In 2001 Promessa was born, after almost three years of preparation. The first patent registration being made in December 1999, concerning the "Method for Mouldering".   The concept of Promessa was introduced at a press conference in Stockholm in May 2001.

 

Susanne is married to Peter and they have three children; Carl aged 25; Emma aged 22 and Frida aged 17. Since their marriage in 1979 they have lived on an island on the west coast of Sweden, where they built their house and created their lives around the passion they share for the garden and nature.

 

Imagine the scene on a fine April morning. There has been a heavy frost and on a remote hillside cottage in the Highlands of Scotland, the nearest neighbours ten miles away and no signal to enable the mobile phone to work, the post van arrives. The cottage doesn't have a letterbox so my husband goes to welcome the postmistress who, as well as passing twenty odd minutes chatting, hands him a letter. He walks into the cottage. "Its from your mother", he says. An air of foreboding descends, why would she write to me?  Something must have happened.

 

I open the envelope and take out the neatly scripted letter, ignoring the newspaper cutting that floats to the floor, impatient to find out the reason why my mother would wish to write to me on holiday. The letter contains general chit chat on the lines of "your Dads got a cold", "they've given it bad weather for you up there" etc, etc, then the final paragraph, "I've enclosed a clipping from the Sunday paper, which I thought you might like to read".

 

I pick up the cutting from the floor and unfold it to reveal:

 

 

I read the article with a great deal of interest.  Indeed, I was so interested that I re-read it several times during my holiday.

 

May 2004, I am in a meeting and my pen runs out. I am sure that I have another in my bag. What is this?  It is my newspaper cutting from holiday. My interest is stirred once again and I decide to show the article to David Marren, the Executive Director of the Direct Services Directorate.

 

The feedback is positive. He is interested in the idea and fully supportive. Indeed, he actively encourages me to investigate it further and gather more information. This new alternative to burial or cremation could be the solution to the problem with mercury emissions that may occur with cremation.

 

Twelve months later and I have built up a small file containing information on Promession, most of which came from the 'Promessa' web site, though some of it came from newspaper articles. However, it had been a while since I had seen any articles about Promession in the press and then I noticed that at the Cremation Society of Great Britain's conference in July, one of the papers was to be by Susanne Wiigh-Masak the originator of Promession.

 

On a very, very hot morning I found myself, David and the other delegates, waiting for the start of Susanne's presentation. I hoped that it would be interesting, as this was the last lecture and the heat of the room made concentrating difficult. It didn't look like a very promising session was about to take place. There was no power point system, no overhead projector or anything else. Susanne was introduced, and, right from the start I knew it was going to be something different. This engaging Swedish lady captivated all of the delegates there and there was no going to sleep in this presentation because it was dynamic and Susanne's passion for the subject reverberated around the room. What should have been a thirty minute presentation lasted well over an hour, such was the interest generated.

 

After she had finished, Susanne agreed to join us to answer some of our questions on Promession. One could not help but be drawn into her enthusiasm for this alternative to burial or cremation and her answers to our questions were both frank and open. David explained that we were very interested in this concept and asked if she would be prepared to visit Crewe and Nantwich sometime in the future for further discussions. Susanne agreed to this proposal.

 

In October 2005, a thirteen page long report was submitted to the Board, the subject being the "Abatement of Mercury Emissions from Crematoria". Contained within this report was a two paragraph long option giving brief details of the Promession process, with a recommendation to investigate this further. Little did we know then, that this would create such a stir with the representatives of the media.

 

Next day we were inundated with enquiries not only from the local radio station and the local newspapers, but also from the national news organisations, including the Times and BBC Radio 4, to name but a few. Crewe and Nantwich had achieved celebrity status. The coverage meant that the general public were now aware of this new concept and they wanted more information on it. It was with bated breath that I picked up the phone or read a letter on the subject, every time expecting it to be negative or full of criticism, but NO, everything was positive and the people I spoke to were genuinely enthusiastic about Promession.

 

The interest that the media had generated led to a visit to the Home Office to discuss the legalities of the process. David and I spent a couple of hours with Brian Patterson (Constitutional Affairs) together with two of his colleagues from the Coroner's Office, discussing a wide variety of issues relating to the subject of Promession. Following our visit we had arranged to meet Susanne for further discussions. Susanne was in London, in order to attend the Green Apple Awards at the House of Commons having been nominated for her work in finding an ecological alternative to burial and cremation. She actually received a Gold Award. Before leaving we were able to arrange a date for Susanne to visit Crewe and Nantwich to give a presentation on the subject of Promession.

 

Some of you may have been at the presentation and if so I hope you found it both interesting and informative. For those of you who were unable to attend and are unaware of the process, Promession begins with cooling the casket containing the deceased to a temperature of minus 18^o C. The temperature is then reduced further to minus 196^o C using liquid nitrogen. This makes the body very brittle. The coffin and contents are then subject to gentle vibration, which turns the body into an organic powder, which is then placed into a vacuum chamber to allow any liquid to evaporate away. The now dry powder passes through a metal separator where any surgical parts and dental amalgam are removed. The remaining organic powder is ready to be placed in a biodegradable coffin and buried in a shallow grave, where the living soil turns the coffin and its contents into compost within six to twelve months.

 

If such a process had been available in 1874 when the declaration, given below, drawn up by Sir Henry Thompson and his distinguished friends and on which the Cremation Society of England was founded, would the word cremation have been replaced with Promession?

 

'We, the undersigned, disapprove the present custom of burying the dead, and we desire to substitute some model which shall rapidly resolve the body into its component elements, by a process which cannot offend the living, and shall render the remains perfectly innocuous. Until some better method is devised we desire to adopt that usually known as cremation. '

 

We believe it would. A cross party political group has now been set up who are investigating the practicalities of introducing Promession into Crewe and Nantwich. So far the group has held talks with the manufacturers of liquid nitrogen to ascertain an independent view on the potential environmental impact of the process. Our aim is to be sufficiently informed on all aspects of Promession by the time we have to make a decision whether to renew our cremators.