Off Florida’s Longboat Key in
Florida, Lynne Lamb Bryant consigned
her late husband to the
warm, jade-colored waters of the
Gulf of Mexico, after having his
remains made into oceanfront
property.
None of us, it has been said, is
an island. But a man or woman
now can choose to spend the
afterlife as part of an artificial
reef, designed to be environmentally
friendly and serve as a home
to fish and other marine life for
at least 500 years. What better place
for a departed diver?
The deceased’s cremated ashes
are mixed into concrete. For $850
to $3,200, based on what the customer
or survivors request, this concrete is then molded into a “reef
ball,” which looks like an igloo
with holes. Once dropped to the
reef, the dearly departed can
sleep eternally with the fishes.
Teary-eyed, Bryant looked on as the 400-pound,
3-foot-high casting into which her husband’s ashes
had been stirred during manufacture
was lowered by crane from a barge. Thirty
feet below the surface, two scuba divers
positioned it on the sandy bottom. |
Teary-eyed, Bryant looked on
as the 400-pound, 3-foot-high
casting into which they had
stirred her husband’s ashes during
manufacture was lowered by
crane from a barge. Thirty feet
below the surface, two scuba
divers positioned it on the sandy
bottom.
“Goodbye, Lee,” Bryant said.
“ You sleep in the deep.”
It is just one of the latest
options in the increasingly
diverse American way of death.
As Baby Boomers die off, a growing
number are having their cremated
remains launched into
space, sprinkled on their favorite
golf course green, or incorporated
into objects such as duck
decoys, shotgun shells, fireworks,
paintings and designer glassware.
For divers, reef balls, which add
posterity, may be replacing an
ocean current, which disperses
the ashes in the ocean’s infinity.
For Bryant, a 53-year-old resident
of suburban Houston, an
artificial reef was the solution to a
problem that had gnawed at her
since her second husband, Lee, a
Kansas-born architect, died 20
years ago. An avid sailor and
scuba diver, Lee Bryant wanted to
be buried at sea, she said, but she
was told that casting a body into
the ocean is illegal.
She had him cremated after
he died of a stroke, but didn’t feel right about dispersing the
ashes on the water. For two
decades, she kept the cremated
remains in a plastic urn on a shelf,
until she learned of the artificial
reefs through the Web site
www.eternalreefs.com. She drove
to the post office and sent off her
husband’s ashes by certified mail.
A tossing 30-foot tuna boat carried
Bryant three miles off
Florida’s west coast, where
Manatee County officials are building
a reef to shelter myriad fish,
including grouper, flounder, snapper
and kingfish. Bryant had felt
uncertain enough about the offbeat
burial rites not to mention
them to many of her friends in
Houston, she said. But after the
burial at sea, she was certain she
had done the right thing.
The reef ball is “really a sculpture.
And Lee loved sculpture.”
On the water over the burial
site, she sprinkled dried flowers
she had kept from her husband’s
funeral service two decades
before. They had been married
for just three weeks and four days.
Lowered into the Gulf of Mexico
at the same time were a concrete
casting containing the mingled
ashes of a New Jersey couple,
joined now in death as they were
in life, and a third igloo made in
part of the ashes of a Texas
woman.
Don Brawley, president of
Eternal Reefs Inc., of Decatur, GA,
read briefly from a speech by
President Kennedy that concluded:
“We are tied to the ocean, and
when we go back to the sea —
whether it is to sail or watch it —
we are going back from whence
we came.”
Brawley, 37, a former network
programmer, got the idea for the
novel type of burial from his
father-in-law, a noted Atlanta
pianist, composer and arranger.
Carleton Glen Palmer, stricken
with terminal cancer in the late
1990s, asked for his remains to
become a part of a reef ball.
Those castings were the brainchild
of one of Brawley’s friends,
Todd Barber. His Bradenton,
Florida-based company has manufactured
more than 100,000 of
the items to help revive coral reefs
in the United States and other
countries and to stimulate marine
life.
“I’d rather spend eternity
down there, with all that life and
excitement going on, than in a
field with dead people,” Brawley
remembers the dying Palmer
telling him.
On May 1, 1998, the first
“memorial reef” was cast, incorporating
Palmer’s ashes. Like the
balls immersed last week, it went
into the Gulf off the coast of
Sarasota. “I told business acquaintances
about it, and they said,
‘ Wow, that’s neat. Can you do this for other people?’” Brawley said.
Now his company promotes the reefs
as the “only death care option that is
truly an environmental contribution
and creates a permanent, living
memorial for the deceased and their
families.” The concrete used is specially
designed to withstand the corrosive
effects of seawater, according to
Eternal Reefs. Once cast, the balls are
left in the open air to cure for a
month.
Your Eternal Home?
The Swiss-cheese holes attract fish,
which can seek shelter from storms or
predators inside the igloo. The balls’
rough surface allows coral, sponges
and algae to adhere and flourish.
Brawley has already sunk about
10 0memorial reefs, mostly off
Florida, and is negotiating with
California authorities to do the same
in the Pacific. Eternal Reefs received
the green light from the U.S.
Government, its founder said, when
the Environmental Protection Agency
ruled cremation ashes were a permissible
“concrete additive.”
A customer pays $850 to join a
large “community reef” with 100
more people or as much as $3,200 for
the solitary glory of the Atlantis, a reef
ball weighing 2 tons and Eternal
Reefs’ top-of-the-line model. A bronze
plaque can be affixed to identify the
deceased. Cremation costs are extra.
Brawley said that, for him, donning
diving gear to visit his late fatherin-law’s reef ball is a joyous experience
that brings tears to his eyes. “The best
feeling you’re going to get from a
cemetery is a somber one, at least for
me,” he said. “But when you go to
visit a memorial reef and see the fish
swimming and all the other sea life,
you get a good feeling.”
For more information about
Eternal Reefs, you may contact them
at 1066 Berkeley Road, Avondale
Estates, GA. Phone (404)966-7333 or
fax (404)966-7337. Their Web site is
www.eternalreefs.com.
This article originally appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, written by John-Thor Dahlburg. Undercurrent takes all responsibility for editorial
modifications and additions.