To burn in a dark cave or Blaze among the stars?

image site

Years ago, for reasons I have utterly forgotten, I was asked what I wanted to happen to me when I died. While I concluded I had no real control on my placement in the afterlife, it did get me thinking about coffins, burial plots, etc. After watching far too many 'medieval' movies, I came to the passionate conclusion I wanted to be placed upon a pyre, shroud in a vivid shroud (at the time I was obsessed with deep purples and thought this would be a great accent to the wood and fire). I wanted that open-air burning, powerful and noble. Then I was told, sadly, that Canada does not allow funeral pyres; that if I wanted to be cremated I would have to do so in the privacy of a furnace.

I was heart broken, and have been for many a year, at the loss of this awesome ritual at my death. That was until this week's assignment came around. I guess I should slow down a little, open-air cremations are still illegal in Canada, but this could change.

Early last year a small town in Colorado passed measures for open-air burnings to be legal.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the-hot-button/colorado-town-offers-its-dead-options-of-funeral-pyres-green-burials/article1889944/

image site

I doubt my future family (all those individuals not yet born or made into the family, because I have no plans on dying quite yet) will bother to trek my body across the boarder, especially with all that red tape. Instead what makes me happy about this decision is that it has occurred in the USA. This opens the lines of communication for the practice to be adopted here. People can start arguing:  "See it works in the USA, an industrial Western country. It will work here too!"



So maybe one day, far off in the distant future, my family will surround my body with love and watch it light up the night sky.