hope for humanity in death
Jun. 4th, 2005 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonA Movement to Bring Grief Back Home: Many Bereaved Opting to Bypass Funeral Industry
I am so glad to see this kind of thing taking hold. Death, like birth, is one of those fundamentally primal, human transitions which should be allowed to happen at home, with your family, friends, and tribe around you, if that's what you want. And after death, there's no reason to pay the obscene funeral industry many, many thousands of dollars to do what you can better do your own self, in your own way, by the hands of your own people. No hermetically sealed box, body pumped full of toxic chemical preservatives, stuck in a industrial park full of dead preserved corpses for me, no thanks. That's just wasteful, and hugely unnecessary.
For me, when it's my time, I want a proper wake. Prop my corpse up in the corner and throw one hell of a 3-day bash, let everyone sing, tell stories, laugh, cry, fight, drink, dance, carouse, love, and whatever else they need to do, then dig a hole in the woods out back, drop me in it, no box, no chemicals, and plant an oak or an ash or a hazel tree over my head. Someday maybe my great grandkids can build a swing in my tree.
And the beauty of it is that as far as I can tell, there's nothing right now preventing exactly that from happening.
We all deserve a birth, a life, and death with dignity. This is definitely one area where a step back is a step forward.
I am so glad to see this kind of thing taking hold. Death, like birth, is one of those fundamentally primal, human transitions which should be allowed to happen at home, with your family, friends, and tribe around you, if that's what you want. And after death, there's no reason to pay the obscene funeral industry many, many thousands of dollars to do what you can better do your own self, in your own way, by the hands of your own people. No hermetically sealed box, body pumped full of toxic chemical preservatives, stuck in a industrial park full of dead preserved corpses for me, no thanks. That's just wasteful, and hugely unnecessary.
For me, when it's my time, I want a proper wake. Prop my corpse up in the corner and throw one hell of a 3-day bash, let everyone sing, tell stories, laugh, cry, fight, drink, dance, carouse, love, and whatever else they need to do, then dig a hole in the woods out back, drop me in it, no box, no chemicals, and plant an oak or an ash or a hazel tree over my head. Someday maybe my great grandkids can build a swing in my tree.
And the beauty of it is that as far as I can tell, there's nothing right now preventing exactly that from happening.
We all deserve a birth, a life, and death with dignity. This is definitely one area where a step back is a step forward.
