ŷ������

The story of the unclaimed is, urgently, a story for today. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, an estimated 2 to 4 percent of the 2.8 million people who died every year in the United States went unclaimed—up to 114,000 Americans. This is roughly how many Americans die annually from diabetes. And that number is increasing. In Los Angeles County, the most populous county in the United States, the unclaimed used to make up 1.2 percent of adult deaths. That number inched up to 3 percent by the turn of the century—and it has continued to rise. The increase means that hundreds more residents every year end up in the Boyle Heights mass grave. In Maryland, one of the few states to keep track of unclaimed deaths over time, the percentage of people going unclaimed, adults and infants, has more than doubled in twenty years, from 2.1 percent of total deaths in 2000 to 4.5 percent in 2021.

COVID-19 made things worse. Medical examiners and coroners estimate that the number of people going unclaimed rose nationwide during the pandemic, resulting in as many as 148,000 unclaimed deaths each year. An investigation in Arizona’s Maricopa County, the fourth-largest county in the United States, revealed a 30 percent spike. Reports streamed in from across the country, underscoring the problem. The Chicago medical examiner’s office cremated twice as many unclaimed bodies in a three-month period in 2020 as in the entire previous year. Montcalm County in Michigan saw a 620 percent increase in unclaimed bodies in 2020. In Fulton County, Georgia, officials oversaw burials for 456 unclaimed bodies in 2021, 150 more than in previous years. In Hinds County, Mississippi, the coroner commandeered a refrigerator truck to store unclaimed bodies after the number ballooned.

Los Angeles County Department of Health Services

A 2020 headstone marks the communal grave where the remains of 1,900 people were laid to rest during the Ceremony of the Unclaimed Dead in Los Angeles.

There is no federal agency to track or oversee the unclaimed, just a patchwork of ad hoc local practices. In smaller cities and towns, burials for the unclaimed happen, if they happen at all, randomly. Ashes can languish for years in the desk drawer or office closet of a local county sheriff or wind up abandoned in private funeral homes.

The unclaimed mostly go uncounted and unseen. Megan Smolenyak is a genealogist and founder of Unclaimed Persons, a web-based group of more than four hundred genealogists who volunteer their sleuthing skills to resource-strapped forensic communities across the country. They locate kin when government employees cannot. Smolenyak describes the rising numbers of unclaimed as its own “quiet epidemic.��

This book grew out of our efforts to unravel the mystery of the unclaimed: Who are they? And why do they end up where they do? We follow four individuals who died between 2012 and 2019—some destitute and some with means, some with close relatives, some without—as they wend their way through L.A. County’s death bureaucracy. To piece together the story, we observed the work of county employees who care for the unclaimed: those who field phone calls from concerned neighbors, those who go into homes and hospitals to retrieve bodies, those who call families to try to compel them to claim, and those who divvy up the dead’s assets.

As we immersed ourselves in this world, the book morphed into a quest to better understand what we owe one another in death and in life. The unclaimed raise pressing existential questions: If you die and no one mourns you, did your life have meaning? If a common grave can now be the final destination for anyone, rich or poor, what��does that say about us? What does it say about America? The answers we found were daunting and, at times, disheartening. The unclaimed bring today’s fractured families into sharp focus.��

And yet, we found hope. Los Angeles, a city mocked around the world for being fickle and vain, points the way. Far from the glitter of Hollywood and ostentation of Rodeo Drive, nestled in quiet pockets of the county, some Angelenos have devoted their lives to making sure that the unclaimed are not forgotten. These citizens who have taken it upon themselves to care for the dead receive no money and few accolades. But they feel a moral responsibility to step in where traditional families have failed—creating new kinds of kinship, rebuilding local communities, and caring for the most overlooked, even in death.

Excerpted from by Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans. Published with permission from Penguin Random House LLC.

A memento mori—Latin for “remember you will die”—is a practice, object, or artwork created to remind us that we will die, and that our death could come a at any moment. By evoking a visceral awareness of the brevity of our lives, it was meant to help us remember to make choices in line with our true values. The use of memento mori, which seems so counterintuitive today, is a practice that was found in cultures all around the world and for many millennia; it even lives on today.

Memento mori were a part of life in ancient Egypt, where dried skeletons were sometimes paraded into a feast at its height to remind the revelers of the brevity of life. They were also frequently encountered in ancient Rome, where it was common to see skeleton mosaics on the floors of dining rooms and drinking halls. And, if you attended a feast, you might be gifted with a tiny bronze skeleton called a larva convivialis, or banquet ghost. In both cases, these memento mori were meant to ex- press the well-known Latin adage carpe diem—meaning “seize the day”—reminding viewers to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they might be gone.

Socrates, the ancient Greek founder of the Western philosophical tradition, asserted that a memento mori–like contemplation of death was at the core of the practice of philosophy. “The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner,�� Plato records him as saying, “is to practice for dying and death.�� Similarly, the Stoics, a philosophical school in ancient Greece and Rome, believed that one must contemplate one’s own death as a means toward living more fully and authentically. Seneca, a prominent Stoic philosopher, urged his readers to rehearse and prepare for death as a means of diminishing their fear.

Memento mori also play an important part in Buddhist practice. In the Buddha’s own time, there was a practice called the Nine Cemetery Contemplations, in which practitioners were encouraged to visit the charnel grounds—where bodies were left, aboveground, to be eaten by vultures or to decompose—in order to meditate on corpses in different states of decomposition. This was meant to help people overcome fear of death and release attachment to the body. This tradition even extends to artwork, in the Japanese tradition of ��ܲ�ö����, which are paintings that artfully depict these nine stages of a decaying corpse. Even today, it is not uncommon to find a human skeleton in places devoted to Buddhist meditation.

Skull in a case: memento mori, ca. 1650, Albert Jansz. Vinckenbrinck, at Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Christianity also makes use of the memento mori. In this tradition, it is meant to remind one to live a pious life, to resist earthly pleasures and temptations so that one will be ready to meet—and be judged by—God. Much as in the Buddhist tradition, Christians were, at one time, encouraged to meditate upon the dying and decomposing human body. Death was also, in the medieval era, brought to mind by the daily recitation of prayers called the Office of the Dead, which were supposed to prepare one’s soul for death and the Last Judgment. And, of course, every year on Ash Wednesday, devotees go to church, where the priest renders a cross in ash on their foreheads, a visceral reminder that from dust we are formed, and to dust we shall return.

