00:06:12.900some doctors came up with some preservation methods primarily using formaldehyme and we were
00:06:18.860able to do that and it worked and it was successful so there was an eye on the prize there was that
00:06:23.940concept of hey there's some money to be made here so there was some more teaching and some more
00:06:29.120schooling and before you knew it we had funeral directors and these funeral directors were
00:06:33.100primarily boys because that's who went to school and got education they opened up funeral homes
00:06:39.600and rather than having the family keep their loved one in the front funeral parlor they were
00:06:46.520having their loved ones whisked away from the home into the funeral parlor that was in town
00:06:52.880so with that we no longer had the craftsman making the basic casket we were being provided
00:06:59.440different services and there were all these different fancy boxes that came along to be
00:07:05.720buried in then we could be embalmed and preserved and we can go in fancy cars and then before we
00:07:11.540knew it this whole funeral industry was just blossoming and burgeoning rather than using the
00:07:17.720standard churchyard there is the design in the 1950s of the memorial park and the idea that we
00:07:24.400could find this wonderful swath of god's acre that would be green and be majestic and beautiful
00:07:30.460and in order to keep it like that of course we have to fertilize it and we have to put all the
00:07:35.520pesticides down to make it sparkling green but this would be a wonderful lovely place to have
00:07:41.160your loved one in order to keep those grounds that way not only do we have the external chemicals
00:07:47.360but we have the grave liners which is a concrete box which would go inside these graves to hold the
00:07:53.540earth up so you sort of can see the progression here we had the progression of the funeral
00:07:58.520industry of the cemetery industry but really we're having the regression of our love and our
00:08:04.360upkeep of the environment. Wow, that's so interesting to see how the Civil War and
00:08:11.380the death of these boys, like you've mentioned, really being the catalyst for industrialized
00:08:17.700burials. I never knew that. That's really interesting. So just to speak about these
00:08:23.000green burials more. So what you said, you know, not using embalming fluids and burying the body
00:08:28.340in a biodegradable shroud or coffin, and there's no concrete vault or graveliner.
00:08:34.020But I'm wondering if you can share with us a bit more about the work you do with Green Burial and
00:08:38.900perhaps some of the misconceptions surrounding the practice.
00:08:43.460Yeah, sure. I find that when I mentioned that I help families with Green Burial,
00:08:50.500a lot of people will say, well, what does that mean? Does that mean that you
00:08:56.180just have them out in a field someplace? Does that mean you bring them to the national forest?
00:09:01.700And there's that lost concept of what do we do with the body? First off, we follow all legal
00:09:07.920rules. This is a method of disposition, which of course, the United States say is fine. A matter
00:09:14.640of fact, all 50 states say green burial is legal. It's just a matter of figuring out where in your
00:09:21.400state, you can have a natural burial, albeit private property, or do you have to go to a
00:09:28.560cemetery? So I help families figure out where they're going to be buried. I very fortunately
00:09:35.840am in Oregon. I'm in a little town of Boring. I'm the undertaker of Boring, Oregon, which I
00:09:41.400never get tired of saying. I'm 20 miles outside of Portland, but it's so remote and country where I
00:09:48.400am. I'm in a very rural part of Clackamas County, which means I have the luxury and the goodwill
00:09:54.940to be able to bury people on their own property if they can follow some of the statutes according,
00:10:01.160such as they have to have at least an acre, be away from a watershed or the roadway, just some
00:10:07.880things. But a lot of people have family farms and they've got a couple acres or more homesteads that
00:10:13.400have been in the family. So they don't have to buy a cemetery space. They can have their loved one in
00:10:18.660the side yard or the backyard. What I help families do is prepare a grave space. I have them decide if
00:10:26.080they want to have a simple pine box made, if they want to use the sheet off the bed, if they need
00:10:33.220help learning how to use a shroud, and then do they want to keep their loved one at home. Something
00:10:38.920else kind of fantastic is there are 40 states in america that say yep you can act as your own
00:10:47.840funeral home you don't have to use a funeral parlor and again oregon is one of those states
00:10:53.120so i have families who decide that they want to be their own funeral director they want to get the
00:10:59.760death certificate signed they want to provide the disposition and oversee the whole entire process
00:11:06.700for their loved one, which includes having family or friends come in and bathe their loved one or
00:11:12.220dress them or any way they want to do it. No green burial is ever alike. No home funeral is ever
00:11:19.860alike. They're all just special and meaningful and wonderful. And I am so fortunate to be able
00:11:26.360to work my passion and to really be there and observe and receive this magical gift of these
00:11:32.800days of how these families are honoring their loved ones who passed away.
