Don’t we all, deep, deep down, doubt the reality of our finality?
Today while sipping my morning coffee, I consigned myself to eternity.
I filled out a form promising to commit my human remains to the Vermont Forest Cemetery.
This is how it goes:
That most mundane, tedious, bureaucratic act of all—completing a FORM—opens the portal to the MOST MOMENTOUS OCCASION of all, death. Specifically, my death.
All done on a cell phone, for God’s sake.
This was not an entirely spontaneous decision. I’ve been pondering this for a while, tracking the evolution of Vermont’s first forest cemetery, where all-natural burials are permitted.
Still, my index finger hovered over the phone, while I interrogated my intentions. Was I serious about this? Could I force myself to take concrete action concerning the disposal of my body?
The bigger question, of course, is: Does this mean I accept that I am actually going to die?
Well, yes. (Yes???)
But accepting the inevitable in the abstract is not the same as doing something to accommodate the reality.
The American death-care industry strikes me as an especially macabre corner of capitalism, replete with its own tales of horror (see, for example, the Colorado funeral home hosting a passel of rotting corpses that stank up the neighborhood).
[A passel of corpses? A murder of corpses? A shrewdness, a shoal, a swarm…?]
As someone raised to boycott non-union lettuce, and who will never, ever purchase a Tesla for reasons you can probably guess, I’m not keen to support the chemically-saturated, price-gouging funeral industry even after I’m rendered speechless. (See, too, The Burial, which will not endear you to this business. Nor will the science on the toxic fall-out of cremation.)
But ah, the forest! Mixed hardwood trees on the flanks of the Green Mountains in the state that induces peacefulness and tranquility like no other place I’ve been.
I picture the scene:
In a hushed pocket of forest, amid the dappled light my body, wrapped in a willow basket or linen shroud, is lowered to rest on pine boughs and leaves. Gradually, the mycorrhizal network—a tangle of roots—absorbs, filters, and transports the elements of my remains as nutrients for the forest.
I am one with the land. I nourish and give back.
In death, perhaps I right the wrongs I committed in life. My trespasses—real and imagined—are cleansed by the earth.
This is as close as I come to praying for forgiveness.
And as for doubt…since you’re reading Doubt Monster…
Don’t we all, deep, deep down, doubt the reality of our finality?
Don’t we doubt the ways and means?
Don’t we doubt our capacity to die with grace, to tie up loose ends, to love our loved ones sufficiently and forgive our enemies authentically?
Envisioning my body dissolving in the forest focuses my attention on beautiful possibilities, while lightening the burdens of doubt and terror.
With an ending in sight, I’ll take comfort where I can find it.
This was beautiful in its honesty.
"Don’t we all, deep, deep down, doubt the reality of our finality?
Don’t we doubt the ways and means?
Don’t we doubt our capacity to die with grace, to tie up loose ends, to love our loved ones sufficiently and forgive our enemies authentically?
Envisioning my body dissolving in the forest focuses my attention on beautiful possibilities, while lightening the burdens of doubt and terror."
Amy, I've lost several close friends in the last couple of years, but it's still not the same as thinking about my own mortality. Much food for thought in this post. SW