In the Christian tradition, memento mori could also take the form of jewelry, including skull rings—often distributed as funeral souvenirs—and intricately carved rosary beads. Memento mori imagery was also commonly used in watches and clocks, playing on the close association between the ideas of time and death. Gravestone art regularly featured winged skulls or skulls and crossbones, and some grave markers—such as the lavishly carved tomb sculptures known as transi—even depicted the deceased in the form of a decaying cadaver.

Skeleton alarm clock (1840-1900), Science Museum, London / Science & Society Picture Library

There were also a number of fine art genres that brought memento mori imagery into everyday life. One of these was the vanitas (literally “vanity��) oil paintings, which featured imagery such as skulls and snuffed-out candles, symbolizing a life cut short. These were hung in the home to encourage the viewer to focus on the eternal, rather than the momentary pleasures of life on earth. Another popular genre was the triumph of death, in which an anthropomorphized figure of death plows down everything in its path, giving vision to the idea of death as an arbitrary and unstoppable destructive force. There is also the danse macabre, or “dance of death.�� Popular at a time when the black plague was decimating Europe, these works also feature an anthropomorphized figure of death, this time merrily leading people of every age and social station—from queen to pauper to child—in a dance to the grave. This allegory points to the fact that death makes no distinctions; to death, we are all equal.

Memento mori could even take the form of actual human remains.�� To this end, wealthy gentlemen often displayed a human skull in their library or cabinet of curiosities as a poignant reminder of the brevity of life. And cemeteries—in a time before permanent interment�� would dig up defleshed skeletons and exhibit the bones, frequently in artistic arrangements, to remind the visitor of their own death.

A contemporary manifestation of memento mori can be found to- day in New Orleans’s Mardi Gras, as part of the festivities of the Black Masking Indian krewe. Their annual procession begins at dawn when the so-called Skull and Bones Gang—dressed as skeletons—knock on the doors of neighborhood homes to remind them of the transience of life and invite them to join the festivities. In a similar vein, Tibetan Buddhist festivals often incorporate so-called cham dances. These are devotional performances that often feature costumed skeletons intended to remind revelers of the presence of death.

Tibetan skeleton dancers, 1925

A fun and surprising modern manifestation of memento mori is a smartphone app called WeCroak. The app—inspired by a Bhutanese proverb asserting that the key to happiness is contemplating death five times daily—sends you several thoughtful quotations related to mortality throughout the day. In the words of the app’s official text: “Contemplating mortality helps spur needed change, accept what we must, let go of things that don’t matter and honor things that do.��

Far from morbid, contemplating death in this way is the best method I’ve found for revealing, with clarity, what it is we really value. I have also found no better tool for inspiring us with the will and courage to make the changes necessary to live a life that is true to ourselves and in accord with our real values; one that will, or so we can hope, leave us with the fewest deathbed regrets.

��

��

From MEMENTO MORI: The Art of Contemplating Death to Live a Better Life by Joanna Ebenstein, published by Avery, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Joanna Ebenstein. MEMENTO MORI is available now, ��or from your favorite local bookseller.

Note from the author:

As exciting as writing a book on a subject you care passionately about can be, there is an aspect that is heartbreaking: the reality of word counts and editorial constraints inevitably means that there are some stories you have come to love which wind up being cut. I have a book on pet cemeteries and animal burials coming in the Fall, titled “Faithful Unto Death��, and in the last round of editing the situation was put to me bluntly. Something has to go. To fit all the photos we’re using and make our word count within the number of pages at our disposal, we need to cut the equivalent of about one story. That is why what follows, the tale of the death of an Irish Setter named Garry, will not appear in the book. But it is, and I hope you will agree, a wonderful and historically important story, one which I think still has something to teach us even a century later. This is why, with thanks to the Order of the Good Death, it is offered to you here. And for those curious about what is in fact in the book,

Small, private pet cemeteries had a heyday in the United States in the late nineteenth through early twentieth centuries. This was before urban pet cemeteries had become popular, and since owning sufficient land was the first necessity for being able to start a cemetery, it should be no surprise that they were primarily found on the estates of wealthy people. Among the most noteworthy was located in a clearing of trees on Mackworth Island, in Casco Bay just off the coast of Portland, Maine. The island had been owned by the Baxter family, which gained its wealth from the canning and packing of vegetables. In a small clearing set just back from the island’s coast, Percival Proctor Baxter, who would become the fifty-third governor of Maine, would establish in his youth an animal cemetery.

The site is marked by a simple stone circle, and the paucity of visible memorials—there are only a few cracked gravestones—no doubt causes most visitors to pass by without giving it much thought, and certainly without recognizing its extent. In fact, there are many more burials here than are initially apparent. Rather than being individually marked, they are recorded on a bronze plaque attached to a large boulder within the circle. “To my Irish setters/life long friends and companions/affectionate faithful and loyal/Percival P. Baxter/Governor of Maine,�� the inscription reads, and then notes those interred at this spot. And it is one of those names that gives the cemetery its importance: a scandal surrounding the death of Garry on June 1, 1923, turned him into one of the most influential dogs in American history.

Paul Koudounaris

It was not Garry’s death itself that was scandalous, as he had died of old age and its related complications. Nor had there been any hint of impending controversy during his life, as he had always been a good dog who would have been content to remain far removed from the public eye had not his owner been the state’s governor. The hubbub was instead due to Baxter’s act on the death of his faithful companion. On his authority, an order was issued to lower the American flag at the statehouse in Augusta to half mast in Garry’s honor. Lowering the American flag is reserved for times of national tragedy. It is a gesture not to be taken lightly, and provoked a vitriolic response quickly followed.

Many of the state’s political observers had already questioned whether Garry hadn’t gotten privileges enough, including many not extended to the state’s own citizens. The dog could come and go as he liked from the Capitol Building, for instance, whereas human visitors by law had to register before entering. He even had access to areas where outsiders were not allowed, such as the Treasurer’s Office. In the governor’s chambers, meanwhile, Garry had his own couch, and was allowed to sit in on councils in which Baxter confirmed appointments and voted on pardons—there were even whispers that the dog’s attitude towards a petitioner might be the deciding factor when it came to such decisions.

