coastal state, and a lot of people here think about burial at sea. (Preferably a Viking Funeral, the burning boat bobbing slowly out with the tide, flames over sea until the boat sinks and the body is carried away.) Sea burial is usually more complicated and expensive than earth burial. The body must be ferried out at least three miles to international waters, weighted, and dropped into a depth of at least six hundred feet. A fair amount of paperwork is required. If you are a veteran or a spouse of a Navy or Coast Guard veteran, burial at sea is free, but the paperwork is complicated and the scheduling slow. Slow as in months, pending the position of ships and their maneuvers.

"Margaret Drabble is in her late seventies now and making plans. She has asked to be cremated and "not buried in the cold earth." She wonders about sea burial: "The thought of being devoured underwater is strangely attractive to me, but I think it's hard to arrange, and I won't want to be a nuisance." I want to tell Drabble that sea burial is quite a nuisance, and if she dislikes the cold ground, she won't be happy with the sea. Decomposition goes faster in warm water than in soil. But in cold water -- which is all their is at six hundred feet -- bodies go through fairly dramatic chemical changes that most people will find at least distressing as ordinary decomposition, and they are not exactly devoured, at least not in a timely way. The government of India releases thousands of turtles into the Ganges every year to help eat the remains of all those bodies" (Tisdale 180-81).

Work Cited

Tisdale, Sallie. Advice for Future Corpses (And Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying. Gallery Books, Simon and Schuster, 2018.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2212.08 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2715 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.