Before I started this class I had always thought I’d be cremated. Now that it is coming to a close I find myself set on a green burial. I like the idea of giving back to the earth, of being recycled back into nature, and the thought of not having a headstone or monument is even more appealing.
There is such a comfort in knowing that personhood is not restricted to the body; our identities are instead dispersed and constructed in relation to the significant people, places, and experiences encountered over the course of a lifetime. I can almost see a form of immortality in that somehow even after death we will still be inseparable from the complex webs of relationships we encountered throughout or lives.
“We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.
I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.”
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