Dying and death pathways

We live in an era that operates under the illusion that when a person moves into the active dying phase, they, in all their dimensions, die too.

Under that illusion, it appears appropriate for a person to advance from being sick, to being dead, to being in the morgue, and to being cremated without an interruption or an acknowledgement of their transition into their spiritual life.

Unless a person’s family interjects into that timeline their own personal or traditional spiritual consciousness, there will be a great poverty of meaning as to the passing of that person’s life into death and the afterlife.

It is becoming an accustomed trend for folks to agree on “no funeral”, “Mom didn’t want anything.” “We can’t afford it.” This is understandable. Still, the human life in transition deserves, and requires, meaningful attention. For the person who is new to being dead and for those being left to grieve, it is essential to their well-being.

A Home Funeral

is family-led deathcare. This practical and reverential process of applying love and grief into the gaps between the living and the dead restores the continuum of Life. The tending applied in those spaces is physical, psychic, spoken, and felt messages into the multiple forms of Life/Death/Life.

The human heart knows no time or space. Practices of connecting to those in the afterlife are always open and available as long as we are.

Rituals that make sense to our family and community contain both personal markers and universal signposts, bringing cohesion and drawing strength from the truth-telling stories our grieving bodies need to share.