One of the huunuu team members had a chat with us about why they think burial is the best way to lay their body to rest (quite literally!). Here are their thoughts!
When discussing funerals, we’ve all been asked some variation of the question; would you rather be set on fire or have worms eat you in the ground? When I pick the burial option, they’re like “whoa, but you’ll be decaying and trapped in a box – burning is so much quicker!”
People have asked me this so many times, and what confuses me most about this question is that the ability to answer it would mean I’d still be alive to feel either of those two things that would happen to me. It’s not a way to die, it’s a way to dispose of your body. Since I don’t intend on being dead and then coming back to life a few days after, I think I’m safe from having to feel pain from burning or worms (yay).
But if I did have to pick out of the two in a serious and logical, I’m going to be dead kind of way, burial is my number one choice. And here’s why…
This isn’t necessarily for my benefit, like I said I won’t be alive to experience my new home in the ground and pick out curtains etc. But I think having somewhere to go to mourn someone is an important part of the grieving process for family and friends. It means you can visit the person you’ve lost and pretend they’re still there in some way as a form of comfort. Burial also allows the option for you to be buried next to the rest of your family members when they die, so it feels like you’re not all alone. I recently discussed this topic with a group of friends, and one expressed that she was sad her family members were cremated so she couldn’t visit them. One point to burial right there.
The idea of burial in comparison to cremation feels like a more gradual way of losing someone. Yes, they won’t look like themselves once they’ve been in the ground for a while. But it does take a while for them to completely decompose, and you don’t have to see it. You can easily block the whole thing out and pretend they’ll just look like they’re sleeping forever. I’d like to avoid the sudden shock of them one minute being a person and within an hour they’re ashes. Also, fire destroys the entire body. The ground leaves the bones at least.
Burial is the oldest form of disposing of a body. I think it seems a lot more humane and natural to bury a body in the ground and let the earth do its thing, rather than choosing to do it yourself with cremation. But maybe I’m just super traditional in this sense.
I’d kind of like to be buried with all my favourite things in my own little cosy coffin bed. I know I won’t be alive to use them, but I think my family and friends would feel better if they could leave something with me. Plus, I don’t want anyone else using my favourite mug.
Aside from mugs though, there’s an even cooler way to personalise your coffin. The 4G coffin allows you to listen to your favourite songs forever, as it’s built complete with a surround sound stereo system. Relatives can update soundtracks using Spotify and a ‘Catacomb app’ using a touch screen built into the gravestone. The inventor of this fancy gadget, Fredrik Hjelmquist said the coffin would be powered by an electrical supply to the tombstone. The coffin is linked wirelessly to the CataTomb tombstone which comes with a seven-inch touch screen LCD panel, a 2.5 GHz Intel core processor and even a 4G Wireless internet connection. How cool is that?
Of course, it’s completely up to you whether you’d like to be buried or cremated. In the near future, we may get the option to freeze our bodies after death and turn them into a fine powder (cryomation) - watch this space!
While you’re here – why not create your funeral plan with huunuu!
