http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Butz-Funerals.mp3
Benjamin Franklin famously said that nothing in the world is certain but death and taxes. The government's power to tax is a hot button issue these days, but writer Bob Butz thinks people should be outraged by Michigan's funeral laws, which are among the strictest in the country.
You can home school your children.
You can have a home birth.
You don't have to hire an accountant to do your taxes.
Even if you're sick and dying you can still refuse to go to the hospital.
So why do you have to open your door and your wallet to a funeral director when you or a family member dies in Michigan?
Michigan is one of only six states that challenge the rights of families to care for their own dead, but there's legislation in the works to hopefully change that. It's being pushed group of people who believe modern burial practices have become too institutionalized, too impersonal, too unnecessarily and too expensive.
They believe people should have certain choices when it comes to after-death care, and I think they make a good case.
Funeral directors, like accounts, certainly provide a valuable service to those who need it. But what if you don't? What if you've done the planning? What if you don't want strangers handling your body, or the body of a parent, a spouse, or your children? What if you don't want to be embalmed?
In Michigan right now, you really don't have an option.
A law enacted in 2006 also says you need funeral director supervision for any burial arrangements. That was a year the Michigan funeral lobby spent more than Anheuser-Busch to get the ear of state politicians who don't come up with ideas like this on their own. The average cost of a funeral in America runs anywhere from $6,500 to $10,000 dollars, according to the AARP.
Modern funerals are expensive and they're also bad for the environment: Metal for caskets, concrete for burial vaults, and embalming fluid. Figures show that the modern funeral industry buries enough metal in the ground to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge every year, enough embalming fluid to fill an Olympic pool and enough concrete to build a two-lane road from New York to Detroit.
There are a lot of things wrong with conventional funeral practices, but Michigan has an even bigger problem, if you ask me.
Who does your body belong to, after death?
Right now, a good argument could be made that the answer is "the state." The current system puts people at a troubling disadvantage by giving a funeral director chief authority, the legal right to inhibit or facilitate the burial of a loved one at prices rarely challenged by the bereaved. It's a system backed up by laws drafted by an industry and enacted by politicians whose constitutes who don't know or care about the issue until it's too late.
We care for our loved ones in life and, if we choose, the same should apply after death.
Bob Butz is the author of Going Out Green: One Man's Adventure Planning His Own Burial.