Last year, a friend of mine died in Washington state. Instead of being buried or cremated, he opted to have his remains composted in a process sometimes called terramation. It’s an environmentally friendly option to normal burial, and legal in several states including Washington. Illinois had House Bill 3158 on the docket this session to make it legal here as well.

The bill passed the house, but never made it out of the state senate committee, so it’s dead for now (no pun intended). I decided to look up how my state representative voted, and because I live in the red part of a blue state, I was unsurprised to see they voted against it.

I wondered why that might be – could it be a simple partisan thing? Of course, that’s part of it, but another part is the opposition. A little research shows that two groups opposing it are funeral directors (less $$$ for them), and <gasp!> the Catholic Church.

Why? Human dignity, they say – Daniel Welter, retired from the Archdiocese of Chicago, said turning humans into compost “degrades the human person and dishonors the life” that person lived. He compared it to composting vegetable trimmings and egg shells. Funeral directors also commented on the lack of dignity for the dead.

Thoughts? Mine are simple – I am built from the dust of stars, as is everything else on this planet. It’s my birthright to return to it. Anything that prevents that is anathema to me.

I also find it supremely ironic that, at “traditional” funerals, the priest says “earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” as they lower a preservative filled body in a lacquered box into the ground which is encased in sealed vault, completely separated from the earth and ashes and dust to which the dead is supposed to return.