Naked and Natural

Bury me deep. Wrap me in natural cloth. It’s a simple request, and I trust that any loved one who survives me will honour my choice to be laid to rest in the womb of Mother Earth’s cool, dark soil.

Naked. Natural. Simple.

As people start to become aware of the choices available at death, so too the conversation must turn to not only what is right for the deceased but what is right for those left behind, including the planet.

Not only am I a huge advocate of family-led and DIY funerals, I’m also keen to educate people about the choices available, including wrapping the deceased in a shroud (any natural cloth).

It saddened me enormously, quite recently, to hear of one family enquiring about a shroud with their funeral director only to be told “but what will people think if they see that when the hearse goes through town!” Not only was it unprofessional of the funeral director in question, it also showed ignorance, disrespect and potential discrimination. It also, to my mind, spoke volumes about the funeral director being worried that their business might be seen as catering to ‘paupers’ rather than clients who’d be spending thousands to dispose of their loved one’s body.

The law requires that the deceased’s body be covered when transported in public. It does not state how this should be done.

Thinking outside the (coffin) box means that we should be asking ourselves WHY we do certain things. Why do we spend hundreds of pounds to ‘hide’ the outline of a loved one’s body? Why do we spend money on fancy cars to take us from one side of town to the other? Why do we give the job of caring for our loved one’s body to someone else?

We do it, for the most part, because we don’t know we have a choice.