“DR WIIGH-MASAK, A MR EICHMANN ON LINE ONE”

Burial, cremation or ... Promession (Marni Soupcoff, National Post, June 9th, 2006)

In today's Q&A, Marni Soupcoff speaks with Susanne Wiigh-Masak, a Swedish biologist who has developed a new form of burial called Promession, in which bodies are freeze-dried, reduced to powder, metal-separated and composted.

MARNI SOUPCOFF When we're confronted with making funeral arrangements for a loved one, most of us think there are only two options: burial and cremation. But there's actually a third, Promession. How does it work?

SUSANNE WIIGH-MASAK First, we use liquid nitrogen to deep freeze the body and coffin, which makes them brittle. Next, we subject them to a specific vibration. Within 60 seconds, the coffin and body fall apart into millimeter-sized particles.

SOUPCOFF Why such small particles?

WIIGH-MASAK To make the body unrecognizable. It's much easier for us to think about something breaking down if it doesn't look like a person.

SOUPCOFF Fair enough. What's next?

WIIGH-MASAK We subject the remains to a vacuum, which sucks out the water. After that, we use a metal separator to remove all the body's spare parts (things like tooth fillings and artificial hips). People today are really spare-part people.

The metals are placed in a sealed box and recycled. The dried remains go into a second biodegradable coffin, which is buried in a grave, not too far from the surface so that the oxygen can reach it. Within six to twelve months the remains have turned back to soil. Nature is quite quick.

SOUPCOFF How did you come up with this process?

WIIGH-MASAK It really wasn't that crystal clear, initially. I had the idea, but I didn't think, "Oh, I'll tell everybody."

I remember I destroyed a lunch for my colleagues at one point. I was talking to one of the women next to me and I said, "When I die, I want to be composted." Everyone went totally silent. That really kept me quiet about the idea for another 15 years or so.

SOUPCOFF But obviously you came back to it.

WIIGH-MASAK I did. I thought about the process a lot. Without revealing my idea, I talked with all sorts of experts -- freeze drying experts, meat experts. I just didn't talk about what kind of "meat" it was!

Just think of all the prime residential real estate we could stop wasting.

More.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

–Danny Boy