00:11:38.740Beautiful. Thank you. So I'm thinking about the people who get buried at their homes, or
00:11:46.380like you were saying, and on their private property, but honestly, anywhere. The CDC reports
00:11:52.260that in the US, we carry 219 toxic chemicals, pesticides, fungicides, flame retardants,
00:11:59.580heavy metals and preservatives in our bodies throughout our lives. So I'm curious about
00:12:04.980the implications of green burial in terms of bodily decomposition. So can you speak to the
00:12:11.440possible implications of these chemicals and metals entering the ground through our bodies
00:12:16.480after death? And are undertakers in the field of green burial looking to how to neutralize these
00:12:22.900toxins? You know, how can, say, micro-remediation or a fungi be utilized? If we have a body which
00:12:31.780is embalmed, that's three pounds of that toxic formaline going into the body. Some say formaline,
00:12:39.640some say formalin. I've heard two pronunciations, but that's ultimately the main chemical in the
00:12:44.900formaldehyde, which is the embalming fluid which preserves the body. So to embalm somebody,
00:12:50.420we have the blood, the liquid, the fecal matter, basically everything inside the body naturally
00:12:57.540is removed. The embalming fluid is going in. And not only is that about three pounds of
00:13:04.340embalming fluid and formaldehyde we now have in a human body, but all of that other matter that
00:13:10.160was organic is now going to be down the drain. So we have that initially starting as a problem.
00:13:17.340We have embalmers that are spending time in the preparatory rooms, we call them prep rooms, at embalming facilities or funeral homes, and they are masked up and suited up because these chemicals are really heavy, nasty things.
00:13:32.020So a lot of these people who have done this for careers have become very sick, their lungs are full with these chemicals, they've developed tumors and some cancers,
00:13:43.340And we're finding out, of course, that this stuff does not bode well for the human body alive or the human body that's passed away.
00:13:51.100When a body is there buried into the ground and it has this fluid inside it, over time, things will biodegrade.
00:14:00.660And even though a body is preserved, over time, the biodegration will happen.
00:22:42.440You're on the advisory board for the Green Burial Council of Turtle Island, and I'd love to hear about the current standards for green burial and what shifts that you would recommend.
00:22:54.760Sure. So the Green Burial Council is an organization that came to be with some people who had been in the funeral industry, the conservation industry, the energy industry, the environmental industry, and just realized that we need to have some sort of regulations or some sort of standards so people not only understand what green burial is, so there are some rules, some regulation, and ultimately just some information.
00:23:21.260I mean, information is really the biggest thing when it comes to all of this.
00:23:25.340So they decided that it might be a good idea to have different cemeteries and funeral homes
00:23:32.180who say that they want to offer green services to be able to have a place where everything can be regulated.
00:23:39.320We don't really want greenwashing to happen in the industry.
