Morbid poet or Canny Pre-Planner? It’s inspiring to note that America’s most death-preoccupied poet (known for writing “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,”“Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;” and “I was always attached to mud”) died in her own sunny bedroom 129 years ago this week, was then placed in a white casket on a pine bier in the parlor, honored with a 130-line obituary in the local newspaper, and was lovingly buried with two heliotropes in her hands at a gorgeous graveside service that involved other May-blooming flowers she had studiously reared (when in better health) in her own garden. Who gets an end-of-life roll-out like that any more? Mostly only those who think a lot about death in advance.

She’d be pleased with us, sitting here, talking about her funeral. “We do not think enough of the Dead as exhilarants,” she wrote. What a soul, what an intellect. She shocks and enlightens us today with her death-inspired insights. For example, she said any death, all death, reliably comes as a “stupendous” surprise (even when that death is long-awaited and anticipated). This is certainly true to my experience. She wrote, “All other Surprise is at last monotonous, but the death of the Loved is all moments–now.”

For her funeral May 19th, 1886, Dickinson’s pall bearers walked her casket from the parlor to the cemetery in Amherst, Massachusetts, as her grave lay just beyond the fence line of the elegant home where she lived all her life. There, her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson read Emily Bronte’s poem “No Coward Soul is Mine,” a piece which could be interpreted as slightly more religious than Dickinson was in her final years, but you can decide for yourself when you read it, and start thinking about what poems you’d like recited when you too are dead, when “subterfuge is done,” and when the temporary and the eternal “Apart–intrinsic–stand.”

No Coward Soul Is Mine

By Emily Bronte

No coward soul is mine,

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere:

I see Heaven’s glories shine,

And faith shines equal, arming me from Fear.

O God within my breast,

Almighty, ever-present Deity!

Life – that in me hast rest,

As I – Undying Life- have power in Thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men’s hearts, unutterably vain;

Worthless as withered weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one

Holding so fast by Thine infinity;

So surely anchored on

The steadfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love

Thy Spirit animates eternal years,

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears

Though Earth and moon were gone,

And suns and universes ceased to be,

And Thou wert left alone,

Every Existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,

Nor atom that his might could render void:

Thou art Being and Breath,

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This was how it was at Kinship Ritual’s sustainable funerals event ‘Natural Burial’ at the Sustainable Living Festival. Many people really want natural burial as an option that’s less environmentally harmful than cremation. With natural burial the imagination comes into play, and often it’s a grave with a tree planted on top. For this event I wanted to enable a better understanding of what’s available in Melbourne and elsewhere.

Terry King from the Southern Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust, presented what was essentially a preview of a new Memorial Park being developed by Southern Metropolitan Cemetery Trust called Bunurong. This kind of preview would be provided to funeral directors as a matter of course, but not to citizens. A 21 hectare area has been set aside for natural burial. Terry is Director of Infrastructure, and showed the design concept for 80 ‘burial under tree plots’.

Brendan o’Connor is a Regional Manager at the Greater Metropolitan Cemeteries Trust (GMCT). He explored the dimensions of ‘natural’, ‘green’, ‘eco’ and ‘bushland’ burial, the notion of returning land back to its original state and of the conservation strategies that might be associated with ‘bushland’ burial. GMCT offers small natural burial areas in two cemeteries, Lilydale and Healesville. However Brendan highlighted that many of the GMCT’s cemeteries have great ‘natural settings’.

Pia Interlandi spent a rich period of her life helping with the early development of Clandon Wood, a natural burial preserve in the UK. Through the founders’ work, people find at Clandon Wood the aesthetic values that most people are looking for in a natural burial. The bare landscape has been transformed, with a wetland, wildflower meadows, an orchard and a light as air pavilion.

When I put the program together I did have a moment of doubt. How would an evening go with spokespeople from cemetery trusts that are to some extent in competition with each other, and a passionate advocate? It was a great night. I enjoyed the way in which everyone got together, the thoughtfulness of participants, and the recognition of values that drive the natural burial movement.

Sustainability values apparently drive natural burial. But aesthetics matter deeply. Beyond minimising impacts I observed people looking for a psycho-spiritual relationship with the place they might be laid to rest.

I look forward to putting on more. Perhaps exploring a social justice imperative? Some participants felt strongly that being obliged to subscribe to formulaic, costly and elaborate funerals does not respect or support many people’s economic and social needs. Interesting.