From an e-mail to the Institute.
For those who are dissatisfied with burial and possibilities for placing burial urns after cremation, there are other possibilities.
The suggestion is to provide oneself with a mailing list of Poste Restante addresses in isolated locations in different countries around the world. Getting the addresses together is merely a question of using an atlas and looking for small towns or villages in isolated locations - possibly with marvellous topography, just where one would like the ashes of loved ones to rest. Make the address on an envelope: Poste Restante, Name of Town. A hundred so addressed envelopes could be made in this way.
Following the cremation, all that remains is to put a few ashes in each envelope, seal it, and send them off.
What then happens is that the envelope arrives at the Poste Restante office in each location and stays there for some months. It is then treated as waste paper and either burnt or dumped. In this way a person gets their ashes distributed around the world for the price of a small mailing.
Of course, a more elegant arrangement would be to reach international agreement on the treatment of such envelopes. They could be opened and the ashes scattered at the local burial ground. But this is for the future.
Anthony Judge, Union of International Associations, Rue Washington 40, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium (tel 32 2 640 18 08; fax 32 2 646 0525; e-mail: uia@uia.be; WWW Home Page: http://www.uia.org/).
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
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