00:23:42.180And greenwashing is really, you know, as the demand for the green services and the products sort of grow,
00:23:47.720it's that idea of businesses and organizations really saying that they are doing things in a
00:23:55.060green way but and they're trying to minimize environmental impact but you know they're
00:23:59.520technically not doing that but people don't always know that people just sometimes see something say
00:24:04.720green or natural or environmental and they just go with it so the green burial council does talk
00:24:12.220about the idea of what a green burial cemetery will look like. So I'm really glad to be able to
00:24:19.240share with your listeners that there are three different layers of green burial cemeteries,
00:24:26.220and they sort of have different purposes. And what I mean by that is, first off, there's a
00:24:32.240hybrid cemetery. There are many cemeteries out there that were already started. They already
00:24:38.060had modern burial techniques they had headstones they had the rows of graves and these cemeteries
00:24:44.700are deciding that either yeah you know we have this acre or two over that's undeveloped and we're
00:24:52.620going to allow green burials to happen there or they've decided to allow any grave space
00:24:59.220throughout the park to be able to have a natural burial and that would mean somebody can come in
00:25:05.240with their loved one, either in a shroud or a cardboard box or in a natural casket. They can
00:25:12.020lay their loved one to rest inside the grave space without any sort of a grave liner or a barrier
00:25:17.680that won't help them biodegrade. They can help backfill the grave with soil and spend their time
00:25:23.140and they can have a natural burial inside a regular cemetery where you do see headstones
00:25:29.420and everything looks like a relatively standard cemetery. The next level of cemetery, there's a
00:25:35.100of these springing up too are natural burial preserves and these are created with the idea
00:25:40.780of just a natural burial so all the bodies buried there they do not have any embalming
00:25:47.260they are not going to have any sort of metal in the casket or toxic glue shellac lacquers
00:25:55.740they're not going to have any sort of a concrete or a steel burial vault and those graves are going
00:26:03.020to be the soil is dug from them and removed the layer from the top soil to the sod to however
00:26:11.280the natural elements are that will be put back directly in line as it was removed so meaning
00:26:18.740there'll be piles of the soil so we will put everything back we don't just fill the hole with
00:26:23.120third as a whole we little by little put everything back to the permaculture and everything is exactly
00:26:27.260how it needs to be we want the root systems to be able to reconnect again and then that grave
00:26:32.180is never mowed it's never fertilized it looks however it looks it's going to grow organically
00:26:40.100with whatever natural foliage and fauna is occurring there at the cemetery so it gives
00:26:46.140it a really nice sort of meadow field and which is wonderful some of those cemeteries say you can
00:26:51.820bring in seeds for wildflowers and they have their own rules the third level and the grounds that we
00:26:58.780see less of but are becoming more and more and more important in the green burial movement are
00:27:03.500the conservation burial grounds and these are the cemeteries that have all of the requirements
00:27:10.460of the green burial in the natural setting but ultimately these are really trying to keep that
00:27:15.820high degree of the intrinsic social and ecological value we're really trying to make sure that the
00:27:22.860land is being conserved the money that's coming in to buy these grave spaces either the money is
00:27:29.380specifically going to regulate and be an endowment fund for this land or at least half of the money
00:27:36.680is going back to buy more land for more graves so ultimately we're getting into that idea of
00:27:42.780green burial land where more acres are coming and rather than god's small acre of a cemetery
00:27:48.420we will have areas and maybe even a green burial forest and the idea of this is a wonderful
00:27:54.780landscape right here to bring your loved one back to earth to come full circle how it was
00:28:00.800definitely meant to be and we're just trying to work with the ecosystems as best as we possibly
00:28:05.540can wow that's so incredible and i just have a clarifying question between the i guess green
00:28:15.780cemetery and the conservation burial plots, I guess I'm wondering, is the only difference that
00:28:25.000one is meant for conservation and obtaining more land for conservation that maybe isn't all
00:28:32.220completely a burial site, but the burials that do occur go into purchasing more land for more
00:28:38.840conservation? Maybe it's public land or yeah, if you could just get into some more details around
00:28:45.240the two and how they would function and how they do function.
