I have officiated hundreds of ceremonies — weddings, baby blessings, coming of age passages, memorial services. I have stood at the threshold for others more times than I can count. But it wasn’t until that afternoon on the water that I realized I had never stood at my own threshold and considered what I actually wanted.

This post is the result of that reckoning. It is the story of how I planned my own water cremation ceremony — from the science that changed how I see death, to the type of vessel I chose, to the music I want played, to the words I hope someone speaks when my own atoms are finally, generously, returned.

I’m sharing it not as a prescription, but as an invitation. These are my choices, made from my particular history, my loves, and my understanding. Yours will be different. But perhaps walking through mine will help you find your own.

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The Borrowed Atoms — A Scientific Reframe of Death

Not long ago, I came across a video that changed something in me. It examined what happens — physically, chemically, cosmically — to our bodies after we die. It framed death not as an ending, but as what the narrator called a “returning of borrowed materials.”

You are made of approximately seven octillion atoms — mostly hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. None of them are original to you. They came from stars, from ancient limestone, from the breath of people who lived centuries before you. You are a temporary arrangement. A pattern. And when you die, the pattern stops being maintained, but the atoms go on to form new patterns.

The physicist Sam Kean has written about what he calls “Caesar’s Last Breath” — the statistical reality that the air you breathe right now almost certainly contains molecules exhaled by Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare, by your great-grandmother. We are not metaphorically connected to one another. We are literally, physically, demonstrably made of each other.

When I understood this — truly felt it rather than simply knew it — the question of what happens to my body after I die became less about ending and more about timing. Not whether my atoms return to the world, but how quickly. And with how much grace.

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Why I Chose Water Cremation

Water cremation — formally known as alkaline hydrolysis or aquamation — uses warm water and a naturally occurring alkali solution to gently dissolve the body, returning it to the same elements it came from. The process takes three to four hours. What remains are sterile mineral bone fragments, which are processed into a fine white powder, and a nutrient-rich liquid that returns to the water cycle.

I find this beautiful in the same way that a natural woodland burial is beautiful — not because it is romantic, but because it is honest. It cooperates with reality rather than resisting it.

The video I mentioned earlier introduced the concept of some methods being “more generous” than others — a phrase that stopped me. Generous. Not to be interpreted as charity, but as the willingness to release what was borrowed. To not keep the universe’s carbon and calcium locked in a box where it can’t help a blade of grass grow or a bird’s egg form. A generous death is one that allows the atoms to get back in the game.

Traditional burial with embalming and a sealed metal casket can delay that return by as much as 500 years. Natural burial gets there in about a decade. Flame cremation returns most atoms to the atmosphere within two to three hours, though bone minerals remain in the urn indefinitely unless scattered. Water cremation, like human composting, is among the most generous — complete, clean, and accomplished within hours.

For me, that generosity felt like the right closing note.

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It’s Closer Than You Think

When I first looked into water cremation several years ago, the nearest provider was hours away. I set the idea aside and filed it under “someday.” Then, in doing recent research, I discovered that the landscape has changed significantly in California. AB 967, which legalized alkaline hydrolysis in the state, went into effect in 2020. Since then, the infrastructure has expanded, and providers now serve the Bay Area and Northern California specifically.

If you’ve been meaning to look into this and assumed it wasn’t available locally — look again. It may be closer than you think. When you reach out to providers, the key questions are:

• Does my location fall within your standard transportation radius?
• What is your current pricing for water cremation, including any residential pick-up fee?
• Do you offer pre-need contracts that allow me to lock in today’s price?
• Can you accommodate a specific type of urn for a water burial?

Pre-planning — locking in current pricing, choosing your provider, signing your documents — is one of the most generous gifts you can give to the people who love you. It removes an enormous burden from those who are already grieving. I’ll say more about that at the end.

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Choosing the Vessel: The Deep-Sink Urn

This brings me back to the yacht. To the wind. To the family whose ceremony was taken from them before it could find its shape.

This is why I advocate for a weighted, deep-sink vessel. It ensures that the threshold is crossed on your terms — quietly, intentionally, and beneath the surface where the wind cannot reach.

The problem with scattering ashes in open air — even over water, even with the most careful intentions — is that you lose control of the moment. The wind doesn’t know you’re grieving. The elements don’t pause for ceremony. And a beloved person disappearing sideways in a gust leaves no visual anchor. No closing image. No moment the mind can hold.

This is why I chose a deep-sink biodegradable urn for my own water burial. Not a scattering. A placement — deliberate, unhurried, and witnessed.

For those unfamiliar, deep-sink urns are designed specifically for water burial. They are made of materials that sink quickly and cleanly rather than floating and drifting, and they dissolve completely without leaving any trace in the water. Here is how the main types compare:

Material	Sink Time	Dissolution Time	Character
Himalayan Salt	Immediate	~4 hours (even in cold water)	Translucent with natural veining; the most decisive return
Sand & Gelatin (Oceane-type)	1–3 minutes	2–3 days	Smooth organic stone shape; sinks gracefully with small water-intake holes
Recycled Paper / Bamboo	Several minutes to longer	Weeks to months in cold water	Gentle and gradual; can drift before sinking in cold, still depths

For cold, deep water, I recommend either the Himalayan Salt urn or the Oceane Sand Series by Passages International. The salt urn is carved from ancient compressed mineral — it sinks without drifting and dissolves completely within hours regardless of water temperature. The Oceane is an organic stone-shaped vessel made of sand and vegetable gelatin, engineered with small water-intake holes that pull it down within minutes. Both are available through specialty memorial retailers such as Stardust Memorials, and both are worth asking your cremation provider about directly.

