挑戰傳統的另類喪葬 遺體分解成肥料1

When Grace Seidel dies, she’s not goingto be buried in a cemetery. She won’t be crematedeither. In fact, none of the usual options have ever really felt right to her,she says.

格蕾絲·賽德爾（Grace Seidel）去世時，她不會被葬在公墓裏，也不會被火化。事實上，她覺得任何一種目前通行的辦法都似乎不太對她的路子。

“When you think about cremation, even when you’re dead itfeels so violent to be burned in this oven. With burial you’re filledwith chemicals and put in several boxes in the ground and I always knew I didn’t want to dothat.”

“當你想到火化，即便人已死，在燃爐中被燒掉仍然是一種暴力的方法。而土葬則需要在你體內填充各種化學物質，然後放入箱子埋在地下，我一直很確定我不想這樣被安葬。”

But recently, Seidel found what she waslooking for –a process that is gentle, natural and environmentally el’s body will be composted when she dies.

而最近，賽德爾找到了她所期望的辦法——這個過程是溫和的，即天然又環保。在她去世後，賽德爾的遺體將被自然分解。

Seidel, a 55-year-old writer and artistliving in Seattle, says she’s long been interested in death, and when hermother moved into elderly care it became hard to escape the question of whathappens to a person’s body after they pass away. “You’re constantly being facedwith the dying,”she says, “so it’s hard not to think about it. I’ve thought about ita lot in the last couple of years.”

現年55歲，生活在西雅圖的賽德爾是一名作家和藝術家。她一直對死亡感興趣，而當她的母親搬到養老院之後這個問題就更加難以迴避，當一個人死亡後遺體將被如何處理呢？她說：“你一直都在面臨死亡這個問題，因此很難不去想它。在過去的幾年裏，我一直在考慮這個問題。”

Seidel first learned about the idea in abook called Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by the mortician Caitlin Doughty. In thebook, Doughty talks about the Urban Death Project, a space for compostingbodies. “I immediately said to myself ‘Yes! That’s for me! That would be theway to go.’”So she contacted Katrina Spade, the designer behind the project.

化作春泥更護花賽德爾起初在入殮師凱特林·道蒂（Caitlin Doughty）撰寫的《你眼中的迷霧》（Smoke Gets in Your Eyes）這本書中瞭解到了這個辦法。在書中，道蒂談及了一個“城市逝者計劃”（Urban Death Project），一個分解屍體的空間。“我立刻對自己說，”是的！我喜歡！這就是我要做的事情。“因此她立即聯繫了該項目的設計師卡特麗娜·斯佩德（Katrina Spade）。

Like Seidel, Spade was prompted to thinkabout death because of her family. “I had one of those epiphanies that I thinkmost people have: ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die some day.’ I had some youngkids, and something about having kids makes you feel really mortal, and theygrow so fast and you think oh my God, time is flying by.” So Spade started thinkingabout what she would want done with her own body when she died, and realisedshe wasn’t sure. She wasn’t religious, had no ties to a specific cultural ritual,and the more she looked into the funeral industry the less she liked any of theoptions.

和賽德爾一樣，斯佩德也是因爲家庭原因而開始思考死亡問題。“就像大多數人一樣，我也有這樣的頓悟：‘上帝啊，我有一天也會面臨死亡’。我的孩子還小，有了孩子讓你感覺真實的存在世上，他們成長得這麼快，然後你會想，時光不等人啊。”當斯佩德開始思考死後要如何處理她自己的身體時，她才意識到其實自己並不是很確定。她不信宗教，也不適用於任何一個特定的文化習俗，對殯葬業瞭解的越多，她就越對自己所面臨的選擇感到無奈。

Ultimately, she came up with the UrbanDeath Project, a composting system that turns bodies into rich soil that can goback to loved ones and the community. The Urban Death Project isn’t yet areality; it’s still in the planning stages. But Spade says she’s already hadpeople, like Seidel, express interest and ask to sign up, and she hopes to getthe project up and running in the coming years.

最終，她提出了一個“城市逝者計劃”，一個通過堆肥法將遺體轉化可以用於豐富的肥料，成爲他們曾經熱愛的家人和生活的社區的一部分的堆肥系統。“城市逝者計劃”目前尚未成形，仍處於規劃階段。但斯佩德說已經有像賽德爾這樣的人，表達了參與的意願，因此她希望在未來幾年可以推動這個項目啓動和運行。

Spade says she doesn’t want to stop anybodyfrom being buried or cremated, if that’s what they want to do. But she saysthat composting provides a method that is both environmentally friendly, andmeaningful in a way that other methods might not be for some people. “Honestly Ithink what the system is providing is really simple but very deep meaning –when youdie you can grow new life. It’s as simple as that.”

斯佩德說她不想阻礙人們採用火葬或土葬的方法，如果那是他們希望的。但她說，堆肥法提供了一種既環保又飽含深意的方式，對於一些人說使用其他方式或難達到同樣的效果。“坦白說，我認爲這個系統所提供的非常簡單，但是很有深意：你死後新的生命得以萌發。這就是生命的輪迴。”

For Seidel, that return to the earth is thekey. “I’m a gardener, I love gardening, I love being outside and I love mydirt. It seemed to me to be so gentle, just a gentle way of calmly and gentlyand non-violently returning back to the earth.” Seidel says that she almostthinks of it as a strange kind of health resort. “I don’t lay in my dirt in mybackyard, I’m not that much of a weirdo, but sometimes I’ve thought about theconcept of a spa with really clean dirt,” she says. “Wouldn’t that be pleasant tobe laying in some warm sterile soil and resting in it? That’s kind ofhow I see composting –sort of like a spa experience for the dead.”

對於賽德爾來說，入土爲安是核心的想法。“我喜歡做園藝，我喜歡在戶外，我熱愛塵土。在我看來，這是如此的溫柔，就是用一個溫柔的方式平靜溫和地，而不是暴力的入土爲安。”賽德爾說她幾乎認爲這是一種奇特的療養勝地。“我不會躺在我的後院土地上，我還沒有那樣的怪癖，但有時我想用乾淨泥土做一次溫泉體驗，”她說。“在溫暖無菌的土裏休息難道不是一種令人愉快的方式嗎？”這就是我對堆肥法的理解，就好像是逝者的一個溫泉體驗。”