00:28:50.580Sure. Right. So the conservation sites are really put together to be able to develop more land
00:28:58.560specifically for burials. Our very first conservation site came back in 1993 in a place
00:29:05.340called Ramsey Creek Preserve. And that was done in Westminster, South Carolina. There was a town
00:29:11.760doctor named Dr. Billy Campbell, and he was a naturopath, and he really wanted to be able to
00:29:17.300bury people on private land and have this sort of nature preserve. The state, the city, they all
00:29:23.940thought he was pretty cuckoo, and they weren't really up for the idea, but the only thing that
00:29:28.440allowed him to move forward was he was the town doctor, and he was very revered and very respected,
00:29:33.180so he was able to move aside and do this. He had 33 acres that he chose, and over time,
00:29:40.280he has been able to expand it to 78 acres because what happens is a family will come in,
00:29:46.520they will purchase one of these spaces. And then with that, he takes most of that money in a fund
00:29:53.240to buy more acres. His goal ultimately is 100 acres. So he has the fund to buy more acres,
00:30:00.540and then he has to have some money to keep up the management of the cemetery. And that doesn't mean
00:30:06.540the mowing and that doesn't mean you know the chemicals of it all but just be able to obviously
00:30:12.940when you have land in general i mean somebody needs to prepare the grave spaces there's just
00:30:16.800some other things which need to happen to for keeping a business open so and most of these
00:30:21.680wonderful preserves like this have waterfalls and they have native vegetation and footpaths and
00:30:26.940they're lovely now as far as natural burial grounds they ultimately are doing most of this
00:30:34.140However, they don't have that designation that all monies that come in need to be put towards buying new spaces. They can stay at their same acreage, they can be doing what they're doing, and they can just be a preserve, which is set aside for burying people. So does that answer your question?
00:30:51.640yes absolutely and i would love to hear about more of these both green cemeteries and these
00:31:02.840conservation plots you know you'd mentioned the one in south carolina but are there any others
00:31:09.580that you could share with the audience so that they can start looking into them maybe ones that
00:31:14.980you really resonate with uh ones that you're really liking their model yeah i'm sure there
00:31:21.720are um a few in california that i'm really really really enjoying just because that's a state close
00:31:28.440to me now there are the ones in california are just natural burial um the ones i'm thinking
00:31:37.520about there is one that is called forever fernwood and this is right above san francisco
00:31:44.960And this came about with a lovely woman named Esmeralda Kent, who was a costume designer back in the 70s.
00:31:53.640And she had so many friends pass away of AIDS and different diseases in the 70s and 80s.
00:32:00.560And the magnitude of grief was so heavy for her that she decided to go ahead and parlay her costume making into shroud making.
00:32:08.080And she makes these beautiful shrouds.
00:32:10.040And her business is Ken Caraco, and she's in San Francisco.
00:32:14.320She's one of the first pioneers of this, of the cemetery. And it was just neat to see this grow of just above San Francisco. Down a little further, there's in the Half Moon Bay area of California, there's another cemetery where a man decided that this little tiny place was falling in disrepair.
00:32:35.020there wasn't going to be any uh this it just it was abandoned a tiny cemetery a tiny town so
00:32:41.940edward bixby who has a cemetery in new jersey came out looked at it and said yeah i i want to do
00:32:47.740something with this so he's turned this completely into a natural burial preserve called parisima
00:32:52.680and it's just amazing to see these things happen and the like-minded people who move forward with
00:32:58.160this now there are some conservation grounds one that's probably one of the most known is prairie
00:33:03.660Creek. That's in Gainesville, Florida. And it's really fun to name cities for people where they
00:33:10.200say, oh my goodness, you know, that's not a little tiny town like Boring, Oregon. You know, that's a
00:33:15.280relatively larger town. There's a lot of green burial cemeteries and things in Ohio. I mean,
00:33:21.020it's just amazing to know that there is a lot really going on. And just about every state has
00:33:27.720a cemetery where you can bury somebody so the model of these is just the idea of allowing a
00:33:35.580body to come in families to take their time families to walk the grounds choose the space
00:33:42.980with a real low pressured sales model it's really amazing to have this happen and families to be
00:33:49.020able to have a burial that is really exactly how they want it to be most of them have the whole
00:33:56.180park to themselves. There's all these different areas between the indigenous trees, the meadows,
00:34:03.860the grasses, and people really can choose something which is so specific to them versus
00:34:09.300walking around more of an industrialized memorial park where it's the flat green grass and there
00:34:15.140might be one tree or two in the park, but really it's just a wide swath of grass. This is just
00:34:20.380really a very specific area and you can resonate and really feel what is right for your person.