Whatever you choose, look for the words “deep water burial” or “deep sink” in the product description, and confirm with your provider that the remains have been processed to the fine consistency required for a water burial.

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Finding the Place That Holds Your Heart

For many of us, there is a landscape that feels like a physical manifestation of our own interior life. A place where the water doesn’t just sit, but seems to hold the weight of the sky. Where standing at the edge of something deep and cold and clear, you feel — quite literally — that you could be everywhere at once.

I have chosen a quiet, deep-water location that has been a sanctuary for most of my adult life. A place of permanence. Clarity. In my Letter of Intent, I have named the exact coordinates and a specific threshold point that offers a peaceful crossing in the early morning hours, before the winds of the afternoon arrive. I choose not to name this place here — not out of secrecy, but out of a desire to keep its stillness intact.

In ceremony, the specific geography matters less than the emotional resonance. Whether it is a family forest, a coastal cliff, or a high mountain reach, the goal is the same: to find the place that feels like home for the atoms you are returning to the cycle.

Once you have chosen your place, research the legal requirements for that specific body of water and state. Regulations vary significantly. When you contact your cremation provider, ask them to note your intended disposition location on the required permit — it is a small step that protects your wishes and removes a logistical burden from your family during an already demanding time.

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The Music I Chose

I am a celebrant, which means I understand the role of silence, of breath, of timing. I have spent years developing what I call the Threshold Method — a way of using sound to hold ceremonial space, particularly at moments of transition. The instrument I work with is a steel tongue drum. For this ceremony, it is the music I want.

I say this not to prescribe it, but to illustrate the principle: choose the music that is genuinely yours.

The music of your ceremony — whether it is a drum, a cello, a recording of something you loved, a voice singing without accompaniment, or the sound of the water itself — should arrive from the actual texture of your life. Not from what seems ceremonially appropriate. Not from what you’ve heard at other people’s services. From what you love, what moves you, what you have returned to in moments of threshold.

For outdoor water ceremonies, live acoustic instruments carry beautifully — they cut through wind and water in a way that recorded music often cannot. A simple repeating pattern is easier to hold in a moment of grief than a complex arrangement. And silence, as I have learned from years of ceremony work, is itself a form of music. The pause after the last note is as important as the note.

Whatever you choose, put it in writing. Leave the name of the piece, the performer if it’s recorded, the moment in the ceremony you want it played. Don’t leave it to interpretation. The specificity of your instructions is its own act of love.

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A Ceremony Script for the Returning Tide

What follows is the ceremony I have written for my own water burial. I offer it here not as a template to be borrowed wholesale, but as one example of how the science of borrowed atoms, the philosophy of generous return, and the specifics of a loved place can be woven into words.

Feel free to adapt this for your own ceremony, replacing my name with the name of someone you love, and the particulars of my life with the particulars of theirs. A ceremony script is not a form to be filled in — it is a frame for truth. The truth is the part that belongs to you.

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The Letter of Intent: A Gift to Those You Leave Behind

In California, your Will — the legal document — is often read after the immediate decisions about your body have already been made. This is why I have written a Letter of Intent: a separate, clearly worded document that tells those who love me exactly what I want, and why, so they don’t have to guess in the worst moment of their lives.

Here is the version I have written for myself, offered as a model you can adapt:

Once written, sign it in front of a witness and keep a copy somewhere visible — not locked in a filing cabinet, not buried in a drawer, but in a place your family will find it immediately. Some estate planners call this the “refrigerator rule”: put it somewhere as obvious and accessible as the family refrigerator. A bright envelope in a kitchen drawer, a folder labeled clearly on a shelf, a digital copy shared with those you trust.

The clarity of this document is itself an act of ceremony. It is the last piece of your own story that you get to write before others carry it forward.

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The Freedom of Having It Buttoned Down

There is a particular kind of lightness that comes from having this planned. I don’t mean the lightness of having avoided thinking about death. I mean the lightness that comes from having thought about it fully, made decisions that feel right, and written them down so that the people who love me don’t have to carry that weight in grief.

As a ceremony professional, I have walked alongside enough families in their hardest moments to know what the absence of that planning costs. It costs time when time is already scarce. It costs energy when energy is already depleted. And sometimes it costs the ceremony itself — the moment becomes about logistics rather than love because no one knew what the person wanted.

Pre-planning a water cremation is not morbid. It is the same impulse that leads you to write vows with care, to choose words for a baby’s blessing with attention, to think about the closing of a memorial service with as much intention as the opening. Ceremony is how we mark what matters. And the ceremony of our own return deserves the same care we give to everyone else’s.

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