Image: The cover of the book shows a colorful photo of a shroud. The body is wrapped in a white shroud and covered with wildflowers. There is an illustrated white ribbon added to the photo over the shroud. The top part of the ribbon says "Reimagining" in script, the next section says "DEATH" in capitalized letters, the next portion says "stories and practical wisdom for home funerals and green burials: in smaller capital letters. Across the bottom is a white box with the author's name and the foreword author's name in capital letters.
Reimagining Death tackles very important topics that many human beings shy away from confronting, often until the last minute when it is too late to have access to the most choices. The book definitely has a target audience- one that I thought I was part of but it turns out, not so much. This affects my review, but does not mean someone else would not enjoy this book more than I did. I am reviewing mostly on my own tastes and unmet expectations.
It is necessary to mention that I'm an atheist, but not the annoying internet dude kind that finds superiority in their lack of belief in God(s.) I respect that religion and spirituality have important and often positive roles in peoples lives and have no desire to take that away. That said, my opinions and outlook on green burial and other topics covered in this book come from a love of nature and desire to feed the Earth and those on it when I die. It comes from a rational place of wanting to avoid contributing to the suffering of others and to climate change in death. I also have thought about death fairly regularly from a young age, so I didn't need to learn a lesson that death should be spoken about and embraced as part of life. I was hoping that this book would teach me a lot about conventional and green practices in depth, how far reaching the negative effects of the former are, and the importance of viewing death differently. Instead, I got a book that is very heavy on the stories and very light on the "practical wisdom." Every time I would get past a long, drawn out story about a death ritual, I would get to a section I thought would teach me what I wanted to know. Unfortunately, I would just find a bullet point list with a few bits of information before the author moved on to another story. All of the stories were written in a style that just didn't work for me. Most of them seemed longer than they needed to be.
It is very clear that the author is writing from her perspective as a a "woo woo" spiritual hippie type who lives in a community on Whidbey Island that I assume is predominantly white, middle to owning class people of a similar bent. I have been to the island once and it is an absolutely gorgeous place, but is very unlike where most people live. Every story is written in this very new agey perspective, assigning extreme cosmic significance and meaning to all sorts happenings. There is a lot of psychic, spiritual, and other things that were of no interest to me, however much I understood the significance to the author and her friends. I think I was just hoping for something that didn't treat everything around death as a magical experience all the way down to washing the genitals of your mother's dead, rigored body or anointing your dead husband's perineum with oils. Sure, we can find spiritual experiences in after death rituals, but is all of it a fantastical experience full of immense meaning? It may be for some, and that is fine. But, the book is written as if it should be for everyone.
Another thing that makes the author's centering of her own experience clear is that cost is pretty much never discussed. Is a green burial and home funeral cheaper (after all of the legal paperwork and home hospice care many cannot afford?) I don't know. It was something I wanted to know. The author discusses her housekeeper nonchalantly as if it's something everyone has and all the stories focus on people who were able to afford home hospice care from what I can tell. Do I believe people should be able to die at home or wherever they prefer? Absolutely. But, many people don't. There is a section about if someone dies in a hospital, but it is not a centered experience throughout the book. Pretty much everyone discussed seems to be someone the author is related to or is in her community.
Even though I did not get a whole lot out of these stories, though, I do think that some people can. I think that reading these stories can help people realize that there are alternatives to many mainstream western after death rituals. I think that these stories could be comforting to someone who has recently lost someone or who needs to see death as a topic that should be embraced rather than avoided. I think people similar to the author in particular could enjoy these stories. I think people looking for story telling more than practical information on the topic would enjoy these stories.
I didn't really get what I was looking for until the last two chapters of the book. The chapters, "Reimagining the Future in Ecological After Death Care" and "Be Prepared: Creating a Plan with Family and Friends," were the most useful to me. They were still too light on the information I wanted, but I did finally get to read more about what practices like embalming and typical cremation do to the body and the environment. There were a lot of things I learned such as alternatives to cremation if you don't want a burial and how these alternatives can actually be good for the environment rather than neutral. I found things like composting burials, the use of cryogenics, water processing and other methods to be very interesting. The appendices at the end also offer information and sources for those looking for more outside the format of the book. There are also a lot of lovely photos of green burials and rituals that were really cool to look at.
All in all, I don't regret reading this book. I would recommend it to someone looking to understand how after death rituals do not have to be as expected. If you are more looking for the kinds of information I was, I think you could easily skip around in this book, choose what you need, and leave the rest.
This was also posted to my goodreads.
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