ashes to ashes
The operator uses the visual inspection port to check that Victoria's cremation is complete. All that remains of her is a mass of red hot incinerated bone and coffin ash.
There are no flames at this stage, but the chamber bed glows orange. Small chunks of whitish gray debris lie in the oven. (Victoria's bones broke into fragments due to their rapid loss of water as they were heated). A particularly large clump sits about halfway back, just about where Victoria's hip was. She has been reduced to burnt bone fragments. The temperature is now about 500 degrees centigrade.
About 30% of Victoria's skeleton was burnt up - the organic non-mineral part. Most of the bone fragments that survive incineration come from her heavier bones - pelvis, lower vertebrae (the bony segments of the backbone), and skull (about 20% of the total). The bones in the female pelvis are are more delicate (thinner and lighter) than those in the male pelvis, so Victoria will have less pelvis to leave behind.
But how much will be left of Victoria, lets listen and find out:
Better than Pole Dancing as a way of loosing weight. The crematorium technician presses a button and the retort door opens half way. The technician quickly rakes the silvery debris - all that remains of Victoria - forward using a long handled device. She makes a clinking sound as she is raked out - like embers being stirred in a fireplace. Victoria's cremains go into trench type gap and this leads down into the stainless steel bin. A cold air blast into the box cools her ashes.
Several of Victoria's bones are clearly visible among the cooling chips and chunks. An 8-inch strip from her arm. A ball that once fitted her shoulder. In fact, Victoria's entire skeleton is there. Our bones are largely calcium, which burns only after lengthy exposure to temperatures much higher than those in the cremator.
All residues - (in Victoria's case coffin screws, but for others surgical implants) - are removed from the ashes. A powerful magnet removes any metal.
Now to the machine used to pulverize Victoria - the cremulator. It's a perforated tube about 20 centimetres in diameter inside which is a cylinder with titanium chains attached along its length. Victoria's identity card is placed onto the machine. Her bone fragments are poured into the tube and the chains flail round pulverizing them. When her ashes are reduced to a fine enough consistency they pass through the perforations and are collected below in the container. Victoria's ashes look like gunpowder, millions of little flakes rather than fine powder. A small proportion of the ashes have been irretrievably lost in the pulverization process. Victoria's ashes are transferred into a plastic bag, which contains a further identity card; the bag is then heat sealed and placed into a plastic container with the original identity card attached. It take about 20 minutes to complete the processing of Victoria's ashes.
Victoria wanted to be be scattered in the clouds from a 747-400. Instead Victoria is scattered in the Crematorium Winter Gardens at the same place as her dad. Victoria's ashes quickly break down so that within a few days little trace of them can be seen.
rest in peace HUNTER S. THOMPSON frown i heard that in this document somewhere it said he wants his ashes thrown from a cannon! WHAT A GUY! ... i would definitely want my ashes to do something extraordinary before they disintegrate into nothing!! (Madison)
"I want my ashes scattered on a coral reef, so that they become a part of it."
"I feel a little sad to think that all I may become is ashes" (Anna Lee)
An episode of "The Simple Life" that showed hotel chain heiress Paris Hilton and sidekick Nicole Richie working at a funeral home upset some local residents. The pair spilled what appeared to be human ashes onto a carpet, then used a vacuum cleaner to clean them up. The ashes were actually a mixture of cat litter and cement, according to John Podesta, the owner of Kohler Funeral Home.