I love the saying ‘Neither Use nor Ornament’ and I think it should be on my tombstone.

A tombstone is an expensive luxury so it is pretty unlikely I’ll make that happen, but I think it would amuse visitors to the cemetery. It always makes me smile.

I love the saying. It seems to sum up my particular life very nicely. And the older I get, the more it resonates. There is an electric dissonance in it that makes me laugh.

I love it so much because, moment by moment, I feel both incredibly beautiful and incredibly useful for absolutely no good reason at all.

On my daily walks to the local cemetery where I am alone (unless I am lucky enough to surprise some deer or a porcupine waddling slowly home) I always end up thinking about death and dying.

Can I afford a tombstone? What does this all cost? What about cremation? Is that the cheapest option? What would my loved ones want?

To be honest I am not enamored of the oven: cremation. Really? Doesn’t it strike horror in the heart? Isn’t it reminiscent of Nazi death camps? Isn’t it just too efficient?

Wouldn’t it be nice to be buried? To have your bones resting in a lovely field? I think so. I love the poetry of the gravestone, the life story glimpsed.

Like elephants, my loved ones could visit my bones. Maybe leave some indestructible flowers or a coin. The visitors would hear the burring of bugs in the grass, the birdsong, sit under a a pretty pine tree waving its boughs.

I doubt cremation is good for the environment. I can’t imagine burning bodies is good for the air we breathe.

But it is clear that there are too many people for everyone to be buried. I get that. It just so happens I live in a lonely unpopulated place with lots of room for bones.

I recently visited a beautiful cemetery in a city and it was crammed full of old bodies, no room for anyone else. What do busy modern funeral directors and city cemeteries offer now? Do you place your dust in a a drawer in a bank of ashes? How clerical, cold and bizarre.

When you think about it, an honest death would be the most clean. And by honest I mean natural, intrinsically ‘animal’.

If another animal ate you there would be practically no waste. Except for when the animal had to poop afterwards, of course. So to be eaten by coyotes would be good. Not at first, of course, but in the long run.

On that subject, although a death by being eaten would be a clean death in terms of the environment, it wouldn’t be a great meal for the wild animal. Human meat would be a low quality meal, you would think. The average citizen is packed full of poisons and toxins, from pharmaceutical drugs and alcohol to toxic skin care, tattoo ink and indigestible piercings.

Still, it would be the ultimate recycling. No smoke from the cremation, no chemicals left to simmer in the earth.

Maybe we should return to the poor man’s burial at sea. It is awfully practical when you think about it. You could push a body out to sea on an ice float and let the tide and the sea creatures absorb it.

Or there is always the high tower option. You know, when the body is left out in the heat and the sun to be be picked clean by vultures.

Where are we getting these high towers, you ask? And how are we getting our loved ones up there? No need to struggle with towers and hoists, I say, every city is full of high rises with available rooftops. Voila.

Let the birds clean us up. Collect the bones later if you wish.

Now you might be picturing a slightly macabre scene in which you are explaining to your grandchild why the vultures are circling in the air, as you take him out for a city expedition.

And yes, you would have to say someone must have died and they are returning to earth now. Or they are going into the sky, or the heavens. And yes, death would be present and part of the child’s understanding of life. And then the child would move on to window shopping.

In our society we hide death behind rituals and ceremony to make it more digestible. The hearse, the coffin, the pall bearers, the embalming. We follow the path that we have laid out.

But the funeral industry is changing and there are some interesting new green burial ideas out there. There are cardboard coffins and there is even an organization in Cocagne that is planning to offer wild forest burials. Or how about returning to the earth as efficiently as possible by being buried with mushrooms, that is also a possibility.

But if the green that concerns you is more the green of your small bank account, never fear, says the snappy article I flicked through, there are ways to reduce your burial costs by having a DIY funeral.

Don’t hire a funeral director, organize the funeral yourself! Don’t embalm, it isn’t necessary and it is bad for the earth. And you can even avoid the hearse payment by using your own car! Wait, what? My active imagination had me folding down back seats and jamming in a coffin at an angle.

While researching funeral and burial options I was truly gobsmacked to discover that there is no law in New Brunswick against being buried on your own land! The issue to consider, says the internet in a gentle tone, is that you may want to move later in life and feel overly attached to your land, and also, the burial might effect the value of your land.

Fair point. Who lives on the same land all their life anymore? Hmm, though. Doesn’t it make you wonder why we thought that it was illegal?

It makes you think. What else are we handing over to the authorities that is within our rights to control? What are we paying for? And why? Don’t even get me started.

Come to think of it, how likely is my local United Church to grant me a place in their classic old graveyard with tombstones going back to the 1700’s.

Why would Meg Dallas Edwards fit in there? A place she chose as her home only about 25 years ago. What with her ‘Neither Use nor Ornament’ tombstone, who would have her?

I suppose I do have the credentials if I was to make an argument for belonging. I was brought up by parents who claimed Protestantism, if only to level criticism at Catholics. And I did visit the church at Christmas time with my grandmother that I was named after, whose father was a minister.

I liked my experience, it was peaceful and full of music and love.

I am not religious and I suspect few truly are, but I am very spiritual, whatever that means. And I think I have been praying recently, which is a surprise. Like meditation, it is private and impossible to explain, but it works (maybe they are the same thing).

What I might do is plant a pine tree and set aside a spot for me at the back of my land. Free of my earthly sayings, free of earthly judgement. Free, as always