Green Bodies

/ Lisa / 6 Comments

Many years ago a local woman came to a planning commission meeting with information on green burials. This was where you could bury someone and allow them to decompose naturally. At the time, this was a radical idea that never gained traction. But I loved the thought that I could fertilize trees.

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Some people were grossed out by the idea, even though it was nothing new. This is how we did things before burial became a business.

Some were worried about contaminants, others about their religious beliefs.

Those same arguments circled when cremation was a ‘new’ practice. Of course cremation wasn’t truly new because cultures had also been doing that for hundreds of years. Think of those flaming Viking ships sent out to sea. What made cremation ‘new’ was that it was a new way to conduct the business of burials. A slightly cheaper way, but still a money-maker.

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Washington State just legalized human composting as a burial option. I am so, so thrilled by that. Isn’t it about time?

I love the idea that soil can be returned to my family and they can plant a rose. Or that they can choose to donate the soil for forest restoration. But as much as I love the idea, it’s way too costly still.

It bothers me that it is still a death-business. It’s being billed as more affordable. Really? Look at the numbers. A traditional burial can cost up to $9,000. Cremation can cost almost as much depending on what you want, although it can be as low as $1,000 (think cardboard box and spreading ashes), which is still difficult for many to pay. Composting sounds like it will run around $5,000.

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Explain to me why death is a business. Please. I get that everything these days is regulated. But why must death be so expensive that people have to budget and save or take out loans? Someone dies, the body is taken away from you, and you have to pay to get it back. And pay a lot. You have no choice. It’s almost like kidnapping and holding someone for ransom. My thought is if they want my body so badly they can keep it. The idea of my family having to bankrupt themselves just to get me back in some form is awful.

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Because composting is considered new, the usual fears are circling again. Will it be safe for pathogens and disease? Will it be safe for heavy metals? What if a person has been radiated? And of course, there’s always religion and those who believe a physical body is needed for resurrection.

I get some of those reasons are why regulation is needed. Regulations will ensure a process that is consistent. But I still don’t agree with the cost.

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Why hasn’t someone taken up the banner of socializing death as well as healthcare?

Though I suppose if we have to pay to be born we should also pay at the other end.

Maybe by the time I die composting will have been around long enough that costs come down. And then my husband can plant a new rose.

And wherever I am, there will be a day when I hear his voice yelling at the dog, ‘quit digging!’

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Beginnings

/ Lisa / 14 Comments

For the past three years I’ve been writing a new story. I’ve mentioned it here a few times, but only briefly because I’m superstitious that if I talk about an infant story too much, it dies and I never finish it.

Three years. Granted, I’m a slow writer in the best of times. But this has been hard because I’m trying to stretch my wings as a writer and am not sure if I’m succeeding. This one has multiple perspectives and story lines. It’s darker than I’ve written before, and it’s scary. Well, my goal is to make it scary. I’m not sure it’s scary enough.

My editor has her fingers in the story now, and she’s challenging me to delete chapters, strengthen motivations, and work on the scene/sequel process. It became obvious the beginning was very rough and needed a lot of work. No surprise there because beginnings can be the hardest thing to write as they have so much to accomplish.

The idea for the story came from a news event, but I don’t think I could have written it without being in a darker place myself. Without saying, ‘these are the things I’m afraid of in this world’ and then trying to place those fears on paper.

Anyway, I am hoping to have the book available by the end of summer. Cover art is in the process and I’ll share versions here to get opinions. But in the meantime, below is the beginning. The prologue. It’s still in edit but I’ll share anyway. Comments, first impressions, and opinions are appreciated.

And of course it’s copyrighted.

Prologue

The Hole in the Wall wasn’t really a hole but a dead-end shaft with a steel door that could be barricaded from within and locked from without. And the Wall wasn’t really a wall, but a granite mountain deeply fissured and hung with a dark and shadowed forest curtain. One that went straight up, creating a sense of severe vertigo overwhelming anyone leaning back, and back, and back, to see the top. Here and there, stunted fir and cedar and hemlock twisted and bent waiting to fall.

Occasionally the Wall would free boulders to plummet down and leave deep impact craters in the forest floor.

Few rock climbers, hanging with harnesses and bandaged knuckles, knew the door was there, far below them where the forest washed up at the base of the Wall.

Curtis Jonason locked himself in the Hole five days a week. Some days he imagined himself a climber suspended in the heights, able to see for miles, see the rushing white water of the Skykomish River, speckled with daredevil kayakers. Or to gaze down on the tiny, tiny town of Index, Washington nestled a mile off Highway 2 in the Cascade Mountains. But he wasn’t an adventurer. And he had long ago come to terms with the reality that his adventures were only found in imagination and books.

Instead, each day, in cold weather gear, he unlocked the Hole with his smooth scientist’s hands, slipped into the dark, and bolted the door behind him. There, he would spend fourteen hours alone burrowed into the granite, a small stream rushing under his workstation, a flashlight his only illumination.

Alone with his machines.

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Morningstar climbing route on a small portion of the Wall

A Stranger

/ Lisa / 9 Comments

I posted about this a couple years ago but a friend recently asked me to retell the story. So you old-timers might recognize this one.

Ten years ago I was going through radiation treatments for lymphoma. Every morning I drove an hour and a half to the cancer center, took off all my clothes, put on this robe, and sat in a room with others in their robes.

There was no socializing. There was little, if any, talking. Everything going on in that room was internalized. We were all head down, thoughts inward. Preparing for what we knew was coming, and how awful we were going to feel in a couple hours, and how sick we were going to be the rest of the day.

We were simply breathing. Grateful to be breathing, but able to do nothing more than take the next step right in front of us.

There was an older woman in that group. Short, steel-gray hair. She was always there before me, and when I walked in, she would lift her chin in greeting. We could manage an acknowledgement, but that was it.

Three or four years later I was in a grocery store, in the produce section, and happened to look up. And there she was. We met each other’s eyes and immediately burst into tears.

She was alive.

We hugged. We asked each other how the prognosis was going, how the healing was going. That’s when I found out she’d been in there for breast cancer.

And then we moved on to finish our shopping.

We never asked for each other’s name, or phone number, or email.

It was so random, to run into her there, of all places. That we happened to be, not just in the same town and the same store, but the same section at that exact same moment in time.

Years passed.

Two years ago I was…you guessed it…back at that same store. And there she was.

Once again, as soon as we met eyes, we were crying. We hugged. We asked those questions. Are you still free? She was. I wasn’t. I’d just finished another round of radiation and was still pretty sick. But I was able to tell her it was a precaution only and all was good. We cried some more.

We never asked for each other’s name, or phone number, or email.

She’s a complete stranger. I know nothing about who she is as a person, or what her family is like, or any of the myriad of stories we associate with those we know.

Yet I count her as a close friend.

And some day I’ll run into her again.