The Bee, Friday, June 8, 1923.

And now Baxter had ordered the American flag to half mast at the dog’s passing? The consensus was that this time the man had gone too far. No matter how much he had been affected by the loss of Garry, he had abused his authority and mocked a solemn gesture. The condemnations came quickly, led by members of the American Legion and other veteran’s groups. Colonel George R. Gay, an official with the local chapter of the Grand Army of the Republic, lodged an official complaint with the State House on behalf of his post. He likened the act to a form sacrilege, one that insulted every member of his organization. While he loved dogs himself, Gay explained, the problem had nothing to do with canines in general. What he and his fellow soldiers loved most of all was “the old flag which so many of them gave their lives to preserve,�� and it should not be lowered for vain or personal reasons. (2)

Mrs. William Wolff Smith, Chair of the Correct Usage of the American Flag Committee of the Women’s American Legion in Washington, D.C., pointed out that, strictly speaking, Garry wasn’t even a citizen. Had “the dog been an American citizen it might be different,�� she commented, “but he was no more of a citizen than a strawberry patch.�� Baxter’s political opponents had meanwhile pounced on the incident, vowing to use it against him. Word quickly spread, and by the next day people as far away as the West Coast heard about the governor’s act, and suddenly everyone was taking shots at Percival Baxter.

And that was fine by him. To understand why, it will help to know a bit more about the man. Despite coming from a politically prominent family, his father having served as mayor of the state’s most populous city, Portland, he was definitely not a standard, party-groomed politician. A Republican who had previously served in both Maine’s House of Representatives and Senate before assuming the office of governor in 1921, many of his views would even now seem progressive, and he was not afraid to take a stand in the name of causes he believed in, even if the result was a ruckus.��

The Hartford Courant, Saturday, June 2, 1923.

Baxter was, for instance, among the first prominent politicians to publicly oppose the Klu Klux Klan, which had at that time gained a strong foothold in Maine politics. He was also a prominent supporter of environmental causes, and as both a legislator and governor he campaigned to get the state to purchase the land around Mount Katahdin, the tallest peak in Maine, in order to preserve the area as a wilderness park. When he failed to sway the state, he instead used his own money to buy up the land and donate it. This gift earned him the nickname “the man who gave away mountains,�� and the land is now known as Baxter State Park, one of the largest on the East Coast.

But his greatest interest was animal welfare. A framed placard reading “Be Kind to Animals�� stood in his office between the national and state flags. He did not hunt, unusual for the time, having abandoned the pastime for ethical reasons. “I would no sooner think of killing a deer than I would step out and shoot some down faithful old horse out there in the street,�� (4) he said. He also took an active stance against the fur trade, and as governor scuttled a plan to provide a fur farm at the University of Maine. Likewise, he declined a request to capture local bear cubs and send them to a zoo in Massachusetts, commenting that, “our wild animals are entitled to their freedom, and, unless they are dangerous to human life and property, should not be molested.�� (5)

A pamphlet authored by Baxter and issued by the state urged people to treat animals humanely. “They work for, depend upon, and are devoted to us,�� he explained, and “On our part we always should care for them, protect them against all neglect and cruelty and do everything in our power to right their wrongs.�� He pleaded with his readers that “should you see animals or birds being abused, do all you can to stop the abuse; and you yourselves should never fail to treat them kindly.�� (6) Likewise active in the anti-vivisection movement, Baxter worked during his tenure as governor to prevent the cruel use of animals for dissections in Maine’s schools. All of this considered, it is hardly a surprise that he was lauded as “America’s greatest humane governor�� by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society.

Among all animals, Baxter’s greatest joy was dogs, and of all breeds, his favorite was the Irish setter. Garry was not his first. Baxter’s history with them dated back to his childhood in the 1880s, when he received as a gift from his father an Irish setter puppy named Glencora, who would test the boy’s heart from the outset. The puppy was frightened and confused that first night and began to cry, and as young Percival lay in bed worrying about his new friend and wondering what to do, someone in the house got up and took care of the situation—by putting the dog out. “This cruelty was more than I could stand,�� Baxter later recalled, and he snuck out, found the frightened puppy huddled in the yard, and carried her upstairs and placed her in his own bed. (7) The scene repeated itself for several nights until the dog was finally enough at peace to sleep quietly in the house.

Maine Governor Percival Proctor Baxter with his Irish Setter, Garry.

Baxter eventually began breeding Glencora. Her puppies were sent to good homes for a nominal fee, but he also kept a few for himself and continued breeding them. The Irish setters became a constant motif in his life, there always seemed to be one around and the love he had for these dogs was so sincere that people didn’t seem put off, despite the liberality with which he treated them. Not even after one of them, Deke, who lived on campus with Baxter during his university days at Bowdoin College, carried a large bone into the university chapel during a service and laid it down at the feet of the school’s president during prayer. In the end, he raised an estimated five dozen Irish setter pups, all descended from the first, Garry among them. But now, with the flag at half mast, Baxter had finally crossed the line of public decency.

What the people lodging complaints didn’t know was that the lowering of the flag was a carefully contrived gesture designed to manipulate them into the exact situation they were in. Garry had been sick for some time, and after the best veterinarians in New England failed to suggest an adequate plan of treatment, the governor resigned himself to the fact that his friend’s passing was imminent. He then came up with a plan to turn the tragedy of Garry’s death into something positive. Yes, flying the flag at half mast would raise ire, but doing so would provide an opportunity to open a public dialogue. “I did it . . . to teach a lesson,�� Baxter explained to a newspaper reporter, “to draw people’s attention to the qualities of the dog, qualities which so often are forgotten in human relationships.�� (8) In other words, the ruckus would provide him an audience to proselytize to about a topic he passionately believed in.

As the complaints rolled in they were met with a pamphlet, printed in advance, to be distributed to the governor’s detractors. “If all men would acquire the outstanding virtues of the dog,�� it explained, “great happiness would soon be spread over this sordid world.�� And of those virtues, Baxter believed that loyalty and unselfishness are the greatest.

