Life is so precious and so fragile, I truly hope that everyone appreciates the seconds they have. I just lost a dear friend last Thursday and believe me when I say every minute after has been a traumatizing experience. Death has a funny way of taking time to a halt as you ponder on the lost moments…
My friend was a great many things but above all he was a dutiful son, a wonderful brother, a loving husband and a magnificent friend. Surely the memory of a man so great cannot become extinguished with the last breath he draws? I think regardless of which faith you keep; when we are faced with death…we cannot help but wonder what is next.
Now I do appreciate that the presence of death, is hardly a time to think about eco sustainability and let us face facts…death or how we lay the body to rest after is anything but eco-friendly – think of the embalming fluids (formaldehyde), the expensive caskets, the carbon dioxide that your loved one becomes when cremated.
But it’s something that has to be done. Laying our loved ones to rest in an honourable and complete manner is necessary for closure. I recommend that you read this article by Gloria Campos which is entitled “8 Environmentally Friendly Burial Alternatives.. or 8 Options to the Boring Old Coffin”. It’s absolutely brilliant and quite inspiring.
She gives you insight into a world of eco-burial as you probably never imagine existed.
However, there is one eco-sustainable burial that isn’t on her list and that’s the POETREE.
POETREE is the brilliant brainchild of one Margaux Ruyant, a young French Inventor with the DSK International School of Design Pune, India. She designed a funeral urn that progressed with the emotional stages of grief and mourning.
The ashes of the departed is placed in the urn and a boxwood tree (an evergreen shrub) in planted in a biodegradable pot and placed onto the ashes within the urn. As the tree begins to grow, the pot will biodegrade, the soil within will mixed into the ashes and the roots of the tree will begin to grow into the mixture. This will take sometime and by the time it happens, it will be synonymous with the stage of letting go.
The POETREE is now ready to be planted into the garden where after a while, the cork based urn will disintegrate into the earth leaving only the tree and the ceramic ring top which will serve as a living memory of a great life now departed.
The true beauty of the POETREE is not so much it’s green effect but rather how it is designed to walk the stages of grief with you.
