Green Burial
Many people prefer not to think about death, maybe hoping that if they don’t think about it, it’ll never happen.
I’m fascinated by death - how it happens, how we deal with it, attitudes towards it. Since 1991 I’ve conducted almost 1000 funerals without religion as a Humanist Celebrant, so I’ve learned a lot about British attitudes to death, dying and bereavement, and a lot of social history. Death doesn’t discriminate - it comes to all classes, all ages, all races.
I did a funeral at the Greenwood Burial Ground at Farnham, near Saxmundham in Suffolk, today. It’s unlike the other green burial grounds near here.
Most of the trees are already established and the graves are dug between them. In other green burial sites, the trees are planted on the graves in the autumn, so a new-ish site can look rather bare for a few years.
I used to think that doing it this way, with the graves so close to the trees, might damage them, but the gravedigger said it doesn’t harm them. It’s like pruning the trees, only underground, and they grow new roots. I’m not convinced but haven’t noticed any dying off.