00:34:25.020So that idea of money being put back in to buy more spaces and to cultivate more land
00:34:30.200for the source of having our loved ones back to earth is just really delicious to me.
00:34:35.800I love hearing about these cemeteries that I had no idea existed. I had always thought about
00:34:44.100Green Burial. I never realized how many people have been working tirelessly to make this a reality
00:34:51.860in a very industrialized world at this time so it's really encouraging to hear and I have a
00:34:58.600question around cremation and green burials so I feel like a lot of what we've been talking about
00:35:04.020in these green cemeteries is these natural burials but what about putting cremated remains in the
00:35:14.520green or natural cemeteries is that something that you often see and something that I'd heard is that
00:35:20.200once a body is cremated, the ash is actually toxic to a lot of plants. But I don't know if
00:35:27.640that is the case and what your experience is with that. Well, with cremains, what we're finding is
00:35:33.940there is a pretty high pH level. So that's sort of acidic. When you're going to bury cremains,
00:35:42.440problem with those is if you bury them all in one space, for instance, people say, well,
00:35:47.060I want to be a tree and I'm going to take my cremains and I'm going to go ahead and I'm going
00:35:51.940to place them into the ground. I'm going to put a seedling intermixed with this and my loved one
00:35:58.440fully will become a tree. Tricky to do that because again, with the pH level, that doesn't
00:36:03.760work so well. You can scatter cremains, which helps better if you rake them in and intermix
00:36:09.820them with the soil. That's definitely a better idea. People have buried cremains inside green
00:36:15.380burial spaces primarily it's for the body to go back into the earth but i know that ultimately at
00:36:21.220that point if you are cremated then there's not going to be anything inside you at that point
00:36:26.940you're not embalmed you know there's all those things that are really are not going to hurt the
00:36:30.880water tables there's a man who has a product called let your love grow and that's the idea
00:36:37.460of taking undiluted cremains that aren't exactly the healthiest for plants but he has them mixed
00:36:44.300the cremation ash is mixed with a specially formulated organic matter and that way the
00:36:50.620cremains can be used fully for planting soil and the mixture becomes a low very low sodium and
00:36:57.320really low ph content and then that way those ashes can release just nutrients that will fertilize
00:37:04.020plants so that's one way to do that other families have decided to rake them other people have taken
00:37:10.700the cremains and have gone ahead and put them in more of an eternal reef you can spend eternity
00:37:17.260there at the bottom of the ocean there's these wonderful pods that a georgia-based company
00:37:22.840called eternal reefs makes and it's human ashes it mixes them with the cement and they create these
00:37:27.900reef balls they look like these huge wiffle balls and they're sunk offshore and they become these
00:37:33.660artificial reefs and fish and other marine life really go through them and enjoy them and they
00:37:38.740you know they support the sustainable ocean and it is something interesting you can use it
00:37:43.820by locating with the gps system so you sort of know where your loved one is it's kind of a neat
00:38:08.740Wow, it's so interesting hearing about all these different ways of being in relationships
00:38:38.720with death of loved ones and that kind of brings up thoughts around my next question where I feel
00:38:46.380like more and more people are waking up to the reality of how separate we are from death although
00:38:56.000in a lot of ways we live in this death culture of the mass extinction and gosh industrialization is
00:39:03.240killing so much but yet we're so disconnected from our loved ones when they die like you were
00:39:08.080saying earlier in the conversation that the bodies are taken away from us we're not in relationship
00:39:15.040with the process of burying our loved ones and so on and so forth so this is a question around
00:39:22.180your experience with working with people and let's say somebody who is really interested in
00:39:31.120these green burials but are living in a family who this may be something that's odd or doesn't
00:39:38.220feel quite right you know what is some advice that you have in starting conversations within
00:39:43.240families around this to hope to inspire people to move in this direction i appreciate you asking
00:39:52.900that question because that's really a reality piece and when someone dies it's a reality and
00:39:59.660it's something that's very uncomfortable and it brings out personality traits that sometimes
00:40:04.560aren't the best. If you are thinking that your loved one who's passing away soon or yourself,
00:40:12.360you would like to do something more green, then you need to make your wishes known. I think you
00:40:17.620can help your family out as much as possible. Meaning a lot of people haven't heard of this.
