Constable: Digging for a green burial

As part of typical newspaper routine, my Daily Herald editors have assigned a reporter to write my obituary this month for use whenever it becomes newsworthy. I always had assumed my demise would be noted near the end of a news story in a paragraph beginning with the phrase, “Also killed were …” And it still might. But while death often comes as a surprise to the dead, it helps if we make some rudimentary plans. The details always fall on the survivors.

Lately, on one of those details, social media have been hyping the concept of a “green burial.”

“There are the (tree) pods,” says Jon Kolssak, 41, a funeral director and owner of Kolssak Funeral Home in Wheeling, referring to an Italian company's plan to bury people's remains or ashes in biodegradable pods and plant trees on top. “There's also a lady offering a mushroom suit.”

The mushroom suit works on the same principle as the tree pod, but might make you rethink your pizza toppings. If you think outside the box, you can just drop a body into a hole and let nature handle the recycling.

“One of the best green burials I've done was for an environmental attorney.” Kolssak says.

The man was wrapped in a shroud and buried in a very rural downstate cemetery a dozen years ago, Kolssak says.

“We have done quite a few green cremation funerals,” he says, noting the funeral home plants a “tree of life” in concert with the Wheeling Park District. “You know where the tree is, but nobody else does. It's like a personal cemetery.”

Illinois is one of eight states that require a funeral director to play a role in caring for the dead, but most cemeteries have additional rules requiring caskets to be placed in vaults, which help keep the ground from settling. Locally, Willow Lawn Memorial Park in Vernon Hills and Windridge Memorial Park in Cary offer burials without vaults or caskets.

“We definitely have seen an increase in demand for natural burials,” says Kelly Lawyer, family service manager for Windridge. Many people in their 40s and 50s already have planned natural burials.

“I have a lady buried in a wicker basket, wearing her favorite pajamas, resting on her favorite pillow and covered by her favorite blanket,” says Anne Locki, sales manager at Willow Lawn, which has seen natural burials grow to about 25 percent of all burials. Another young man was buried in a simple pine box along the nature trail where he used to bicycle.

Before his death at age 87 in 2003, my dad, Wilson Constable, talked about how he wanted to be buried in a simple, pine box befitting his farmer life. Unable to find one of those, we opted for a stunningly ornate oak casket with drawers where the grandkids deposited heartfelt notes and drawings for him. But, in an example of repurposing, Mom made sure to honor Dad's request that we use an old concrete step from his first country school as the base for his gravestone.

Given all the pollution I've created in life with seemingly endless commutes, I'd like to be a little greener with Mother Earth in death. I've abandoned my previously held desire to be stuffed and made into some sort of mechanical device, so that future generations of Constables could sit on my lap, insert a quarter or maybe swipe their phone, and hear one of the many, many amusing stories from my full, rich life that probably won't be included in my obituary. Or maybe I'd just tell that joke where the punchline is, “Well, with a pig that good, you don't eat him all at once.”

Now, I'm thinking I'd like to adhere to that ancient wisdom of “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and just have my body or ashes be swallowed up by the Earth.

“I think there's a lot of curiosity. I've had a lot of conversations, but I haven't had a lot of green funerals,” says Kolssak, who says the full green burials make up about 1 percent of his business. Cremations, which were rare a couple of generations ago, now make up 55 percent of the Kolssak business.

“I think green funerals will be more prevalent in the future,” Kolssak says, noting that he has done many funerals without embalming chemicals. “We have a number of green packages we offer. If you want to green-up a funeral, you can.”

As for me, when my obituary does run in the Daily Herald, I'm hoping it's far enough in the future so that it might be printed on paper made from a tree that grew out of somebody's burial pod.