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 Ah, Spring. It turns ones’ thoughts to warmer weather, longer sunny days, and signs of new life coming up out of the ground and…….old life going into the ground. With all these nature-based thoughts, this month’s edition addresses new ways of looking at passing into the next world and communicating with it. Nice tie in, right?! A natural compliment to the green movement sweeping the nation is the concept of ‘green burials’. Now you can pass directly, and more expediently, into the next plane without the traditional encumbrances of casket, embalming or burial vault. Straight into the ground with simple biodegradable fabrics or caskets.  Green burials are eco-friendly, inexpensive and gaining momentum on traditional burials in the USA (although already done for many years in the UK). Now this doesn’t mean you can plant your deceased beloved in the backyard, there are still rules and regulations to be followed. First you must find a cemetery that handles green burials….there are five certified locations in the USA currently. But then the rest is up to your choice for honoring your dead. It’s all outlined on the internet (god bless the internet!). www.greenburials.org and www.acfnewsource.org give some basic information on green burials. One even says “Do It Yourself!” Purchase your casket in advance and use it as a bookshelf until the interment need comes along. Now there’s ingenuity! In-earth burial too pedestrian? Launch your cremains into space www.celestis.com. Sleep eternally with the fishes with www.eternalreefs.com.  Commend your mortal remains to molten glass and hand out souvenirs at your funeral www.artfromashes.com. Oh, the fun never ceases!! For those of us left behind, we can visit with you in your afterlife assisted by some new and clever communication devices. Bring your Blackberry to the cemetery and plug in the magic wand for the Memory Medallion from Rock of Ages to hear and see your immortal beloved again. Vidstone is a self contained video/audio gravestone unit that runs on solar power. No cel phone plug in needed! We may sound irreverent, but it’s all true and found out there in www.com land. Humans continue to evolve and along with it our ideas of what we are and how we want to be remembered. Green burials allow us to leave a mark just as permanent as the traditional gravestones and interments in the multitude of cemeteries we are currently familiar with. The landscape may change, but the desire to memorialize remains. Think of that next month on Monday, May 26 when you’ve got the day off from work. Memento Mori! Brenda, Maggie & MelissaThe Gravestone Girls -
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