November 2, 2022
Dear Sara, my sweet dead sister,
I was thinking of your body on this Day of Dead, when your final act poisoned the earth. We were all for it. I captured a video of your cardboard coffin entering the furnance while brother Pete and nephew Robert sang.
We didn’t use the word, “poisoned.” Katrina Spade used it in a tour I took this past Saturday afternoon of her company’s facility located in the industrial area of south Seattle. Katrina is the founder and CEO of a company that uses Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), the legal term for human compositing, called Recompose.
Remember when you told me about a way of death where family members carry the body of the deceased, up a ramp to the top floor where the shrouded body is placed on bed of wood chips and straw … and with final farewells the loved one’s body decomposes as it descends to where the loved-one is soil?
Well, the tower idea was Katrina’s as part of her Masters Thesis: Of Dirt and Decomposition: Proposing a Resting Place for the Urban Dead, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Master of Architecture, May 2013 – I knew you would be impressed, it’s on the website – recompose.life.
Recompose started accepting bodies for human compositing in 2020, two years after your death, leaving cremation an immediate choice. Besides, it was a confusing time with your body, then your mind growing weaker.
The time to decide on death care, of course, is when we are well, which is why I am signing up for a prepayment plan they call Precompose. My payments will be $100 a month, which will run for 70 payments over 5 years and 10 months to reach $7000. Recompose will pick me up in Snohomish and return me as soil!
Don’t you love it Sara, my body is turn into enriched soil … D I R T!
Included in the plan is a biodegradable container (64 oz) of enriched dirt that can be added to the garden where we buried your ashes along with our parents! Of course, I could request all of the soil I’ve been turned into but you all would need a pick up truck – as my body will produce around one cubic yard of soil! Consequently, the remainder of my dirt will be donated to Bells Mountain, a 700-acre nonprofit land trust in southern Washington.
I still have a strong memory of your smile, dear Sara, we miss you everyday. You are the Best dead or alive.
~w.
Attached is the receipt for my second payment.
Dear Readers: For the next 70, now 68, months I will continue my letters to Sara with the news from Snohomish. You are invited to read along with a free subscription.
And happy to announce my Letter to Sara will be included in an art exhibition titled: “Act Inspired: Art In the Climate Crisis,” a one day exhibition and discussions in the Snohomish Carnegie Building on October 25, from 2 to 8p.
Really cool Warner ... I’ll share with my mom, who will be interested. Me? I’m too young to ever die! 😐