Eideard

Belinda Ellis’ farewell went as she wanted. One by one, her family placed juniper boughs and logs about her body, covered in red cloth atop a rectangular steel grate inside a brick-lined hearth. With a torch, her husband lit the fire that consumed her, sending billows of smoke into the blue-gray sky of dawn.

When the smoke subsided, a triangle-shaped flame flickered inside the circle of mourners, heavily-dressed and huddling against zero-degree weather.

“Mommy, you mean the world to me and it’s hard to live without you,” called out Ellis’ weeping daughter, Brandi, 18. “It’s hard to breathe, it’s hard to see and it’s hard to think about anything but you.”

The outdoor funeral pyre in this southern Colorado mountain town is unique. Funeral and cremation industry officials say they are unaware of any other place in the nation that conducts open-air cremations for people regardless of religion. A Buddhist temple in Red Feather Lakes, Colo., conducts a few funeral pyres, but only for its members.

Ancient Vikings lit funeral pyres to honor their dead, and it is accepted practice among Buddhist and Hindu religions. But the practice is largely taboo in the U.S….

While Belinda Ellis “did not have a religious bone in her body,” according to her husband, Randy Ellis, she had attended a Crestone funeral pyre and told her family it was what she wanted. Ellis, 48, died of a massive heart attack Jan. 9 and was cremated three days later.

Bob Biggins, spokesman and former president of the National Funeral Directors Association, applauded the practice.

“As a culture, we need to say goodbye,” Biggins said. “And I think watching some of the things that this organization is doing for their community, the word that comes to my mind is, ‘Hooray!’ Because they’re encouraging people to bear witness.”

Though I’ve celebrated more than a few Celtic wakes in my life, I’m not in agreement about the celebration. But, being a hermit, that may be me as much as anything else. I don’t do funerals.

As an atheist, everything coming an end is tough enough to deal with. Crestone is far enough into the boonies to avoid most concerns from pollution to zoning, anyway. That’s what a lot of living in the Rockies is about.

The High Court will consider a legal challenge from a 70-year-old Hindu today that would allow him to have an open-air cremation when he dies. The judicial review at the Royal Courts of Justice will hear a case brought by Davender Kumar Ghai, founder of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society, who wants the law changed to allow traditional Hindu funeral pyres in Britain.

Newcastle City Council has refused him a permit to be cremated in line with Hindu ritual, arguing that a pyre outside a crematorium is prohibited by the 1902 Cremation Act.

Although there have been Hindu cremations in the the past in Britain, in recent years the authorities have become stricter about enforcing the rules. There are more than 600,000 Hindus in Britain and many families pay thousands of pounds to fly the bodies of their loved ones to India for a traditional cremation.

Three years ago the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute after Mr Ghai organised a funeral pyre in Northumberland for Rajpal Mehat, 31, from India.

Hindus believe that cremation is essential to free the soul from the body after death. The dead person’s oldest son is usually expected to light the fire. Monks and children, having no children of their own, are sometimes buried instead of cremated. The pyre must take place at a site on which the sun shines directly at noon and which is close to running water.

Yup. Let’s expand the precedence of religious law over secular, national law. We followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have a few rituals of our own we’d like to introduce – in the States and the U.K.

Or does the number of member of a religion – registered to vote – enter into the equation?

UPDATE: The High Court has ruled against Mr. Ghai’s request.