As consumers, Australians are poorly educated about funeral or end of life options. Many have little practice with the physical reality of death. A new acquaintance and I were talking over a cup of tea. ‘I’m 53 and I’ve never seen a dead body,’ she said. ‘I know very little about death and when my parents go, who knows what we’ll do?’

When I run workshops for organisations, I know who will be there. But I’m not sure who will come to my workshop on Sunday. I don’t know what experience they might have had. Something will have drawn them to it. We’ll find out about this early in the workshop. If there’s anyone who’s been strongly drawn to the workshop, yet feels very nervous about dead bodies,I’ll reassure them that that’s not at all unusual. Throughout, I’ll be talking about laying out and vigil as a love project, a final gesture of care towards a loved one.

Washing away, creating relaxation and comfort

Laying out a body is a time when close people can be part of a transformative process. If there has been long illness all the struggle can be washed away. If there has been an accident, that reality can be taken in a little more gently. If the person is very old and has been living in the garments of age, they can be dressed beautifully.

‘I had come into the room with a body that had been through so much. She looked beat up, cold, lonely, and pained. Once she was dressed, in her own clothes, she looked so cozy, warm, relaxed, and comfortable. She looked like herself. But it wasn’t her,’ says Nora Menkin on the National Home Funeral Alliance website.

Being at home

Rituals of laying out and vigil put the person at the centre, looking like him or herself, but it’s not him or not her. The vigil might be in the lounge, perhaps in their room, perhaps in a room that’s been specially set up for the purpose. Having the chance to lay out the body is the norm for Muslims. Visiting someone who has died is what Greeks do. Any family can create rituals of laying out and vigil. These practices unfold the reality or death and mortality. For this person. For ourself. For us. I’ve never spoken to a person who’s been to a well set up vigil who hasn’t described it as having made a difference to their ability to accept what has happened.

In our practice we like things to be practical and attractive. For many I speak to, the first thought is about how to keep a body cool. At the workshop I’ll be demonstrating how. A vigil is a meaningful and beautiful experience. Any family can choose to do one. One thing I’ll say in the workshop is that there are a few things you can think about ahead. This will make it much easier for the family and organisers of these rituals. I’ll also speak of how vigils can happen at home, in a hospital or an aged care facility. Hope to see you there.

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This determination for change is evident in what’s termed the ‘home funeral’ movement. After the Global Financial Crisis, many simply could not afford funerals. They were sick of being sold products by funeral directors, notably embalming, an ubiquitous practice in the US. I attended the National Home Funeral Alliance’s conference a couple of years’ ago, and got a flavour of the citizen led movement in the sign-in line when the woman next to me introduced herself: ‘I’m Margaret, and this is my sister Helen … we did our mother.’ Intrepid baby boomers without financial resources, they’d been inspired to organise a home vigil or ‘lying in state’ and funeral, taking care of bathing, dressing, vigil and transportation themselves.

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Thanks to National Home Funeral Alliance

The coast-to-coast movement comprises a mix of educators, death doulas, health care and funeral professionals, green burial specialists, Death Café convenors, artists and craftspeople, and those like Margaret, who read in a newspaper or on the net that the family could do it without calling on funeral directors. Margaret then made connections with educators in her state through a Google search. Those who have had the experience often become educators. They can undertake training with home funeral practitioners in numerous states. They may lead the way in their own communities for a new way of approaching death, dying and funerals.

The conference was an intriguing US-wide get-together. The title ‘Home Funeral in Community, Restoring the Lost Art’, suggests the American folk spirit that marked the action. I got together with men and women ranging from 30 to 70. At every meal people were hard at death conversations over weak coffee, comparing notes on regulatory requirements in their respective states and discussing tools of the trade. Americans are tactful, never insisting, simply helping others towards their point of view. ‘You might want to think about buying a body board, said one practitioner to another, ‘it makes it so much easier to move the body across – you should think about it.’ Only to be met with protestations that a double sheet is good, a sheet is quite fine.