Where can these be found in purer form than man’s best friend, the dog? He never falters in his devotion, never questions nor complains. Hunger, threat and privation to him are nothing if he can share them with his master and comfort him in his distress . . . The loyalty and unselfishness of a dog may well put most men to shame, for few are as loyal to their Heavenly Master as is the humble dog to his earthly one. (9)��

There were many people who would no doubt grant him these points, but still insist that the lowering of the flag was inappropriate. And to them, Baxter explained his belief that, “when men and women of this State and nation think through what I have done, they will see (that) a lesson in the appreciation of . . . animals has been taught, and that my act heightens the significance of our flag as an emblem of human achievement that has been made possible largely through the faithful services and sacrifices of . . . animals.�� (10) It was a nod not just to a single dog or canines in general, but a public recognition of all the animals that worked alongside humans to found the United States and toil for its prosperity.

And considering that selfless service, could anyone begrudge a symbolic lowering of the flag in thanks for the heretofore unacknowledged role animals played in the building the country? Baxter didn’t think so. “The fair names of our State and Nation have not been tarnished because a flag was placed at half mast out of respect to one of God’s humble but noble creatures,�� he explained. And as for lowering the flag for Garry in particular, Baxter believed that the act was a “fitting tribute . . . to my dog and to dogs of ages past, a tribute well deserved, but long deferred.��

He concluded that the act didn’t diminish the flag one bit and that, personally “I should esteem it an honor when my time comes to have the same Capitol flag that was lowered for my dog lowered for me.�� (12) This was entirely new and unexpected grist for the mill of public opinion. The man had a point. Animals certainly had been indispensable to the founding and prosperity of the nation, often laboring in brutal conditions. And they had never gotten their due. Was there really harm in finally offering them this token gesture of recognition?

Things turned around quickly. The governor’s gesture was suddenly deemed admirable, and messages of a different sort now arrived. “I have received probably a thousand letters and telegrams from all parts of the country. Only one was unfavorable,�� he was soon able to report. (13) A school girl from Illinois, inspired by the publicity, even wrote a poem in the governor’s honor that wound up printed in humane society journals across the country. It was the work of a child to be sure, but the sentiment behind it spoke for many people considerably older than she.

Percival Proctor Baxter,

A Gentleman of Maine,

Has gained a reputation��

For himself, and great fame.

��

I see his picture often,

But the one I like best,

Is where he has his Garry,

It’s nicer than the rest. ��(14)��

The members of the Grand Army of the Republic, meanwhile, withdrew their condemnation and had all criticism of his actions withdrawn from their official records. They went so far as to offer him a vote of appreciation and confidence. And so that the dialogue raised upon Garry’s passing should not fade too quickly, the Governor’s Council voted a year after the dog’s death that a bronze memorial to him should be placed in the State House, so that it might serve as a “constant reminder to the people of Maine of the faithful and unselfish services rendered them by their domestic animals.�� In announcing the memorial, the Council offered its hope that “the day will soon come in this State when cruelty to and neglect of animals will be no more and when man will be kind and merciful to all of God’s creatures, however humble.�� (15) From what initially looked like a public relations disaster, the governor had scored a resounding victory.

Paul Koudounaris

Baxter never commented on this so we simply can’t know his intentions. But we can know a fair bit of his on his feelings about politics at the time. With his dedication to serving humble causes even at the risk of his own reputation, he seems like an awkward fit among American politicians, and he himself felt this was the case: he served a single term as governor and declined to run again when it ended in 1925. Politics, he had decided, were not for him. But dogs were. While there was no room left on the plaque on Mackworth Island, there was still room in his heart. More Irish setters were indeed to come, and when they were likewise buried in the stone circle, additional, smaller plaques had to be added to the boulder. The first notes four dogs buried through 1934, and the final small plaque names two others, through the 1940s, when the island was given over to state as a gift. Six more dogs total, and it turned out that Baxter wasn’t quite through with Garry, either. Two of those buried afterward were named in his honor, a favorite dog who in his passing helped teach the nation a lesson about its debt to animals.

Sources:��

(1) It should be noted that the Garry in question was technically Garry II. But in the controversy that followed the II was dropped by the press and the dog became known then and afterward simply as Garry, and Baxter himself listed him without the II on the plaque.
(2) “Veterans Protest Honor Given Dog,�� Hanover (PA) Evening Sun, June 4, 1923, 8.
(3) “The Flag Incident in Maine,�� Buffalo Courier, June 8, 1923, 6.
(4) “Governor Who Honored Dog Makes Reply to His Critics,�� New York Times, July 8, 1923, 7:3.
(5) Liz Soares, All for Maine: The Story of Governor Percival P. Baxter (Mt. Desert, ME: Windswept, 1995), 38.
(6) Ibid. 37-38.
(7) Ibid. 9.
(8) “My Faithful Dog Unlike My Human Friends Never Betrayed Me—Baxter,�� Lewiston Evening Journal, June 5, 1923, 11.
(9) Ibid.
(10) Ibid.
(11) “Governor Defends,�� Portland (ME) Evening Express and Advertiser, June 4, 1923, B9.
(12) “Defends Lowering of the Flag for Dead Dog,�� Portland Press Herald, June 5, 1923, 3.
(13) “A Governor Who Put Flag at Half Mast for his Dog,�� Honolulu Star-Bulletin, August 24, 1923, 6.
(14) Soares 39.
(15) Ibid., 42.

One of the reasons we find death so frightening is that a lot of us refuse to talk about it. We’ve made it such a taboo topic, I think half of the fear we feel is just from avoiding it. Avoiding talking about it. Avoiding learning about it. If we did those things, it’d be less scary. The more willing someone is to talk about and accept the fact of their death, the better they’ll live, and the better they’ll die.

You’ve heard the way people talk about someone who’s died.
“She’s gone.��
“He’s no longer with us.��
“They passed on.��

I get it. It’s gentler. But as we think about shifting the way we look at death and dying, we also need to look at the words we use and start getting comfortable with saying the words: he’s dying, she’s dead, they died.

Death.

I understand that not everyone’s there yet. But we all can start trying it on a little bit. Try saying, “Mom died.�� Try saying, “I’m dying.�� Try saying those words; it’s actually really therapeutic. Plus, by using them yourself, you give others permission to use the “d-words,�� too.

