Nearer his end than his beginning, Dick Skellington reveals just how he might end up.
It seems that metal body parts from the dead are being turned into road furniture across the kingdom. Steel hips, plates (I have one in my skull following a road accident), screws and even teeth fillings, are collected after cremation and sent for recycling, stimulating a new private business enterprise.
Increasingly, our former body parts are being melted down for road signs, lamp posts, and even to provide valuable titanium and cobalt which are used in teeth implants. What started in a starburst might end up in an aeroplane or a motor vehicle.
Over one half of the nation’s 260 crematoria have so far signed up to the scheme. Estimates put the total potential amount collected each year at over 75 tons.
What does seem clear is that my relatives may choose my body to be donated to the nascent recycling industry, or if they wish, they can keep the metal parts for themselves as mementoes.
I rather think my metal plate would be best converted into a footpath sign, since I so love the countryside. I am not sure if I can be that specific, but I am thinking of changing my will to make sure.
One of the benefits of the new scheme is that polluting metal substances are not buried underground. Nice to know when I go I might be environmentally sustainable.
However, I think, once the metal has been removed and recycled, my ashes should be buried at sea. Did you know there are three designated marine graveyards, one off the Northumbrian coast, one near Newhaven, and another near the Isle of Wight?
But since 2001, only 140 people have been laid to rest in watery graves. It was something to which former sailors seemed particularly inclined. In 2002 there were 21 sea burials, last year only 4. Perhaps all the old sailors from Second World War convoys have been laid to rest.
Back in Nelson’s time, around the turn of the 19th century, dead sailors were simply trussed up in their hammocks, a final stitch inserted in the deceased’s nose (to ensure that the dead was not in fact merely unconscious!), and a lead weight tied to the feet.
I do not think I will go that far. Just send my metal to the recycling plant and scatter my ashes over the waters beneath The Needles.
Dick Skellington 13 June 2013
The views expressed in this post, as in all posts on Society Matters, are the views of the author, not The Open University.
Cartoon by Gary Edwards