#death positive

[laurieaconley]

[cryptonature]

Death is particularly fearful in a culture that views nature as an outsider and an adversary.

In such a context, death becomes a hateful defeat and final insult.

Except nature is neither outsider nor adversary.

It is our author, keeper, and kin.

Returning to nature is not a loss.

It’s a homecoming.

[hearthspeaker]

[feffjoxworthy]

meowmento mori

[a-typical]

At almost any location in any major city on Earth, you are likely standing on thousands of bodies. These bodies represent a history that exists, often unknown, beneath our feet. While a new Crossrail station was being dug in London in 2015, 3,500 bodies were excavated from a sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cemetery under Liverpool Street, including a burial pit from the Great Plague of 1665. To cremate bodies we burn fossil fuel, thus named because it is made of decomposed dead organisms. Plants grow from the decayed matter of former plants. The pages of this book are made from the pulp of raw wood from a tree felled in its prime. All that surrounds us comes from death, every part of every city, and every part of every person.

Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it’s a cultural one. Facing death is not for the faint-hearted. It is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own. Death acceptance is the responsibility of all death professionals—funeral directors, cemetery managers, hospital workers. It is the responsibility of those who have been tasked with creating physical and emotional environments where safe, open interaction with death and dead bodies is possible.

— From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty

[fuvkin-feral-kins]

The results of the autopsy came back floral as in there's a garden blooming inside my rotten husk 🌱🥀🌲🌻🌹🌾🍄

[uncanny-tranny]

Getting emotional reading my textbook which includes images of cadavers - people who likely donated their bodies in order for them to now educate me. It's about learning, it's about care, and it's about supporting each other. I hope that wherever they are, they know I am grateful to all of them. I don't know them, but they now have made such a profound and humbling impact on me

Maybe this is too macabre for some, but those images in my textbook were of my fellow people, and I think it's right to be grateful for their contribution to my education, to me, it is such a selfless and kind act, something I have trouble quantifying. It feels almost holy, something which I am almost unworthy of

[chupacabracrafts]

My good, bubbling son

[starful-emporium]

we should start treating funerals like weddings and only have the deceased wear black. don't want anyone outshining me on *my* big day

[laurieaconley]

May there always be a songbird at your resting place.🤍

[emberintayson]

A poetry zine for Zinetober. This poem helps me feel more free. And making zines helps me feel free to just create, make mistakes, make more creations, learn, make more mistakes and learn from those. May you feel so free.

[calliope-prints]

☆ putting the 'fun' in 'funeral' ☆

show a little love to the death professional in your life!

[nerdyqueerandjewish]

Okay the death positive mini zine turned out pretty good. Maybe I’ll add it to my Etsy or something? Would people be into that? The information is just from the order of the good death website but it’s still a neat little art piece.

[juleteon]

Decompose 

[a-typical]

In Toraja, during the period of time between death and the funeral, the body is kept in the home. That might not sound particularly shocking, until I tell you that period can last from several months to several years. During that time, the family cares for and mummifies the body, bringing the corpse food, changing its clothes, and speaking to the body.

The first time Paul ever visited Toraja, he asked Agus if it was unusual for a family to keep a dead relative in the home. Agus laughed at the question. “When I was a child, we had my grandfather in the home for seven years. My brother and I, we slept with him in the same bed. In the morning we put his clothes on and stood him against the wall. At night he came back to bed.”

Paul describes death in Toraja, as he’s witnessed it, not as a “hard border,” an impenetrable wall between the living and the dead, but a border that can be transgressed. According to their animistic belief system, there is also no barrier between the human and nonhuman aspects of the natural world: animals, mountains, and even the dead. Speaking to your grandfather’s corpse is a way to build a connection to the person’s spirit.

— From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty

[absolutelybatty]

I made a couple decomposition memes the other day and didn't post them because I felt like there needed to be more then just never bothered to make more.