Specifically, I think it’s important to talk about death with the person who is dying, when they’re lucid. I see that my patients who are willing to talk about their death and what they want before they die have more peaceful lives and far more peaceful deaths. It helps their loved ones, too. Often I’ll begin, “We all have an end-of-life journey. All of us. Right now, yours is a little clearer than other people’s. So what is that going to look like?�� Then I talk about death and dying. When I model doing it, the patients and their family members are usually a little more comfortable talking about it themselves.

Some people ask me, “Why is it so important for people to know that they’re going to die?�� It’s a great question. When people choose to learn about their particular illness and what their death might look like, their fears often are eased as they acknowledge what’s happening. The people who are willing to discuss end-of-life issues and to accept that they’re going to die seem to carry about them a certain type of freedom, and they truly live their last days well. Their fear tends to decrease, and they tend to be freer and more full of life, even though they’re dying.

I’ve also seen the opposite. When people are unwilling to look squarely at death, the last few months of their life are usually filled with fear, anxiety, and stress. There seems to be a lot of existential suffering and chaos. That’s why I want to normalize talking about death and dying and spread the understanding that we’re all going to die.

Ria Munk on her Deathbed, Gustav Klimt

One of the reasons I’m so passionate about educating people about death and dying is because I’ve seen firsthand how our culture sanitizes the topic.

We hide it.
We embalm it.
We put makeup on it.
We photoshop it.
We don’t say the d-word.
We get a babysitter for the kids while we attend a funeral.

And even if we do allow the body of a person who’s died to be viewed at a funeral or memorial service, we make 100 percent sure that it looks as alive as possible.

If you feel scared of death—if you don’t even want to think about it or talk about it—I have really good news for you: you are totally normal. But I want to change what normal is. I want conversations about death to happen, even if they’re uncomfortable—especially if they’re uncomfortable. That’s one reason I started a where I talk about death and dying. Social media eases the conversation in a way that makes people feel safe.

Most people think they don’t want to talk about death. But here’s what I’ll tell you: after they get introduced to it, they’re on board. I receive hundreds of messages from people who have watched my stories online telling me that I’ve helped them with their death anxiety. Learning about death and understanding it a little more has eased their fear.

That’s exactly why I want to help everyone understand what’s happening at the end of life. Because we’ve largely avoided death so successfully, we don’t understand what we’re seeing when we are near death. The most natural process in the world, which every one of us will face, feels foreign to us. I’m convinced that it doesn’t have to be this way.

If you haven’t spent time around people who are dying, you may feel anxious about being on hospice, having a loved one on hospice, and death in general. If you’re seeing things you haven’t seen before and hearing sounds you haven’t heard before, you may be wondering, “Should that happen? Is that normal? Are they suffering?�� This can be confusing and even scary. In ��I want you to discover what a body looks like when it’s dying. What it sounds like. What it feels like. What it smells like. When we break the taboos around facing and discussing death, we also break the power of fear around it. As we begin to understand death and become more comfortable with it, we can not only die better, but also live better.

Excerpted from by Julie McFadden, RN with permission of TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Julie McFadden, RN, 2024.To Buy:

“This case is absolutely a landmark for death doulas,�� says Ben Field, an attorney with the about a landmark decision handed down earlier this year in in the �� of Akhila Murphy and Donna Peizer, and their nonprofit which provides end-of-life care. The nonprofit helps clients make end-of-life plans, and facilitates , doing work that is broadly considered . The case stipulated that in order to continue their work, Murphy and Peizer needed to obtain licensing commensurate with a funeral home and for their doulas to become licensed funeral directors.

The ruling in their favor not only affects Full Circle Living and Dying, but creates a beneficial precedent for other death practitioners. “Other end-of-life-doulas in California can reasonably demand to be treated the same way,�� says Field. “Outside California, the court’s landmark decision is a powerful precedent against applying funeral-licensing laws in a way that abridges the constitutional rights of end-of-life doulas and their clients.��

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The court held that the doulas�� free speech protections are safeguarded �� it also ruled that Murphy and Peizer couldn’t be subjected to those licensing requirements, and that the funeral-home requirement was so irrational that it was unconstitutional. Put simply, they saw the legal challenge for what it was �� an attempt at the prohibition of death doula care but imposing constraints on their practice that were not only undue and superfluous but in direct violation of the First Amendment.

But that hasn’t stopped lawmakers in Indiana.

the lifelong Indiana resident works with people who have terminal illnesses and their families helping them plan for their final days and providing support as they navigate end-of-life care and funeral planning. This work can include everything from sitting with an individual or family as they go through those final days, to delegating complex logistical tasks like medical expenses and power of attorney, to talking through the many options for funerals and interment �� including, but not limited to home funerals and green burial options.

In short, Lauren steps in at the hardest time in someone’s life and helps shoulder the burden of death. She provides empathetic and practical care for people and families during an often emotionally devastating and chaotic time �� ensuring that they can spend their last days surrounded by, and focused on what matters most, and with the most information about the options available to them.

It’s critical and honorable work �� but the state of Indiana, and the State Board of Funeral and Cemetery Services disagree.

Photo courtesy of Institute For Justice

Lauren Richwine, Founder of Death Done Differently

In January of 2023, the state attorney general’s office served Richwine with a cease and desist �� ordering her to get a funeral-director and funeral-home licenses to continue advising her clients. To make matters worse, later that year, in August the State Board of Funeral and Cemetery services issued a gag order.

“The Indiana case is nearly identical to that first category of activity in the Full Circle case—the pure speech activities,�� says Field. “All that Lauren Richwine does is speak to people: to educate them about end-of-life options, to help them make end-of-life plans, and to be an advocate for them with funeral directors.�� Her activities are thus entitled to the full protection of the First Amendment.��

To understand the distinction between the two cases, it’s important to understand non-expressive conduct, and free speech. In the case of Full Circle, both were involved in that Full Circle was providing guidance in the form of speech, and technical support with home funerals �� the former, receives an immensely high threshold of constitutional protection under the First Amendment. The latter, which is considered non-expressive conduct, allows for slightly more regulation, which we often see play out with informed consent laws in medicine. Field says even this context doesn’t justify restrictions on practitioners like Full Circle because the care they provide is vastly different from say, performing surgery, for example. (He points out that even still, informed consent laws prove problematic because they often force doctors to have specific conversations with their patients, something we see quite a lot of in the reproductive health space.)

