n 2020, I found myself gripped by panic and anxiety — facing what many would call a midlife crisis. My husband Kim and I had been talking about our future, and his health was fragile. Twice he had been bedbound with autoimmune arthritis, once in the autumn and again around Christmas. Those conversations, and our care for one another, turned my attention back to something I had carried since 2010: the lessons I learned while accompanying my grandmother at the end of her life, granting her wish to remain at home.
Together, Kim and I began researching end-of-life care in America. We discovered the Doulagivers End-of-Life Doula program, which had recently been featured in Time Magazine. I enrolled, thinking of it as a new path forward. Kim, with his background as a social worker, shared my interest and was ready to join in once we built a practice. It was the first step of a dream — to bridge the gap between families, health systems, and the sacred act of dying at home.
And then, on July 20, everything changed. I lost Kim suddenly. My world halted and yet lurched forward at once. Time itself shifted — stretching, collapsing, reminding me of how precious it truly is.
My teacher Suzanne O’Brien often says this is the greatest lesson the dying have for us: that it’s all about time. Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” Death teaches us what matters most.
In that grief, I also turned more deeply to something that had been calling me for years: green burial.
When Kim died, I chose no embalming and no invasive care for his body. I asked only for gentle washing, dressing, and the placement of his dearest personal items. He was cremated during the height of the pandemic, but my heart was already being pulled toward other ways — ways that honored the earth, preserved land, and reconnected us to the sacredness of decay.
I began learning everything I could: from green funeral practices, to the work of the Conservation Burial Alliance, to courses at the Mid-America College of Funeral Services. I crowdfunded tuition, met mentors, and began forming connections with others who shared this vision. Slowly, the threads wove together — friends, neighbors, faith communities, even fellow conservationists all began to share an interest in reclaiming death care that heals the land as much as it heals our grief.
Green burial, for me, is not just an alternative to conventional practices. It is an act of love. Love for people, who deserve gentleness at the end. Love for land, which should not be poisoned or consumed in death. Love for community, who can gather and remember in spaces that remain living.
I want to become loam. I want to join the trees through the mycelium network, to feed the forest that has held my family for generations. And in time, to return to the stars.
Green burial offers that possibility. It is how I choose to give my body back to the earth that shaped me. It is my act of love.
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