If you know how to love, you know how to die.
Thoughts of death are close and near these days. Not in a melancholy or morose way, just an awareness of it. An attunement to malignant cancer cells, altered plans, and dwindling time.
I want to be composted when I die. I'd like to be returned to the earth as soil that nourishes the roots of a tree. It's a 60 day process called terramation. The insentient body is laid to rest on a bed of straw, alfalfa, and wood chips inside of a personalized chamber and left to decompose gently and naturally. If all goes well, you're nothing more than dirt by the end of it. Depending on the size of your body, ten to fifteen burlap bags, to be exact. Not exactly glamorous, but something about it feels holistic, cyclical, and quietly altruistic.
While not legal here in Canada yet, terramation is being done across the line in Washington state. It's about as ethical, eco-friendly, and sustainable as human burial gets. It uses significantly less energy than cremation, and it’s more pragmatic than traditional methods. Your soil can be used in gardens, forests and land in need of reclamation. Nothing is wasted. All of this appeals to my stripped down, raw side that craves organic simplicity and becomes overwhelmed by fanfare, hence the reason I haven't had a birthday party in about 17 years. When I go, just return me to the earth to be with the worms, nematodes and fungi. Simplify it. Dress me in a gown made of organic linen or peace silk. If you must do a tribute, play a quick tune on the Irish flute or Scottish bagipes, or sing me out to choir renditions of Tracy Chapman's "Unsung Psalm" and "All That You Have is Your Soul". But then let me grow the saplings into mighty and unshakeable oaks that withstand the storms of time. I don't need anything more.
Sure, I find historic cemeteries staggeringly beautiful, and my son and I often walk through them admiring the cracked headstones and the way people have long payed tribute to the dead. But I don't want that for myself. I have no desire for grand monuments or for my body to take up unnecessary space in the ground, nor do I have any need for my bits and bones to clutter up my son's fireplace. I'd rather he plant me in a garden or a field of wildflowers instead. Let me grow the mountain cornflower into wild abundance. Each time his nostrils graze across their fragrant violet corallas, maybe he'll remember me.
If you know how to love, you know how to die.
I believe that the soul never truly dies, that it can't be vanquished into nothingness. It exists beyond time or rational thought and keeps travelling through other realms and passages and encountering other souls as part of a great reciprocal energy exchange. But here on this wildly beautiful Mother Earth we so often take for granted in our human forms, terramation is another way to live forever. More than that, it's the final act of putting our body to use, and the the ultimate indemnity we can make after death. A recompense for all the terrible things we've done to hurt her.
I just want to give something meaningful back after a lifetime of taking.
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