At the heart of these complaints are members of the licensed funeral industry. These are people whose financial gains are threatened by the work that people like Richwine do: empowering people to make informed decisions about deathcare rather than being shepherded into standard �� and often expensive �� funerary practices under the pretense that it is their only option.

And while both the case against Full Circle and the current case out of Indiana are grim examples of the extent lawmakers will stretch the law to further their deathphobic agendas, this distinction between non-expressive conduct and free speech is what makes Richwine’s case so chilling. The legal threshold in the Indiana case is objectively lower; where Full Circle did in fact provide some physical assistance with home funerals, Richwine’s practice is exclusively speech. “[Her case] presents an even starker case of government outreach,�� he says.

So how did we get here? There are a number of driving forces, says Field �� one is simply that funeral licensing authorities are stuck in their ways. “In many states, the laws are written incredibly broadly so that they could be read to reach anybody doing anything related to death, and both the laws and the regulators act on the assumption that just about everybody will do a very conventional funeral—at a funeral home, complete with embalming,�� says Field. “When people want to do something new—or even very old and traditional like a home funeral—which doesn’t map onto that conventional model, the licensing authorities�� gut reaction is to try to force them into the conventional box.��

Beyond that though, there are financial incentives �� invariably, at the heart of these complaints are members of the licensed funeral industry. These are people whose financial gains are threatened by the work that people like Richwine do: empowering people to make informed decisions about deathcare rather than being shepherded into standard �� and often expensive �� funerary practices under the pretense that it is their only option.

“We are nearly certain that’s what triggered enforcement in both the California and Indiana cases—and the regulators are also typically either current or former members of the industry,�� says Field. “They have an obvious self-interest in trying to shut down information about alternatives to what has become the conventional funeral, especially when those alternatives don’t involve buying expensive services from funeral homes like embalming or elaborate caskets. When end-of-life doulas inform their clients that embalming isn’t a requirement, or about natural burial options, or about home funerals, industry incumbents fear about their pocketbooks.��

Image courtesy of Institute For Justice

Lauren Richwine

But what’s at stake here is much greater than the financial security of funeral homes who rely on the false supposition that embalming is necessary �� there are critical constitutional protections implicated in these cases including religious freedom, the First Amendment, and government overreach.

“The most central right at issue here is free speech,�� says Field. Most of what end-of-life doulas do is communicate to other adults about death and end-of-life options. That is core speech protected by the First Amendment.�� The government can only silence speech like that when it has an exceedingly good reason—like national security—and it has exhausted all the alternatives to censorship.�� Shutting down end-of-life doula speech can’t hope to satisfy that rigorous constitutional standard.��

These cases also involve issues pertaining to irrational government regulation �� a matter protected through both the Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Comparatively speaking, the government is allowed more wiggle room with this kind of challenge and is only required to show that there is some rational basis for the challenged regulation. But even that has its limits �� “And the California case showed that,�� says Field. “Forcing end-of-life doulas to build a funeral home they would never use just to be able to help a family perform a home funeral that the family could lawfully do itself is so absurd that the court held it to be unconstitutionally irrational.��

Cases like Richwine’s are causing growing concerns for death doulas and practitioners nationwide: can legislators use the power of death phobia to restrict or outright ban their ability to provide this critical care?

“Yes, I think there is cause for concern,�� says Field.

If regulations are applied reasonably to cover activities like embalming or cremation, he says �� those can be justified �� but that’s not what we’re seeing play out. Instead, we’re seeing the broad nature of these state laws being used to target progressive deathcare providers; terms like ‘funeral services�� and ‘funeral director�� being left ostensibly vague in legislation which leaves “tremendous discretion in the hands of regulators,�� says Field.

“The problem in both the California and Indiana cases was that licensing agencies, when faced with a complaint from a member of the industry and armed with a vague and broadly written statute, applied the statutes in ways that make no practical sense to sweep in death doulas,�� he explains. The way forward is, at least in part, to include more specificity in legislation. Bills should be carefully drawn so that they are limited to technical and sensitive activities—like embalming or taking possession of a body—rather than being written broadly enough to encompass the constitutionally protected speech of end-of-life educators.

Courtesy of Institute For Justice

Death Done Differently intake form

Cases like Richwine’s are causing growing concerns for death doulas and practitioners nationwide: can legislators use the power of death phobia to restrict or outright ban their ability to provide this critical care?

As it stands, the district court agreed that Lauren’s speech �� and therefore her work �� is fully protected by the First Amendment; it entered a preliminary injunction which essentially puts a hold on the legal challenges and allows her to continue running her business while the lawsuit is underway. If Death Done Differently prevails, says Field, it will set yet another powerful precedent that funeral licensing authorities cannot impose onerous requirements on practitioners just to shut down speech they don’t like.

In the meantime, there are steps practitioners can take to protect themselves; at a recent conference, the Institute for Justice provided some tips to follow for peace of mind. Start by reviewing your state’s funeral licensing laws, as these seem to be one legal inroad that these challenges take. You can also consider adding disclaimers on documents or web pages about your licensing status to preempt any attempt to distort what you do. Bear in mind that most regulatory measures are complaint driven �� so reactive to circumstance, not proactive measures made to advance care. And finally, when it comes to legal challenges: remember that speech is more protected than conduct and engaging in non-technical activities may make your case more amenable to constitutional protections �� as does abstaining from holding money before services are rendered. Finally �� and without hesitation �� if a regulator reaches out, or if you feel unsure about where you stand, contact an attorney and discuss anywhere you might be vulnerable to challenges and importantly: your rights and protections to continue doing this critical work.

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Revisions to a cemetery expose, and even reshape, the relationships that living humans have with each other and with the dead. But nonhuman life is part of the process too. Chronicling the history of an African American cemetery in Oxford, Georgia, Mark Auslander writes:

In 1990, an unscrupulous, politically well-connected pulpwood merchant clear cut the oldest part of the black cemetery, taking out hundreds of pines and destroying scores of gravesites dating back to slavery times and Reconstruction. With the trees went much of the community’s capacity to locate and recall the resting places of the dead. The town matriarch, Miss Sarah, recalled a decade later, as she tried to find her way across the meadow, “I used to be going by the trees. I was going by the trees.��

The destruction of nonhuman life—of these trees—became its own violence against the living and the dead. Cutting trees was an unmapping, a book-burning.

