Meaning in life can be found in death

Here's something to contemplate. Some will find it shocking, and may react badly at first. That's OK.

Just please give it a think over time?

For 20 years, I was the director of a nonprofit consumer protection organization. Our mission was to help inform grieving families about their rights and options when buying funerals, cremations, and cemetery plots.

Why? Because Americans spend $20 billion a year burying the dead, and many families find funeral home costs burdensome and impossible.

My organization showed them how to compare, how to budget, and how to avoid grief-manipulating sales pitches.

As part of my job, I became the national expert on funeral and burial law and jurisprudence at the federal and state levels.

The issue we had to fight hardest for on behalf of families was the right of families to care for, and bury, their own dead with their own hands, without being forced to hire a commercial funeral home they could not afford.

I know—many of you reading this are shocked that it's legal to do so. Please ask yourself why. Are you shocked that it's legal to nurse your own child without hiring a wet nurse? Are you shocked that it's legal to give birth at home?

No, you are not. You're only shocked about this because fear of death is endemic. Notice what your mind automatically assumed without your awareness:

”I am not allowed to care for my sister’s body, and I may not touch it. It is off limits to me because it is the state’s right to tell me that I may not care for my own family after death, and the state has the right to force me by law to pay thousands to an anonymous undertaker even if I don’t want to.”

Bracing, isn’t it? Even if you decide a home funeral is not for you, thinking this through clarifies your rights and resets your mind to be an active and loving family member who makes choices instead of a chess piece moved about by commercial death traders and an intrusive state government.

Here's what I'd like you to consider. During my time in the field, the most meaningful, human, and profound experiences I had involved caring for the dying and the dead along with families and friends. With our own hands.

I have sat with and held friends as they die. I have helped move and position them after they've died for a home wake. I've slept over and gotten up the next day, found the body cold and stiff, and conferred with the family about whether it was the right time to call the funeral home (or drive the body to the grave ourselves).

My friends, there is nothing in the world more humanly meaningful and terribly beautiful than caring for someone you love in death along with the other people who love them. It's hard for me to even write about this without crying; it's that moving. It is profound.

I don't think we need as much "grief therapy" as we think we do. Instead, I think we need to get back to the very human, very natural, historical practice of burying our own dead with our own hands.

It's not just about death; it's actually about what makes life worth living in a meaningful way.

If you're interested in more on this topic, check out the book I co-wrote in 2011 with my late friend and mentor. "Final Rights: Reclaiming the American Way of Death."

You can also book me for an hour of consultation on how to plan a funeral affordably, or a home funeral, at joshuaslocum.net.