Why Did Grandma Want Cremation?

Death Practice (5) A way of taking care of the body

By Lee Gyeong-sin

Published: December 14, 2012

Translated by Lee Mi-kyeong

In the 1961 movie Autumn For the Kohahagawa Family, by the Japanese film director Yasjiro Oz, there is a scene of smoke curling up from the chimney of a crematorium. Is it an age-old practice to cremate a dead person in Japan? According to the statistics, from 2011, 99.92% of deceased bodies in Japan were cremated. It is an astonishing figure that is said to be caused by the land shortage for burial.

Burial or Cremation?

▲ The cinerarium in Pere Lachaise Cemetery, located in the east of Paris. It is the largest and most famous cemetery in Paris. The year 2004 marked its 200th anniversary, and public figures such as Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Moliere, Edith Piaf, Modigliani and Chopin are widely known to be buried here. © Lee Gyeong-sin

When did it start? I don’t remember exactly when, but I’ve had an idea that I want to have my body cremated when I die. It might be because of the feeling that a quick cremation was cleaner than the slow decay as prey to insects for quite a long time.

The issue that first comes to mind as a way of taking care of the body of the dead is burial or cremation. An aerial burial in which the body is cut into pieces and then thrown them to birds of prey does exist, but in Korea the only two methods--burial in the ground and cremation--seem allowed as ways of dealing with dead bodies. The ratio of burial to cremation varies depending on countries. Cremation has an overwhelming rate of over 70% in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. In Korea, traditional funeral culture is based on burial, but in the last 20 years the proportion of cremation has soared from 17.8% to 71.1%. However, in some countries such as Ireland and Italy, it stands at a mere 10 %, as the majority prefers burial.

Particularly countries under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church are said to prefer burial to cremation. The Roman Catholic Church, which has long supported burial, declared in 1886 that it would ban cremation and excommunicate those who practiced cremation. It was not until 1963 that it withdrew its ban on cremation.

A look at France, where the majority of people are Catholic, shows that the cremation rate in the early 1980s was as low as 1%, but today it has reached 32%. Moreover, there are more than 150 crematoriums in the country today, up from only nine in the 1970s. According to statistics from 2010, 53% of the French said that they want cremation when they are dead. What makes the French people increasingly prefer cremation to burial?

Financial and Environmental Reasons for Cremation

The crematorium in Pere Lachaise Cemetery
© Lee Gyeong-sin

Of course, people who opt for cremation today do not choose it as a means of protest against the Rome Catholic Church like members of the Freemasons did a long time ago. And yet it is true that the weakened influence of the Catholic Church on society has brought about the growth in cremation. In France’s case, cremation has been recommended for reasons of sanitation ever since Pasteur discovered bacteriology.  The country’s first cremation was carried out in Père-Lachaise crematorium in 1889.

According to the survey conducted in 2007 by CRÉDOC (Research Center for the Study and Monitoring of Living Standards), 35% of respondents said that they want cremation in order not to leave a financial burden to relatives. The choice appears closely related with aging society. The elderly, who have lived depending on those close to them for quite a long time as they grow older, choose cremation lest they should give further burdens to them. Although cremation costs not a small amount of money, it is still considerably cheaper than burial. In France, the price gap is about 1,250 euros.

24% opt for cremation as a way of returning to the earth with a small burden to nature, as it is an eco-friendly way of disposing of deceased bodies. Burial pollutes groundwater. However, cremation also causes controversy about air pollution. Burning deceased bodies produces not only mercury, which comes from amalgam in teeth, but also dioxin, coming from the formalin used to preserve the body. Most French crematoriums don’t have filters, and as the installation of filters is not required until 2018, air pollution caused by cremation will continue to be a problem until then. However, given the fact that formalin causes land pollution by spreading through earth, burial also cannot be free from pollution problems related to preservative treatment.

That was why there has appeared a new method of treating dead bodies, which emits three times fewer greenhouse gases while using one-seventh of the energy that is used for cremation. It dissolves human tissues with potassium hydroxide solution, and after applying pressure and heat, it discharges only water into sewage ditches. This method is now in use in the United States. There is also another method, offered by a Swedish biologist, which uses both crystallization and pulverization. It places bodies into a cube of liquid nitrogen whose temperature is 196 degrees below zero, and then applies a strong vibration to the weakened bodies to turn them into minute particles. The fine powder, after being dehydrated and its toxic substances such as mercury being removed, can be buried. Sweden and the United Kingdom have plans to allow this method in the future.

Other reasons for cremation

Tombs in Pere Lachaise Cemetery © Lee Gyeong-sin

Some people, though their number is small, want cremation because they want their bodies to be disintegrated quickly. If dead bodies are left in the open air, the bones are exposed by insects in less than one month, and they turn into dirt in two or three years. However, if deceased bodies are buried, the decomposition takes more time, and moreover, burial after placing the dead body into a casket takes even more time because of making it difficult for insects to gain access. It probably takes ten years or more. If the casket is sealed well, then of course it takes that much longer to decompose. And if the atmosphere is dry and the temperature is low, the body cannot decay, so in some cases it naturally becomes a mummy. But cremation can instantly turn the body into dirt in a short time.

In addition, some choose cremation for other psychological reasons such as discomfort with their body being eaten by insects and fears of the possibility of being buried alive, and for the reason that crematoriums and charnel houses require less land in a situation in which the land available for burial is scarce.

I don’t know the reason, but my grandma always wished to be cremated. But unfortunately, her wish was not fulfilled. As her children had already prepared land for her next to her husband’s grave after burying him, they buried their dead mother next to her husband, and I’m not sure whether they knew Grandma’s wish or not. On the day when Grandma was buried in the ground, I just said to myself, “But Grandma wanted to be cremated…”

Maybe it was from that day that I started to think, “Burial or cremation does not matter after death. Trying to control even the body after death is, itself, greedy.” Even today, I have occasionally thought about how I would like my dead body to be taken care of, only to reach the conclusion that the handling of a dead body is the province of the living rather than something that the dead can dictate, that it cannot but be left at the disposal of the living. I just hope that my body will not cause huge damage to nature--to the air, water or earth.

*Original article: http://www.ildaro.com/sub_read.html?uid=6225&section=sc71