Photograph by Sjhus

The English ivy, privet, wild grape vine, Japanese knotweed, greenbrier, wisteria, pokeweed, and other plants that grow over graves and cover cemeteries are key players in their daily drama. Weeds cover up histories and create obstacles for people wishing to locate and care for their dead. Initially, they seem to play an opposite role to that of the trees in Oxford. The main “work that plants do�� in these cemeteries is the work of erasure and forgetting: an inexorable force, enveloping, destroying, and returning to wildness a site that people had intentionally carved out from nature to bury their dead.

But certain types of plants were also used by enslaved people and their descendants to mark burial sites. Periwinkle and yucca can be signs leading to hidden burials, hidden ancestors. The writer Alice Walker, reaching the end of a quest to find the grave of her literary hero, the novelist and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, describes a feeling beyond “normal responses of grief, horror, and so on�� when she sees “the field full of weeds where Zora is.�� Yet even in this
anguished essay, Walker finds ambivalent beauty when she “plunge[s] into the weeds��: “Some of them are quite pretty, with tiny yellow flowers. They are thick and healthy, but dead weeds under them have formed a thick gray carpet on the ground,�� she writes. It’s an image of life and flourishing creativity supported from underneath by the hidden dead: an echo of the connection linking Walker to her chosen ancestor Hurston.

For groups of cemetery citizens, plants have also been a call to action. When a neighboring property owner cut down a tree in Geer Cemetery, letting it slam down on top of graves, it was a desecration that also galvanized the resurgent organization. The logo, a stylized rendering of curling vines, elegantly speaks to the presence and importance of plants. Without weeds to clear from plots and grave markers, cemetery work would largely consist of more specialized and less accessible tasks.

Unless you know how to wash and clean a headstone properly, you risk damaging it. Research about the people buried in the cemeteries also requires specialized training, as well as access to the internet and relevant databases. By contrast, weeding and clearing brush are tasks that almost anyone can jump right into, on almost any day. They are the most immediate ways for new people to “physically feel themselves reclaiming,�� as Friends of East End volunteer Melissa Pocock describes it.

Plant life, and the different procedures for removing or taming it, comes to seem like part of the identity of a cemetery. I associate Geer and East End with long, stringy vines of English ivy and the ever-present danger of poison ivy, which leaves itchy souvenirs of workdays on my body. When I went to work with the in Wilson, North Carolina, I had to get used to the thick strands of wisteria growing like baskets around the graves, a “lattice�� of coiled tension that Lisa Y. Henderson described vividly:

That wisteria, especially—I don’t think I’ve ever�� I mean, I grew up sort of rambling through those woods and swinging on those vines, but I never particularly paid attention to the way that it grows, and just this lattice of runners underground. I was trying to describe to somebody: I’m like, it’s—it’s a thunnkk. I mean, the tension is so incredible in these vines, the release of energy when you cut this thing is pretty amazing.

The wisteria was far more daunting than the weeds I was used to pulling, but perhaps even more mesmerizing once I began to get into the flow. I could get my hands around the vines, making them into piles that helped me measure my progress.

Working in a cemetery also offers encounters with nonhuman animals. Sometimes these are planned: Brian and Erin’s dog, Teacake, goes to East End nearly every day, sometimes playing with Mark Schmieder’s dog, Willow. She circulates with her ball, looking for someone to toss it for her while making people laugh. Unbeknownst to her, she’s doing important work: for students and others visiting the cemetery for the first time, she breaks the ice, easing them into spending time in a place they may initially find sad or morbid.

FIGURE 5.2. Black-and-white sketch of a volunteer leaning back as they pull long vines from the ground at Geer Cemetery. They wear a bandanna, glasses, gardening gloves, and a plaid shirt. Drawing by the author, November 13, 2022.

Deer, insects, birds of prey—encounters with all of them are reminders that living and dead humans are not the only cemetery citizens, not the only beings with a stake in what happens in burial grounds. We must widen the circle of belonging in cemeteries to include the nonhuman.

In July 2022, Lisa Y. Henderson posted a new update to the Black Wide-Awake blog. The City of Wilson had agreed to sponsor the use of ground-penetrating radar to analyze Vick Cemetery, a public African American burial ground founded in 1913 and active until the 1960s. No existing records of the burials at Vick have survived. In 1995, a contractor for the city removed all the grave markers from the cemetery for a “cleanup.�� City employees kept the
headstones in storage and subsequently destroyed them; they also lost the key to a map that had been made recording the information found on those headstones. It was now impossible to reestablish people’s burial locations; Vick became a field of erasure. “Five decades of people caring for the dead, leaving names and key details carved into headstones, eliminated,�� is how Lisa described it.

As Lisa expected, ground-penetrating radar was revealing Vick to be an orderly and “well-populated�� cemetery (countering a common misimpression that overgrown cemeteries were always unplanned and disordered spaces). But before the technical analysis was complete, the plants were already saying things. Lisa wrote that photographer George Edward Freeney Jr. had just flown a drone over Vick Cemetery to photograph it from above. Wilson County was in a drought, and Freeney’s aerial images revealed a formerly hidden green grid of places where the grass was still growing: “row after row�� of nearly perfect rectangles.

Those little lozenges where the grass is growing greener and lusher? These are the ancestors revealed in plain sight. These are the graves of our people.

Last month, when I spoke at a Wilson City Council meeting to give thanks to all who made radar survey of Vick Cemetery possible, I stated as one reason the work is important is that the dead cannot speak.

I was wrong.

Row after row. Side by side. Despite decades in which its stewards allowed a forest to spring up over it, and tires to pile high in its weeds, and power poles to punch through its sacred soil, and its headstones to be ripped up and cast away, Vick Cemetery’s dead—my father’s baby brother, my cousins, your grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles—are speaking loudly and clearly: WE ARE NOT LOST. WE ARE HERE��.

To Lisa, it seemed the ancestors were reasserting their presence, revealing their power to speak through patterns in the grass. In her description, she moves seamlessly from “my father’s baby brother, my cousins�� to “your grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles.�� Finally, at the end of her post, the “I�� and the “you�� blend into a “we��: “We rejoice, we give thanks, we renew our vows to restore recognition and dignity to our dead.�� Our dead. A song of belonging, passing from the dead into the grass, then from Lisa to her city and her people.