If a DIY funeral is right for the person, it works well if a planning process has been put in place, roles and tasks considered and conversations had. The activity of doing after death care and a funeral ourselves contributes to sense making, a key aspect of successful grieving and integration of loss. Death is a mystery. It is something humans with few exceptions are at pains to banish from front of mind. Yet it happens to all. In contemporary society our exposure to the reality of death is often very limited. The body is whisked away soon after death, and there may be little further contact with it again. No wonder it is difficult to make sense of. Integrating the experience of loss has to take place via the mind, without the concrete support of the senses. Seeing. Touching a cold body. Listening, and not hearing breath.

The body present at home before the funeral? It’s morbid. Confronting. It’s unnecessary. It will be frightening. These are commonly held views and tend to make the funeral domain strictly one for funeral directors. This makes it the norm to hand over authority to them. They are experienced and resourced to provide a seamless experience. Their work is not easy yet they often describe it as rewarding.

This is equally true of those of us who are part of the movement for ‘death literacy’ and new funeral norms. Groundswell, recently ran their annual Dying to Know Day. Every 8th August, hosted conversations are held with the intent of countering fear, isolation and taboos around end of life discussions.

‘Have you thought about what you want when you die? Have you discussed it?’

‘Oh yeah, don’t worry about it, I just want to be buried in the backyard.’

Hitting on a solution like this seems trouble-free. Yet Imagine flying over the suburbs of Sydney or Melbourne, and instead of noticing swimming pools out of the window, picking up the imprint of a massive DIY graveyard, not of pets, but family members.

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Painting the coffin, forever home …

‘Oh I just want something sustainable. There’s this fantastic new biodegradable pod coffin. You can be buried in it in foetal position and a tree grows out of it.’

The beauty of this individual solution to body disposal has seen it liked on Facebook more than 12,000 times. The pod is still in the design phase but many people think it is an immediate option. On a moment’s reflection the bio aspect of the pod is way more complex than an enviro-friendly Christmas card studded with callistemon seed that is supposed to result in a gorgeous shrub in the garden. It may take some years to perfect. Nonetheless beauty and sustainability are values both innovators and their audience aspire to.

Holding a facilitated conversation for a group of friends, family or health clients can be light and enjoyable. It can acknowledge the optimistic, sometimes unrealistic thinking that comes from thinking alone. It is not morbid to talk about practical aspects of caring for a dead body that we usually outsource to funeral companies. With ease around what many see as a difficult subject, we are more likely to hold in mind values such as sustainability, beauty or cost-effectiveness, that in ordinary circumstances inform our decision-making. We can stop to calculate the human and environmental costs of producing a cheap cardboard coffin in China and shipping it to Costco.

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Anyway with regular updates in the mail, I’ve always felt in touch with Karuna’s mission. Reading the stories, appreciating the difference made to families, has unfailingly given me heart.

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I was in Gippsland recently and I stepped into a wonderful restaurant, Catinalla’s. The owner Deanna is seventh generation Australian. When she married a second generation Italian, a big part of her learning was about food. What they’d eaten at home was different. Great food but so different!

Everyone loves food

Deanna learned cooking from her mother-in-law, Catinalla. Sugos, stocks, fritattas. This experience lives on in the restaurant. Deanna qualified as a chef in 2015 to formalise her knowledge of cooking. Running beneath the outward effort has been a concern that real family grown food traditions don’t get lost.

That’s a memorial isn’t it? Her mother-in- law passed away in 2014. And in Traralgon, Deanna can keep the traditions going. When Catinalla was still alive, Deanna registered the business name and ran ideas past her, checked things with her. She found out the story behind the unique spelling of her name.

