The past couple of weeks, the African coffin dance meme has been all over social media. It’s a fascinating practice — instead of the traditionally solemn funeral, family of the deceased would hire professional dancers to spice up the atmosphere. A flamboyant good-bye to the dead.
This made me think about my own eventual good-bye quite a bit.
The Dreadful Funeral
Growing up, I always hated going to funerals. I still do now. Funerals in Vietnam are probably the most stressful thing ever: people are crying hysterically, the music is dreadfully soul-crushing, and the colours are depressingly dark. Even worse, some funerals have elaborate decorations in a horribly gaudy way. I always wondered why funerals have to be so dreadfully gloomy? Many families even hire professional criers in fear that their funeral is not sad enough (WTF?).
I understand it’s a time of grief for families and our culture wishes to honour the dead, and hence the solemn atmosphere. But there is a line between solemnity and just being pure depressing. Do we have to make death even more sad than it already is?
When I die, I want my good-bye ceremony to be happy. Nobody has to attend, but anyone who does can wear jeans and T-shirts, and feel free to dance, laugh, have fun, play some goofy and optimistic music. Seriously — if I hear those godawful funeral tunes at my funeral, I will rise from the grave to strangle the asshole who picked the music.
I hope in the future there will be services like those African coffin dancers. These guys are freaking awesome. They are respectful and fun at the same time.
Seriously, if in the next 10 years Vietnam still doesn’t have such a business, I will start one myself. I refuse to let my funeral be an emotional drain to those who attend.
Let Me Decompose
Another thing I dislike about how we treat the dead is our burial practices. What happens after you are declared dead? Your corpse is embalmed with chemicals and beautified for people to gawk at. Some are then cremated. Some are then put inside a metal and wooden coffin, lowered into an underground concrete vault, and a massive tombstone is erected on top.
I don’t want any of this to happen to me. I’m not a special specimen that needs preservation — I came from dirt, and I want to return to dirt. Just let my dead body rot away the way it is supposed to.
Dust In The Wind is one of my favourite songs ever. Incredibly poignant and humbling lyrics. Hard to believe it was written 43 years ago.
I did a bit of reading into a practice called natural burial. It’s fascinating the many ways we can let the dead peacefully decompose and return to Earth. This TED talk goes over the key points of it very well.
- Death is not something we should be scared of. The bacteria that feast on corpses and cause decomposition are not harmful in any way. The only exception is if the corpse is infected with a contagious disease like Ebola or Covid-19.
- In some cultures like Tibet, they let corpses out in the open for vultures. This is their way of sending the dead back to the heavens.
- Some countries have allowed green burial. You can choose to be buried in a special designated area where you can become a tree! Or your remains can become nourishing composted soil.
- After your body (or remains) is buried with naturally friendly materials into the ground, you can either get GPS coordinates of the burial site, or you can have a small wooden memorial plaque. Some choose to engrave the deceased’s name on a stone.
Are We That Important?
In Vietnam, there is a tradition of exhumation. For example, after my mum died, she was first interred in a cemetery. Three years later her remains (mostly bones by this point) were exhumed, cleaned, and put in a smaller box and buried again in another location. The reasoning is that people don’t want their dead kin to remain too long in dirty water and be contained in the rotting coffin, so they move the remains to “cleaner” places.
Frankly I’m not a fan of this ritual at all. It shows how important we’d like to think we are, that we don’t deserve to be in the dirty ground and the decaying coffin so we must be moved to a new cleaner place! Super arrogant human-centric thinking. Not to mention how gross and hazardous it is to dig up dead bodies in the first place.
And really — does the dead person really want to be pulled up, have their bones washed, and moved around like that? Can’t they just… rest in peace?
I don’t like how we build massive and tacky tombs for the dead either. It’s one thing to remember and respect the deceased, but it’s another thing to worship them to high heavens. The elaborate tombs are just another way of making us feel important and special, which I think is fucking bullshit. Humans were made from the same materials as all living things, and we should return to Earth in a similarly humble manner. In 50 years nobody is going to remember your name anyway, so why try to hang on and make a scene?
The Fascination of Death
A while ago, I saw a picture that lays out the stages of the decay process:
Immediately after you die, your body still looks fresh from the outside. But only a couple of days later, it starts to bloat… and then maggots invade, and boom, now only your bones remain.
What I find incredibly fascinating is that the very moment you die, the bacteria inside your body start devouring everything that you once were. These bacteria were only kept in check thanks to your immune system; now the immune system is gone, the bacteria are let loose and they eat everything and release gases, causing the bloat and the awful smell.
This means that being alive is a constant battle to fight off nature. Our immune system is fighting off trillions of bacteria, our kidneys get rid of the bad fluids, our liver filters out the toxic stuff — everything is constantly working to stop the bad guys and to keep us alive. It’s remarkable how close to decay we all are at any given moment.
So, when the time finally comes, just let go. Let nature consumes you. You are the bacteria inside your body anyway, and they have been with you your entire life, suppressed. Let them have a good time now.
Don’t build me a tacky-ass tombstone either. Give me a little piece of rock or a wooden plate with my name humbly engraved, and let me rot into the ground.