00:40:23.200It sounds like a trend or it sounds like something new agey or something alternative when really like
00:40:29.560we discussed in the beginning this is what 90 percent of humans do for burial this is something
00:40:35.920that 150 years ago you know americans were doing this on a daily basis so we're just getting back
00:40:41.800to what we used to do really help your family your tribe your people your community whomever
00:40:47.960help them out there will be a next of kin designated when you pass away and that is the
00:40:54.020person who has the choice of what to do with your disposition and that's either going to be your
00:40:59.380married partner or your registered domestic partner, your adult child, your parents, your
00:41:04.400sibling, you know, whoever that is, or if you are someone who doesn't have those people, then it's
00:41:09.800important to figure out who is going to be your person and make them your durable power of
00:41:14.440attorney. That's just sort of the legality piece. Then have the conversation with them, let them
00:41:19.760know what you want to do, explain why it's important to you and what your thoughts are,
00:41:25.900and try to make it easy on this person by putting some of these pieces together.
00:41:30.400If you want to have a green burial, I tell people, okay, fantastic.
00:41:35.080If this is what you want to do, wonderful.
00:41:37.760So now let's work on where is your burial going to happen?
00:41:41.960If you have private land, do you want to do that?
00:41:45.980If you do, then there are steps that we follow.
00:41:48.380If you don't want to do that, is there a cemetery near you?
00:41:51.960Is there a cemetery you would like to be transported to?
00:41:54.800where is your burial going to happen? If you want to go secure that land and get that space and make
00:42:00.960that all set up for people, wonderful. If not, if you can at least be very clear on where it is and
00:42:06.940what it is and who to call, that's very helpful. And then if you don't want your family to buy a
00:42:13.200standard casket online or at a funeral parlor, then let them know what you want to do. Is there
00:42:20.460a shroud that you saw online or is there a shroud maker that you think makes beautiful things
00:42:25.980would you like to be wrapped up in grandmama's quilt that you keep in a special drawer or on
00:42:32.560your bed did you want to have your neighbor make you a pine box would you like to buy a cardboard
00:42:39.300box and have people start painting on it with non-toxic glue and get this ready so you probably
00:42:43.960can see where i'm going put some of these pieces in place because when someone dies in the united
00:42:50.160States, typically what happens is hospice, the nursing home, the funeral home, within a very
00:42:57.400short period of time say, okay, what mortuary are you using? Who's coming to get the body? And then
00:43:03.720they're whisked off to a funeral home. Sometimes when it comes your turn to make your funeral
00:43:08.740arrangements and you show up at the funeral home, they hand you a general price list. They have
00:43:13.800everything itemized as far as the goods and services and say, this is what we offer, pick
00:43:17.920what you want and sometimes it's hard to advocate and say well you know i had a conversation with my
00:43:22.900brother bob and this is kind of what he wanted to do and you know they might say well that's not
00:43:29.220really how we do things here or you know all of those things happen so it's important to know that
00:43:34.860we have family rights our dead are our property they're our person we can advocate for them and
00:43:43.780So if this is something that's important to you, to do something that we don't standardly do nowadays with American Burial Services, then let somebody know.
00:43:58.240Do not put your plans in your safety deposit box because people don't get into your safety deposit box until they have access to get into it,
00:44:06.540which probably means they have to already have a certified copy of a death certificate,
00:44:10.680which means they've had to go into a funeral home and already make your funeral plans.
00:44:15.120You're probably buried or you're cremated at that point.
00:44:18.540And that doesn't do any good to your wishes.
00:44:25.160Maybe even put money aside for the family.
