Alligator tea party

Posted by Vicki on 22.11.05

Grandad has now been dwelling in his crematorium-issue Tupperware in the shed since February 2004. As far as I can tell he is happy; he's even been brought to dinner a couple of times, although we have yet to introduce him to guests, and there are no plans to move him. This does raise a question of what normally happens to bodies that for whatever reason were disposed of by conventional means.

'By conventional means' encompasses burial, cryogenic freezing and cremation with the ashes being buried or scattered. Ashes can also be left in urns in household situations but as a general rule this asking for unfortunate accidents.

For many people these options might seem dull, they are certainly lacking in imagination and you'd have thought would be relatively easy to carry out. For example the State of Georgia has the following requirements for establishments wishing to carry out the role of crematories: a room with 30-person seating capacity where the funeral services are conducted, a display room with at least 4 urns (it doesn't specify if they should be occupied), one operable motor hearse, one operable retort for cremation, current crematory license on display. It costs an operator about $25 to cremate a body; an urn will cost you extra and if not purchased from the funeral home the ashes will be passed over in a Tupperware boxed labelled with the name of the occupant.

A dictionary definition of retort is "a closed laboratory vessel with an outlet tube, used for distillation, sublimation, or decomposition by heat" - presumably this means a working crematorium oven. However, since on February 14 2002, investigators with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made the gruesome discovery of initially lots of random body parts outside the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Georgia and later found at least 149 decaying bodies.

Of the 60,000 deaths in Georgia on 2004, about 6,000 bodies were cremated. The average cost to the family of a basic cremation is about $1,200, but some families spend thousands on an urn and funeral. It cost Granddad several hundred pounds for him to be burnt and then the question of what should be done with the body was at first debated and then gradually forgotten. In order to add more sparkle to his after-life I intend to borrow some of the ashes and mix them into clay in order to make modern art. The resulting sculptures, no matter how misshapen or badly fired would no doubt win significant sums from arts institution sponsored prizes as a study of grief in modern society where life is disposable and death is forgettable.

However this trick will only work once so in order to prevent boredom after death it's wise to have contingency plans on offer; there are the slightly outlandish but still, just about, socially acceptable options such a multiple organ donation - which under UK law your very dead body can forcibly have blood pumped around it so the medical professionals can harvest your organs at their leisure, stuffing or leaving in your house forgotten to rot. It's important that deniability be present in the last option as dumping bodies or burying them on unlicensed land can be stricken with legal problems. If these are still too mundane for your tastes mummification is always an option, admittedly one that will cost a significant sum of money and require someone with a strong stomach to extract your brain through your nose. This however is a little dated and isn't really in keeping with the advancing times, similarly cryogenic freezing is seen as being slightly too futuristic for most people's comfort.

In my opinion the perfect balance between the two has to the the concept of an Alligator tea party - crocodiles can be used if they are easier to come by; this is where you dress the corpse up nicely as if for a tea party then lay out a nice appetising picnic ear a river or lake which you know is frequented by large reptilian beasts and very few authority figures. If desired invite other corpses to join the party, then leave them to enjoy afternoon tea with the alligators. The body will be disposed of in an environmentally friendly way thus making it the perfect goodbye for animal lovers or anyone who wants to do their bit for protecting the planet.