In 2020, I thought a lot about how to dispose of a body

Published on 10 December 2020

Three days into lockdown in the UK my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Aggressive, advanced, and terminal. It grew from nowhere. There’s no history of cancer in my family and my mum – a teetotaller who swam weekly, walked her dog daily, and never ate processed food – called me and described the surreal feeling of being told that your liver is going to kill you soon. But not as soon as Covid-19 will kill everyone else if you don’t stay locked in your home.

“Don’t worry,” she said, as I frantically tried to buy a second-hand car in a pandemic so that we could drive in a safe bubble to her home across the country. From our separate spaces, we washed our hands to the tune of ‘happy birthday’ as she turned 77, cursed each other’s tactics playing Words With Friends, and FaceTimed twice a day to complain about politicians, R rates, and her developing symptoms.

One month after her diagnosis, mum reminded me that unlike my father, whose cremated remains we’d tipped into the waves beneath Clacton-on-sea pier, she wanted to be buried. “I’m not going to be long-shore-drifting across the seafront, getting washed into children’s jelly shoes as they paddle.”

That was the first time I’d seriously thought about how to dispose of a body.

Burial seemed fairly pedestrian for a British Army nurse who’d once stabbed a drug dealer in the lungs to give her children time to run away from his violent fists and boots. You couldn’t simply abandon to the ground an inner-city headteacher who’d provided foster homes for pupils rescued from abusive homes.. The woman had, in retirement, trekked her arthritic bones across the Sahara Desert and so her body should not be overwhelmed by Suffolk’s sandy soil. There had to be a way to dispose of a body that was more ‘mum’.

So, I took my daily permitted exercise and cycled the empty streets of the city towards University College London thinking that perhaps my mum could be pickled and stuffed like Jeremy Bentham? Her tumours extracted and placed like relics alongside her. She could be displayed in my hallway.

Without commuter-crammed zebra crossings slowing me down, I peddled onwards through Hatton Garden, swooping downhill to the river. Maybe we could compress her into a diamond to create some stylish jewellery? My mum wasn’t a woman for unnecessary baubles, but my sister is and could be trusted to keep her sparkling.

My chest hurting, whether unused to such free-flowing traffic or such heartache for another human, I pushed the bike eastwards along the river path towards home. I thought about having my mum pressed into a 7-inch Dolly Parton record. But reasoned I couldn’t bear to commit her body to a medium that might soon become obsolete.

I did a lot of research when I got home.

Do you know you can be buried at sea (beneath a coral reef to stop you floating into a shipping lane) or composted in your own garden (provided your family are happy to open up a public right of way across the land)?

I didn’t.

Neither did my mum, who was quite sure she wanted none of that, thank-you.

It was eight lonely weeks between diagnosis and the rules being relaxed so we could travel to see her. “I like your fancy Audi and your new worry lines,” she commented as we hugged tightly for three minutes in a big ‘fuck-you’ to the Prime Minister. “I like your new fashionable wheelchair and flattering weight loss,” I replied.

“At least the coffin will be lighter for you.” I didn’t tell her that the Covid-19 rules kept changing and at that moment pallbearers were not allowed. Instead, I hugged her again, harder, and told her we would top up her coffin with her collection of crappy paperbacks to make up the weight difference.

We walked into my mum’s garden, where – despite her prognosis – she’d planted vegetables to be harvested in the autumn. She loved the soil and everything that grows in it. Investing in the future by betting on the success of carrots. The hot summer weather meant we watered the garden together twice a day to keep things green and flowering.

“Promise you won’t cremate me,” she said, as she dug a set of shallow holes for the internment of plugs of beetroot. “It’s in my will that I want an eco-friendly burial.” That ruled out getting her mixed with ink and tattooed across the wrists of her grandchildren, then.

So together, cutting back wilting broad bean plants that had given it their all and collecting rotten windfall apples destined for compost, we decided that the forest was the best place for her. Beneath a tree that would grow and enfold her and keep her bound to the earth that she loved.

We eventually made a plan to dispose of her body at a natural burial site: a wild woodland perfect for mum. On one side, the ancient trees where she exercised the dog before cancer left her too exhausted to walk that path. On the other, Pleasurewood Hills theme park from which the boisterous screams of children riding the ‘Wipeout’ roller coaster would provide a unique soundtrack to her memorial service.

With a small bribe to the burial ground, I suggested we could sneak in more than the 30 government-permitted graveside mourners, too. Outside in the forest, we could stand everyone under the shade of a different tree, use the outstretched branches as markers of a safe distance, and embrace their trunks instead of each other.