A Green Burial Experience
Written by Elfi Shaw-Dillon
My good friend Simone’s last wish was to be planted among the trees of the West Coast Forest on Salt Spring Island. During her terminal illness Simone had formed a friendship with Catherine Valentine, the founder and manager of the Salt Spring Natural Burial Cemetery. Catherine is featured in the most recent issue of FOLKLIFE in an article entitled “The Birth of A Natural Cemetery”.
With Catherine’s assistance, Simone selected her place next to an old growth Douglas Fir stump that was already generating new life. Her grave had been prepared according to green or natural burial guidelines. As a small group, we witnessed how Catherine and her helpers lowered Simone’s beautifully shrouded body with touching reverence unto a bed of cedar boughs and flowers.
Simone appeared to me like a different kind of seed resting on the “old brown earth”. She could have chosen a willow coffin or another biodegradable kind but she wanted to be food for the earth that had nourished her all of her life.
It was my sad privilege to speak her Eulogy while Simone’s community of friends provided tears of love to water the earth. Each of us added a flower and a handful of soil along prayers, poetry and songs. In the stillness that followed, the natural world added the praise of frog chorus, raven dialogues, and the soft rustling of trees in the midst of the silent flow of rainforest mist.
We returned to the Gathering Place that is part of the Salt Spring natural burial cemetery. Catherine and her helpers had lit a fire for us that warmed us. We spoke with one another in honour of Simone’s wish for us to connect as a community.
I am a member of the Gabriola Green Burial Exploratory Committee. We had made an earlier field trip to visit Catherine and to tour her site that now is the resting place of my dear friend. Her funeral is the first green burial in which I have fully participated. I look forward to the day when we will open our own natural burial site for those on Gabriola Island who would love the option of returning to the earth in this way.