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Love project. Thanks to Squarepics.co

Intent, the will to make the vision happen

I was a guest at the public event held in 2015 at Hamer Hall to celebrate Neilma Gantner’s rich and generous life. The program was packed with admiring speakers. One was a Parks Victoria employee who had got to know here very very well in the late 60s. Neilma had approached the government about building a hut in the Alpine National Park in memory of her son Vallejo. Vallejo had died very young, and she was determined to create a fitting memorial that reflected his love of the mountains. She wanted it to be a beautiful place that would benefit all comers. What seemed an impossibility – putting an aesthetically extraordinary hut into the high country – became a reality, the MacAlister Springs Hut. The hut is deeply loved by bushwalkers. Designed by architect David McGlashan, with a copper roof, it is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.

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Water & good campsite. Thanks to the Mountain Journal.

Buried, cremated or transformed to goodness?

My friend Uncle Fletcher Roberts, a Bundjalung elder in Lismore, NSW, once questioned me about where I planned to be when I died. He was old and rarely left Lismore, in case he died while he was away. He asked me if it bothered me that I wouldn’t be in the same place as my parents since I’d moved to Australia.

Where were they buried?

No, they were cremated.

Where are their ashes?

When I said that we’d scattered them in our garden, and that we’d sold the property, he was shocked. On reflection I think he was spot on. What might I have learned by going back to visit the place where we’d let their remains go? How would those owners react if they knew that along with being proud owners of a modernist Johannesburg home, they are caretakers of my parents’ bodily remains?

I now know that loss can be thoughtfully marked in ways that are far from a marble dark cemetery.

Through one’s own life.

As a physical memorial. The memorial might be a venture like Catinalla’s, immediate and personal. It might be a lasting public legacy like the Gantner hut.

Now I can’t help thinking of all the goodness that’s been created in the world through people dreaming up plans not to lose the legacy of important people.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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And then they arrive. Great people who may not have much in common. But they all want to know:

How much sustainability can there be in a Melbourne funeral?

Some are quite optimistic about sustainability. Everyone recognises the challenges.

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Thanks to Johann Drea (2007)

My goal is to give the social aspect of sustainability more of a look in. How can anyone, at the time of a death, do what has to be done without that help. Community. Friends. How much headspace does a family have even to compare price offers by different funeral companies, let alone to assess how green a coffin is?

But here we have the time. We take the coffin as a case study.

Here’s a waste pyramid. Check out the least favoured option. Think about how many coffins go up in smoke or six feet under.

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Thanks to drstuey

What’s is the most sustainable coffin option?

Small groups come to different conclusions.

Well, at first we thought the recycled coffin was the natural choice. But then I thought, I couldn’t take up that option without having quite a big conversation with my family.

We liked the pine coffin, but really we have to think about pine plantations, and where the timber comes from. Perhaps recycled timber?

We had to agree to forget the cardboard coffin. Produced in China, the worker conditions, air and water pollution put them out of the running.

This was just the start. Why be buried in a coffin at all when you could go in a shroud?

Questions questions questions

Everyone wants more information about sustainability in Melbourne. What is the sustainability performance of Melbourne’s crematoria? Why lawn cemeteries? When will there be a dedicated green burial option?

Are we going to talk about the vigil, asks one participant.  More on the SLF event in my next blog.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

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What did I learn from the panel’s exchange with Natasha Mitchell of ABC’s ‘All in the Mind’?

Adults are nervous of talking about death because:

• They’ll be sad and they don’t want that ‘weighed down-‘ness

• It’s taboo. No one wants to be the one who brings up the subject of death.

• It’s very sad – there are lots of endings, iike there’s the end of the movie, the end of a pet, but this is the end of a person.

• They hurt so much

Some of the speakers had been to a funeral for example an uncle’s wake which was quite like a party. A funeral’s a good way to remember the dead person a young woman Niyah suggested, and a celebration of what the person did, the good things they did.

The youngest, Satch, had an interesting thought, ‘If I died the room where I die would be a good place for people to be, to go into that room’. He seemed to be suggesting the value of a vigil.

I agree, it really make sense to do this.

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