This looks like a lovely, serene place for a walk, right? All lush and green and full of life? It’s also full of dead people. This is a natural burial cemetery in Lawrence, KS. I drove about an hour to check it out after binge-watching Caitlin Doughty’s YouTube channel, Ask a Mortician, and learning all about what happens after we die. Well, what happens to our bodies, at least. There aren’t very many natural burial cemeteries in the Kansas City area. I’m not really surprised by that because up until 6 months ago, I didn’t even know that natural burial was an option. Most funeral homes don’t even offer it, and embalming is usually assumed as the default.
Natural burial answers a lot of questions for me. I’ve always been deeply unnerved by open casket funerals, which is perplexing. Sure, a funeral is nobody’s idea of a great time, and I’m always ready for the waves of grief and loss I experience. But I’m not talking about sadness here. The thing is, I’m morbid by nature, fascinated by the creepy and the crawly, but dread fills me every time I approach a casket. My flesh crawls, my hands go clammy, my stomach lurches. I don’t get any of the comfort out of the experience that I’ve heard about from others; I don’t feel like I’m getting the chance to say goodbye, because the person I’m there to bid farewell is already long gone. I used to think this was just my gut reaction to death, to seeing somebody I care about without that spark of life that made them so familiar to me. And maybe that’s part of it, but now I think there’s more to it than that. I think it’s because that body in the casket no longer looks like the person I used to know; it’s a doll, an uncanny, waxen effigy masquerading as a family member or friend. Embalming is supposed to preserve those beloved features, but instead, to me, it looks like a changeling has snatched the body and replaced it with nightmare-fuel from Madame Tussaud’s, no matter how painstakingly detailed the mortician, no matter how much love was put into the recreation. This is a deeply personal reaction, of course, and I don’t begrudge anybody who does get comfort from preserving the visage of a loved one. Death is the most final of final chapters, and whatever helps you cope with that ending, more power to you. Death itself doesn’t scare me much, and I’m not all that worried about what happens in the afterlife. No, what scares me is the prospect of becoming one of those plasticine dolls lying under the ground, slowly melting under the weight of the Earth. I’ve known for a long time that embalming is just not for me, and I figured I would do something weird instead, like have my cremated ashes turned into a diamond or launched into space. Natural burial appeals to me, though. Decomposition might not be pretty to look at, but the idea of rotting back into the earth, feeding the bugs and the soil and the flowers and the trees, really tugs at something in my hippie heart. My life might abandon this body, but new life can take it and grow. That body still won’t look like me, I know, but that’s okay because it’s not trying to; I’m gone, and it’s something else’s turn to use all of this oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen to make something new. It’s a beautiful, morbid, disgusting, elegant cycle that I think I would very much like to be a part of. Walking through the natural burial section of the Oak Hill cemetery in Lawrence cemented this desire for me. There are no imposing marble headstones or looming mausoleums, just natural rock with rough-hewn inscriptions set gently on the dirt to memorialize where a loved one was laid to rest. The mulch of the walking paths crunch under foot, the waist-high grass whispers in the breeze, and birds chirp and flit about overhead. There is no overwhelming sense of death and loss in this little tree-lined alcove that is brimming with life, but in its place, a wild, untamed peace. I think for my next macabre pilgrimage, I’ll trek out to the Heart Land Prairie Cemetery in Ottawa County, KS, where they’re restoring the native prairie ecosystem, letting natural burial fuel the regrowth. There will eventually be hiking trails and scenic overlooks. As a Midwest girl, I can’t think of a more peaceful place to be laid to rest. So, to be abundantly clear, I would like to formally state my death plan here, in writing. When I die: wrap me up in a big white sheet, and cover me from head to feet, put me in a big wood box, and cover me in stones and rocks. From there, just leave me to the worms.
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AuthorSarah Fettke is an aspiring horror author from Kansas City, Missouri. This is a place to collect her explorations of the queer, peculiar, and strange. Archives
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