Shuffling off this mortal coil

Scavenger writes:

Lately I have heard mention several times of "green funerals", or the idea of making your cessation of life environmentally friendly.

This will lead up to another discussion later about, "Why do you do what you do?", but for now I'll talk about this.

I'm not an environmentalist, although I am a scavenger. But for a long time I have not liked the idea of being embalmed in an attempt to preserve my body indefinitely.

I am Christian, as I think I've made clear before. I am currently animate, quick with life, walking around and making a nuisance of myself. But that will end at some point. When it happens, my soul will be judged and my body will be left behind. That which is corporeal will no longer be animate.

We are dust given a spark of the divine. Genesis tells us, "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." When that spark leaves, the body returns to its components.

And yet we fight that. I don't know why exactly. Look at the ancient Egyptians, preserving their dead in hopes that it would mean an afterlife. By doggies, I'd hate to think that my hereafter was dependent on what my body did after I left it!

We fear death. Simple as that. We fear it. We don't know what's on the other side. Religions teach us that there is more after this, but I think that even in the most devout person there is doubt and fear about losing what we know and moving into the unknown. Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Purgatory, reincarnation, a great big Nothing?

Whatever is beyond, we know our bodies fall apart after we leave them. A great deal of time, effort, and money is spent in fighting that. The reasons, as is usually the case, are not singular. From what I've read, modern embalming really kicked off as a way of getting dead soldiers of the American Civil War home to be buried by their loved ones. Not necessarily a bad sentiment. But then people saw that there was money to be made in embalming.

I love capitalism, but if you want to get through it with any real individualism, you've got to be able to cut through the crap mighty quick. Undertakers run a business, same as anyone. If they can get you (or your loved ones) to spend more money on a funeral by adding embalming, caskets, headstones, vaults, cremation, intercoms in case you are accidentally buried alive, and pinwheels turning merrily in the breeze as they lower you down, they would be poor businessmen not to take advantage of it.

Does it do the dead a lick of good? No. They're not around to give a hoot. Is it a comfort to those remaining behind? Maybe, though I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the idea that you're doing the last thing you can to take care of your loved one.

When my dad died, he was embalmed and put into a metal casket. It was stainless steel with automotive-quality paint. Seriously. From the undertaker's mouth. It was my mom's choice. She said that she hated to think of him with rust on his face. It was a bit of solace to her that she was taking care of him, I suppose. I don't know that Daddy would have cared one way or another.

I know I'm dust. When I'm gone, I cheerfully want to return to that dust. Quickly as possible. I don't need my body; make it dirt and let it be useful. I'll probably be buried at a cemetery outside of the church we go to, but I wouldn't mind being buried on the family farm. I don't want a stainless steel time capsule. I want a simple wooden coffin, with plain iron fittings. Preferably I would make it myself. Bury me and plant an oak tree on top of me so that its roots will go down and split my bones apart. I love huge old oak trees, and would far rather have one on my grave than a marble vault.

Being flung by a trebuchet through flaming hoops to land in the open grave wouldn't be a bad way to go, either...

I know I'm living on borrowed time with a borrowed body. I'm not going to fight to keept that body together after I'm no longer tenanting it. Am I scared of death? Heck yeah! But my faith is in Christ and I'll follow where He leads. I know that means leaving my body behind and I'm as all right with that as I think I can get.

But what gets me is this idea of "green funerals". It's trendy. Like driving hybrids. It's a way that people can proclaim that they are doing things environmentally consciously. I came up with my position on my preferred funeral years ago for my own reasons. And now the same basic idea is being touted as the latest and greatest. I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade or discourage anyone (heck, I think we all should probably drop the hooplah and just get stuck in the ground), but I'm just a bit baffled at people. You want buried in organically grown hemp shrouds? Have at it. There's no need to alert the media over it.

I'm writing this very late at night. Hopefully it isn't as rambling as it seems at this point.

Scavenger writes: Part of the purpose of this blog was to be able to show projects that we have worked on or are currently working on. We've been kind of slow lately, and so far it has mostly been philosophical discussion. So, I thought I would show a project that both I and the Feral Man worked on.

This is a knife made for a friend of ours for his birthday. I made the knife and the Feral Man made the sheath for it. This friend's brother has an interest in hunting wild boars with dogs and knives. Personally, I would at least want a spear to keep me back from the tusks, but to each their own. Anyway, the brother was forging a knife with my help, and I got distracted helping someone else and the brother forged the tang down too small. Nothing that would be dangerous for a regular outdoors knife, but when you've got an angry animal that weighs at least as much as you that you're trying to kill with a knife, the tang had better not fail on you. The brother still wanted to use it for hog hunting perhaps.

So with this knife, I was making a present for the friend and also making my version of a hog hunting knife. The tang is very broad, especially at the transition to the blade. The knife is made from scavenged materials. It's forged by hand from a Camaro performance coil spring, unused, that I was given (the friend at one point had a Camaro, so it seemed appropriate). The double guard is copper bus bar I got from a salvage yard. The wooden part of the handle is an oak branch that grew that way. I just shaped it down to a comfortable fit. The stacked leather part of the handle came from a big bag of scrap leather I got at Hobby Lobby. The handle locks into your hand very solidly; the double guard ensures that when you stab a hog, you don't risk your hand accidentally sliding up onto the blade, and the curve at the end of the handle keeps it from sliding out with any slashing or chopping motions.

The sheath is nicely done. It has a peg on the side of the sheath so that you can wear it stuck in your belt if you want. But, the Feral Man also made a separate belt loop holder. This way, you can wear this rather sizeable knife on your belt and still easily climb into your pickup without undoing your belt to take the knife off or having it awkwardly jabbing into you as you're sitting. You simply pop the sheath out of the holder when you're getting in and pop it back in when you get out. He even added an extra niftiness element by stamping a paw print onto the holder that is hidden when the sheath is in it.