00:44:28.120And if you especially want to be kept at home and you want to have a home funeral or a home burial,
00:44:34.700then assemble your team hillary clinton always said it takes a village when it comes to raising
00:44:41.040a child well let me tell you it takes a village when it comes to taking care of somebody who
00:44:46.360passed away somebody needs to either bathe the person or transport the person or get a doctor
00:44:52.580to sign a death certificate and one person doing that is tricky you loved that person they passed
00:44:58.480away you're probably tired you probably haven't slept great so assembling a couple people who
00:45:04.100can really step up into action and do things is so important so get your team assembled and really
00:45:10.400make those plans put it on paper and communicate that's really such a wonderful gift that we have
00:45:16.760that's free talking just talking sharing loving that is such good information that you shared
00:45:24.520i really personally didn't understand all the intricacies of what happens and i was always
00:45:32.000wondering about the legalities of once somebody dies you know what is the process you have to go
00:45:39.520through to make it legal to be able to bury somebody at home or not in a industrialized
00:45:47.300cemetery and so you had mentioned the death certificate and I guess this is a maybe a really
00:45:53.500odd question but if somebody say dies at home not in a hospital setting what would you do in that
00:46:01.700case to make it legally known that that person has passed and then burying them at home? Do you
00:46:08.460have to go through professionals? Yeah, what would be the protocol? Okay, so the steps involved is
00:46:15.820if you happen to pass away in your house, either you are under hospice care, which means you have
00:46:21.680a medical team which has medical history on you that's watching you medically. So we have somebody
00:46:27.080right away who can sign a death certificate that team either is going to have a nurse they're going
00:46:31.680to have a provider being a doctor or a medical director who says yes fine i'll sign the death
00:46:36.820certificate so that's relatively easy hospice then at that point takes over they call the funeral
00:46:43.040home you chose or they can turn the care over to the family and the family can go from there
00:46:47.900what that means go from there would be if you are in one of the 40 states where you can take care
00:46:54.340of your loved one then you call either your local mortuary board or your local vital records and
00:47:03.960from there you can get a live death certificate which means a certificate which now you can write
00:47:09.600in black ink fill in all the vital records on there it asks questions such as the person's name
00:47:16.280where they were born their parents full names just some basic vital information about them
00:47:21.280You go get a provider, someone to sign it, and then it can go on to the county where the person passed away and you've done your legal paperwork to go ahead and keep somebody at home.
00:47:32.380Some families just decide that they want to act as a funeral director where they want to do the care.
00:47:37.660They want to keep their loved one at home for a couple days.
00:47:40.480They want to provide some sort of cooling.
00:47:42.840They want to get the paperwork, the transportation.
00:47:45.020but then they're going to turn their loved one over to the funeral home because you legally
00:47:48.780cannot embalm or cremate your loved one you still have to purchase that professional service so it
00:47:57.140really depends on what you're planning on doing not everybody also is comfortable driving their
00:48:02.600loved one to a cemetery or has a vehicle can do that some families don't want to bury their loved
00:48:07.720one on their own property so every service is completely different now let's say you passed
00:48:13.060away in your own home and you don't have hospice either somebody you wake up and that person in
00:48:19.100your house you know is no longer alive just they died in their sleep or they had an accident
00:48:23.860i think some people just naturally call 9-1-1 there's that idea of it's so shocking that
00:48:30.440somebody is on the floor or somebody is not waking up and we call medical assistance because we want
00:48:36.960a first responder to come so if you know somebody psychologically is not alive but you make that
00:48:42.940phone call, well, no one faults you for that. That's just a human response. You want to help
00:48:47.360the person you love. A lot of families, if they intrinsically know that, yes, this person is
00:48:52.340not alive, they might call the non-emergency line to the police and say, I'm reporting a death.
