You’d look good in compost
We pass a horse-drawn funeral cortege and the hunched driver looks pale and gothic. It prompts a short burst of conversation, during which both of us say we don’t care how the other deals with our mortal remains once they are no longer required
‘You’re going in the compost,’ I tell Baz. ‘You’ll go lovely in the strawberry bed.’
“You’ve given this quite a lot of thought, haven’t you’ says Baz. ‘Have you got a date in mind yet?’
Life at № 42 by E.M. Coutinho
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my weekly diary for my friends
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Fab Fun Findings from France
Preserving the Past | 200+ Abandoned, Historic, and Forgotten Places
THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF LIVING THE DREAM
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Poshbird with Passion 
My plan is to let my remains fertilize the weeping willow tree in our yard. The thought gives me comfort.
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This is the best sort of conversation
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We are booked into the cemetery in Marcolès already. I infinitely prefer the idea of becoming a strawberry!
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You do know this is illegal in France, right? I suppose there are no compost police coming around to check your strawberry patch, but the spreading of ashes is strictly forbidden. Another dumb rule that deserves to be broken IMHO.
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I know that ‘composting’ is forbidden, but it’s a shame that they are so restrictive about ashes, as this is often such a comfort for families
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I COULD just stick him under the patio like the others…
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LOL! And here I was innocently thinking all you wanted to do was spread his ashes. 😉
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Absolutely absurd it is! My father was scattered on The Holies (a lovely bit of National Trust that looks down over the Goring Gap on the border of Berkshire and Oxfordshire. It is ground that my father-in-law was integral in saving for the public and my father loved walking and latterly just sitting upon, cogetating rather like Winnie The Pooh) – my mother and I chose a place he particularly loved and he was scattered by us both amongst the silver birches. A decade later, when I moved to France I trawled a bit of broken birch which sits on my window sill and feels rather sentinal – quietly protecting me in a sense. The fact that the French have to keep building extensions on their cemeteries should surely give them a clue! We, by the way, are already booked into one just in case!!!
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I suspect it’s a money-making scheme hiding under a veil of so-called public health laws. A lot of people now get cremated but the only legal place to keep the ashes is in a ‘columbarium’ which has a hefty annual fee! Or in a sealed urn in your home but to me that’s just creepy. The scattering of ashes in a meaningful place like for your father is a wonderful way to honour our dearly departed.
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Sadly I’m certain you are right. We have a columbarium in our village and it is quite horrible …. looks like the workings of a carpenter who passed his sell-by date in 1974. There is no way I’m going in there, nor on the mantelpiece so having always said I want to be burned I am now to be buried. Perhaps I can cause a scandal by getting those left behind to plant fruit and veg in grow-bags instead of leaving a crysanthemum bush for toussaint? 😀
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We will only have the briefest parting anyway ; He freely admits that if I go first. he won’t last without me….
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Oh how sweet! Baz is already planning to re-settle with someone clean and tidy!
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That wouldn’t work for Trevor; all he wants is to be able to find something in the same place that he left it.
This is not possible with a woman who buys, sells and moves stuff around and redecorates at whim , sometimes in his absence. I suspect ultra clean and ultra tidy would finish him off also.
However, I have by slow and subtle osmosis, made myself & my mad ways at least partly indispensable
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Enhancing the strawberries sounds very merit worthy. Had thought about under the apple tree for us!
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A great way to do something nice for the earth, but no need to be in a hurry. 🙂
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The strawberries look delicious without any additional compost. Baz should be safe for the moment? Did you grow them? Helen’s birthday 24th June, hope to see her about that time. Love to all, xxx P.S. We seem to share thesame ideas about final demise!
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They’re not actuallymy strawbs. I snapped these at Chelsea last month. But mine are fruiting well now x
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Or how about becoming a tree? Bios Urn offers biodegradable urns that use soil and cremated ashes to sprout new life in the form of a tree.
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Not to be too morbid (well, yeah, it is, but not MY idea), there’s an artist who created a mushroom suit to turn a person’s dead body into compost. Check out the TED Talk: https://www.ted.com/speakers/jae_rhim_lee
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Fascinating stuff. People are so innovative about the taboo subject of death these days
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