When I laid down to die, it caught me and everyone by surprise and it looked as if I had little time. I gave the folks around me at the Be the Change Project my instructions. I wanted to be allowed to die in place with no intervention--even though it looked as if I would die of dehydration from constant vomiting and no water intake. What I really wanted was to die with a drum circle and burn in the Black Rock Desert on a funeral pyre such as the native Americans used. I knew that was probably asking for bureaucratic hassles and probably even a legal impossibility so I settled for cremation and having my ashes float the Truckee River from the River School to Pyramid Lake, where my shaman’s mesa (personal altar of 13 small stones) would join me in eternity. In the days that ensued, I stopped vomiting and my brothers showed up from New York and Malaysia. My brother from Malaysia is an engineer with a law degree and things got complicated. He insisted that hospice come in because his research showed that Be the Change could come under investigation for my death by the coroner’s office if no “officials” were involved. I was too weak to move even my head and this annoyed me to no end. I just wanted to die without medical involvement. Be the Change is an off-the-grid urban homestead and I certainly did not want to make trouble for them so I consented over my own objection. Obviously I did not die. My point is that it seemed impossible to have the simple, ceremonial non-economic death and cremation I wanted. Hospice meant my family had to pay the bill and I had to apply for Medicaid reimbursement. This went against everything I believed and desired in an off-the-economic-grid death. In the end, many thousands of dollars changed hands and I felt violated by that. At least my drum core was always there waiting :) The attached video clip shows a remarkable service for people like me--though in Oregon--who want a natural non-economized death. It reminds me of my funeral experience in Mexico, where my boyfriend’s uncle died and we all spent the next 24 hours together with the body and family. It was beautifully integrative for me to watch. The family loved the body and bathed the body and then carried it collectively down the street to the funeral home where the service was held that same evening. I saw no fear of death in that Mexican family--only normal human grief processing and heaps of Love.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 05:49:31 +0000