00:49:00.120In this case, a deputy, most likely from a county, will come out to the house. They take a look
00:49:05.580around, just get a report. A medical examiner or a coroner, depending on what state you live in,
00:49:11.460normally are notified they don't always come out and take the body away they don't always perform
00:49:16.520an autopsy it really depends state to state county to county depends on your situation are you being
00:49:23.700seen by a regular doctor are there medication bottles around the house that show yes you had
00:49:28.840high blood pressure yes and is there a doctor that says yeah i was seeing this person for this
00:49:33.560sometimes people don't go to the doctor at all they haven't been seen by any provider for many
00:49:39.240many years and that's more where the medical examiner will get involved either if something
00:49:43.680looks accidental there's some sort of suicide some sort of foul play or if somebody just they
00:49:50.100there's no clue that why somebody passed away that's more where they get involved and do more
00:49:55.680of an exam so that might have been a little bit more of an elaborate answer but i'm always happy
00:50:00.980to inform people because all we know is really either what we lived firsthand or what we saw on
00:50:07.660TV. And I can't tell you the amount of times people have asked me about when is the Inquisition
00:50:12.960going to happen. And they talk about the scene of the crime and they want to know if they can go
00:50:17.120back in and all these things that we've learned from all of these television shows that most
00:50:21.960deaths are very simple. They're very quiet. And it's just a matter of the loved ones trying to
00:50:28.200figure out what their new normal looks like that this person they loved is no longer in their life.
00:50:32.560i so appreciate you taking the time to get really detailed with that response i think a lot of the
00:50:40.820listeners will be also really grateful to have that knowledge because i think what you've been
00:50:48.480saying you know when a loved one dies the overwhelm the grief sets in and then of course
00:50:56.420all the logistics also set in. And so to have an idea of what it actually entails before
00:51:04.360the death occurs, I think is so helpful. And I think back to this interview we have with Stephen
00:51:10.420Jenkinson with his book, Die Wise, and how the way in which people die is really important.
00:51:17.380And it's so overlooked in this dominant culture. And it's really something that is a detriment to
00:51:24.520all of us to not have a stronger relationship with death for ourselves, for our loved ones,
00:51:31.400our family members. So communication and really talking and thinking about these things before
00:51:37.740it occurs, I just feel like is such an important thing, important education for all of us to
00:51:44.100spend time learning about. So thank you. And I really encourage the audience to seek out
00:51:50.380a copy of your book, The Green Burial Guidebook. And I'd love to open up the conversation and ask
00:51:57.320if there's anything we didn't cover in our conversation they would like to highlight
00:52:01.180either from that book or from your personal experience. Sure, absolutely. Two things I would
00:52:08.160like to say. One, I knew at a very young age that I was going to be an undertaker. This is my calling.
00:52:15.460I had a mother who passed away as well as my dad's parents who all lived in the same house.
00:52:20.960And so it's interesting how I always knew that was my calling.
00:52:24.480But then I found out after my first green burial, I found out, uh-oh, my real calling is to be a green mortician.
00:52:34.460It was such a watershed moment for me.
00:52:36.760And these green burials that I've had an honor to be a part of have been so eye-opening.
00:52:41.280And I'm so thankful because even though I had a rewarding life as a funeral director and an undertaker, to go one step further into this green world and this environmental world has just been, it's been amazing.
00:52:54.960And then secondly, I want to say to your listeners that when somebody dies in your life, it is so overwhelming.
00:53:07.500You need to stay around positive people.
00:53:09.460and remember that whatever choices you make are absolutely right. I always encourage people to
00:53:16.240think about shades of green. If you aren't going to go fully with a green funeral or a green burial,
00:53:22.860maybe just think about some element where you can be sustainable or you can recycle or just do
00:53:28.880something for the environment. I think that's a wonderful thing to leave your listeners with.
00:53:33.320Well, thank you so much, Elizabeth. This has been a really educational and deeply felt conversation. And I really appreciate all of the work you've done for so many years to inform people, to help people in their very vulnerable states, and to teach people that these are realities.
00:53:57.380Because I, like I said earlier, I think so many of us don't even know that this is an option. And like you said, we learn from television or another experience we've had, but we don't always know all the options. I think many of us don't. So this has been incredibly helpful.
00:54:15.320Thank you. Thank you so much for taking an interest in sharing your time with me.