Honored with a Green Burial

What do you believe happens after you die?

To make it easier to answer, let's start with your physical body. Everyday multiple times, we eat something, plant or animal, that was once living and now is not. Now, it is transformed into food for another.

After your death – you too will be food for another. Who would you want to be food for? Or we might say, a feast for? Have you ever thought of that?

In a Green Burial, the microbial life in the soil gets to have a feast. This same microbial life has in essence been feeding everything that has sustained you in life. It seems to me this is the most meaningful final offering we can share related to our physical form.

Since we have left our body, many say they don’t care what happens next. Yet, if you could, would it make you feel good to feed others as your last act of gratitude for all who have fed you?

Let’s now focus for a moment on the spiritual part. What do you believe happens when you die? Is that it? The end? That’s basically saying you were only your body, not your spirit – not your consciousness. In my nearly thirty years as an Intuitive Energy Healer and Medium, I have had numerous experiences hearing from those who have crossed the veil. So, my answer to the question of what has died? – Is only the body, only the life form. Spiritually the soul has continued on its journey.

Now, back to an experience of Green Burial:

I entered the foyer of the mortuary to find loved ones gathered around my heavily shrouded family member. His body had been “harvested,” meaning offered for medical purposes, so he was actually double shrouded. As we began, one of his grandsons pulled in a large garden cart full of cedar boughs. We were able to tuck them into the bindings – gracefully and respectfully adorning the body. Prayers were offered and songs as well. In time we began to be led outside with the pall bearers rolling the cart he was on. We had a long walk ahead of us to his burial site. It wasn’t yet time for them to bear the weight. Immediate family walked behind. I was asked to pull what was left of the cedar boughs in the wagon, with more family and friends following in the processional.

When we arrived, the hole had been prepared and the soil piled high slightly beside the grave. The pall bearers now lifted him with the straps of the bindings and while walking on either side of the grave, slowly lowered him into the ground. Offerings were then added such as more cedar, flower petals, paper cards with heartfelt writings for the afterlife. 

After a brief ceremony with more readings, prayers, music and song, it was time to cover him up. This was mostly attended by his grandchildren but all capable hands added their shovelfuls until a large mound existed. Done in silence and yet a loud silence full of tears and potential. 

We then walked back to the mortuary in quiet conversation, attentive to the elements in a heightened manner.  Aware Spirits were with us, especially HIS own and the family members that met him on his Spirits’ journey. 

The thirty to forty close loved ones present for his burial, then headed back to the family house for a luncheon and time to uphold one another. Two-three months later would give us time to develop a Celebration of Life for a larger number of friends. Yet the Green Burial, which took place within a two-week window of his death, was complete.

I have seen pictures of other beloveds adorned with flowers spectacularly in patterns and such. The guideline is we must use natural materials that will decompose readily. I have also heard of adding collections of treasured nature objects that the deceased cherished in their lifetime.

At the nine-month mark, closest family members returned to his gravesite to plant a tree and other items of beauty. While this doesn’t always occur it offers additional opportunity to bring beauty to grow from all that he offered the soil. Green Burial is an appreciative way to end the greatest give-away we have...our final act of nourishing others. by Kathryn Lafond

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