January

A new year. For thousands of years, we humans have been aware of our passage around the sun. It is a worldwide ritual acknowledgement of time. The cyclical nature of endings and beginnings has always been embodied in the natural world we inhabit. Mortality and renewal are sad and joyful in their turn. Denying the reality that we are embedded in this cycle seems ignorant and yet, our culture takes death so personally, that we employ all manner of denial to avoid the inevitable.

I include a piece I wrote last fall about attending to my body after death. I am so glad I did. It still makes me smile to think of that day. On this finally frigid morning, a bit of snow shower whitewashing clings to the grass outside my window. It has been overly warm until this week, and it feels like a relief to know we can have a real wintry day. Because I don’t have to drive anymore on icy roads, I simply appreciate the white stuff with a bit of nostalgia from when snow was a playground of delight. My cement garden frog looks a bit concerned because snow lingers between his eyes. I assure him the afternoon sun will rise above the rooftop soon enough and his serious stone visage will be restored- at least until the next snowfall. May this year bring joy, peace, and freedom to all.

          “I am not courting death, but death is courting me”.

Yesterday, my older daughter and I went to choose my burial site and we were giddy with joy. My death is not imminent (I sincerely hope not, anyway) but I was thinking the other night, “I am not courting death, but death is courting me”. Death is courting all of us since the day we were born if you care to think about. Which most people do not. Our culture in general does its best not to embrace death as an essential aspect of life. I currently live in a wonderful CCRC (continuing care retirement community) in the Assisted Living area of Kendal at Oberlin and am surrounded by neighbors in their 80’s, 90’s, and two amazingly sharp people who are 103. So, yeah, living here I think about death as a regular occurrence treated with utmost care, respect, and support for all involved in the loss of their beloved.

I have had MS for over 50 years and since I was in my 30’s, I have been hanging out in the secondary progressive phase of MS, (for me, a slow but steady decline). I am now officially in the primary progressive stage (my decline is increasing monthly). I am 72 years old, and my new neurologist said to me the words I have heard many times before, “You don’t die of MS but because of complications with having MS.” I also am not going to get any stronger so if I wanted to locate my burial site, now was the time to do so.

I live in a body that is in chronic pain. The increasing inflammatory nerve messaging to my entire torso, legs and back, means that I am in a high-tech power wheelchair, for which I am very grateful. I definitely have down moments as I eliminate one activity after another from my life. Knowing that my young grandsons will never know the active grandmother I had thought to be, is maybe the hardest one to accept. I am part of their lives through FaceTime and carefully planned in person visits that I treasure. They and I make the most of our times together with the help of my persistent daughter making sure that her sons know her mother. My husband, her father, died in 2018, precipitating my move to this Ohio community from our 60-acre homestead in upstate NY. His ashes were scattered in a river we once loved.

Yesterday, my daughter loaded me and a small portable wheelchair into the car and drove me an hour and half away to the Foxfield Preserves. It is a designated section within a 650-acre wilderness center with 3,000 allocated sites for a green burial. When I heard this advertised on the radio a couple of years ago, I was delighted. Ohio being a conservative state, I never imagined I’d have this option. I was now ready to prepay and manage my burial so my family doesn’t have to deal with it later. It made me happy to think of being buried in a natural setting wrapped in a simple white shroud and placed directly into the soil. That is just what I wanted.

This was the day we were to choose my site. First off, it was a glorious day for fall foliage viewing. Cool nights suddenly turned muted brass into a full fanfare of color. Except for doctor visits and seeing my daughter’s family in a Cleveland neighborhood, I don’t get out much. We drove south and west into farm country. Large working farms spread out for miles. As we got closer to Wilmot, (known as The Amish Door) the town where the Wilderness Center was located, we saw the occasional Amish horse and buggy trotting along the highway. The last three horses my husband and I owned were Amish animals, two of them from Ohio. One was a gorgeous fellow we named Lucas. He loved pulling a fore cart along our upstate NY roads and that trot was his specialty. Seeing these horses was the first tug at my heart. My daughter and I both commented that had he lived, this was the sort of area where her Papa and I would have moved to.

When we arrived at the Wilderness Center, we informed the receptionist that we were here for the Preserves and to meet with H, our guide. We were told to take the elevator up to the observation deck as we were early, and the receptionist would come tell us when H was ready. This top floor was filled with nature scenes made of carved wood with painted displays for children (and me) to touch and climb in out of (not me, but my daughter and I immediately envisioned her boys in here). It was beautifully arranged information about the flora and fauna that the wilderness offered, with no plastics or breakable objects in sight. Going outside on the sunny deck provided an even stronger pull on my heart.

Now we could see that this whole wilderness area was surrounded by big rolling hills. We had passed signs for hiking trails on our way up to the information center and noticed two large solar panels over angled roofs below us in a parking spot. Looking around from on high, it was inhaling the hills that cinched it for me. I grew up in the Catskill Mountains of New York. So far, I had seen only the astonishing flatness of Ohio. This 180-degree panorama of rippling hilltops was balm to my flattened heart. I could feel what I call my ‘animal body’ sigh a huge gust of relief. This place felt like home to me. This place was my old home right here in my new home of Ohio.

Then we were summoned to meet H, and our tour of the Preserve began. She drove slowly in front of our car pointing out the three potential areas for my site. My impressions as we bumped along the grassy dirt tracks, was that the number 1 area was mostly wooded winding up to the top of a knoll. The number 2 area was partially wooded and partially winding down to the prairie, and the number 3 area was mostly a wide-open prairie field. When we stopped there, silence ruled all around punctuated only by birds whose field calls I did not recognize, and the calming drone of humming insects. No cars, no mechanical sounds- just acres and acres of wild Ohio. The sun, the molten colors, and finding an enchanted resting place for my body together with my daughter: all of it made us giddy with joy.

We chose a spot 30 feet off the driving track in the second area, on a ridge so you can look out beyond to the hills. I think you could maybe see down to the prairie below. I could not traverse it on foot, of course, but my daughter and our family will be the ones at my interment and if she said this was the place, then we agreed, this was the place. On our way back to the wilderness center building we met two women who asked H for help to locate their son’s burial spot in the woods. We waved her on to help them and met her back at her office. Such personal care and kindness and intimate knowledge of each burial further rooted the joy in my heart that here was the right place for me and for my family’s future visits.

We asked our guide questions, including requesting permission to bury a tiny pinch of my husband’s remaining ashes with me. She said, of course, and then advised us on various funeral homes who will take my body to hold overnight until the actual hole is dug after which my body will be driven back to the Preserve for interment. A memorial gathering will take place later at my retirement community. My community has always been very good at holding unique and moving memorials for my friends and neighbors and I know my family will have a good experience setting this up at Kendal when the time comes.

We signed the contract and agreed to the additional required donation that accompanies the arrangement. The idea of helping to maintain a small piece of wild Ohio is a lovely legacy for me to leave behind. Besides, as members of my family, my daughter’s family can come for free to hike, explore the wilderness area, or use the small observatory that had just sponsored a children’s astronomy weekend. I foresee that my grandsons will enjoy coming to Gramma Judi’s last physical home. The body of this land will always welcome them.