��

��

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Excerpted from by Adam Rosenblatt, published by Stanford University Press, ©2024 by��Adam Richard Rosenblatt. All Rights Reserved.

Image via the Broadly Gender Spectrum Collection

��These dead are hungry. Fuck, Dance, run, kiss, steal, eat decadently, sing, destroy, create. The energy of life, ecstatic life, draws them close, nourishes.��

The first line of Contagion Press’s seems an unusual way to start a pamphlet dedicated to remembering and connecting with the dead. Most memorial bulletins feature vibrant pictures or quotes chosen to represent the lives of those who have died, distributed among a small or large group of mourners. But this is the anonymous author’s favorite line of the book they wrote “in spirit�� to connect with the queer dead. While it has no names written in its pages or family members succeeding their death, it is a patient and often joyous connection point to the many LGBTQ+ individuals killed and buried anonymously, who have no one wandering this Earth to remember or celebrate who they were.

A brief history of Goetia

The line above is preceded by two footnotes, one of which explains the etymology of the word “queer�� and the history of the term “Goetia.�� The latter derives from the ancient Greek term “goeteia�� and refers to a form of sorcery invoking the dead. In ancient Greece, the term “goes�� referred to magicians, seers, and healers that stereotypically were associated with deceptive magic. “Grimoires�� were their book of spells that contain instructions for conjuring’s and castings, along with summoning spirits, gods, and demons. These texts predate ancient Greece, tying back to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

But these terms, all described in Greek, derive from the term “goao�� which refers to a ritualized form of mourning through wailing. As the author explained to me, that embedded into this practice “is this idea that certain sounds or certain intensity of emotion when connected with sound or song is able to really open the gateway between the worlds.�� The concept of ritualized mourning is common to many cultures, who both change dress, meals, house guests, and excursions outside for periods after the death of a loved one, or who in moments of grief, try to reach out to lost loved ones through systems of magic like those found in grimoires.

Photo courtesy of The Anarchist Library.

The first page of the First Protocols of Queer Goetia (2019).

Although traditionally today associated with paganism, grimoires were, according to British historian of witchcraft and magic Owen Davies, used by early Christian groups. In his book (2009), Davies explained that the concept of Enoch being connected to such books of magic continued through the Medieval Era. The most well-known connection to Christianity refers to the Testament of Solomon which would later contribute to The Goetia: The Lesser Key of Solomon the King, a collection of manuscripts and text fragments from the British Library published in 1650. In the Medieval Era, soccer came to be associated with Solomon and grimoires or books he was believed to have written.

Currently, as North America of witchcraft and occult practice, Goetia is still part of many peoples�� practices, both in a secular way towards inner transformation and in a magical way towards greater inclusion in witchcraft communities.

As the author explained, many ancient cultures, including Ancient Greece and the wider Hellenistic culture, believe that the restless dead walk among the living; those who “are still roaming the earth are often those who died in violent ways or maybe never had children who could honor them as ancestors, and obviously for queer people, we had a type of kindship that exists outside of the framework of just heteronormative passing on and reproduction of genes and ancestry.�� The First Protocols of the Queer Goetia refers to the next exploration in the history of grimoires, developing texts that connect with queer ancestors and physically reclaim the ways in which LGBTQ+ individuals have traditionally served as spiritual workers for centuries.

Written “in spirit��

The idea of this pamphlet came to the author while they and friends were visiting the San Francisco AIDS Memorial in San Francisco. While walking home, they felt overcome and rushed to a coffee shop where they began scribbling down the instructions on napkins. While they continued using these instructions in their own private practice, they didn’t approach Contagion Press to publish the text until they lost a friend in the Goshen Fire in California, with the goal of providing “something that could maybe bring some sense of peace or closure or power to people who were in my community mourning for their queer loved ones.��

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Inscription at the entrance to the National AIDS Memorial Grove in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California. The inscription reads, “Circle of Friends Loves Touched by AIDS / Donors to the Grove / Those Who Have Died / Those Who Loved Them.�� The name recalls the Circle Sanctuary, a church rooted in nature spirituality and animism, that was part of the 2023 Pride Interfaith Service.

It was a perfect match. Em Dash, a staff member at the Contagion Press explains that the organization is a project deeply rooted in connecting and conversing with the queer dead. The Press is specifically catering to self-described “weirder�� facets of queer history, providing content for those working at the intersection of esoterica and the occult. For this reason, the press produces materials in extremely small batches that are highly targeted, choosing its own distributors and selling wholesale to bookstores.

In the past, the pamphlet appeared alongside zines like Queer Fire, exploring the George Jackson Brigade, a guerilla group of veteran activists of Black, Women’s and LGBTQ+ Rights Movements active in the 1970s. In line with this anarchist focus, the author chose to remain anonymous, believing that they were used as a vessel to write and share this text with others.

Although this text was written according to the author “in spirit,�� the author did acknowledge that they follow in the footsteps of queer magician Jake Stratton-Kent who wrote the Encyclopedia Goetia. In his first volume The True Grimoire published in 2010, Stratton-Kent explores the chthonic (referring to another or underworld) roots of goetic ritual and upends the European tradition that goetic magic is associated with Solomon (as explained above). In fact, he argues that modern grimoires are actually the living linear descendants of ancient Greek “goes�� who also had a rich queer history and culture that elevated individuals who today might identify as trans, nonbinary, intersex, and queer as living between two worlds and two identities.

As the author shared with me:

“In a lot of traditional communities found all over the world what you see is a tendency for queer people or third gendered people or people who are in some way different to actually have a very special ritualized spiritual role in their community and it’s kind of understood that people who are able to stand in different worlds, in different identities, are actually liminal people, who are connected to spirits. I think a lot of the queer people I know have a lot of very innate or natural connection to the other world, to spirits. �� I think that our exclusion, our demonization from within like Christian faiths, I think it actually is really sinister because it disconnects us from what makes us powerful and what makes us special and unique. I think that queer people come to understand that we actually also have our own lineage of ancestors, and we also are tapped into these fairly ancient practices and roles, I think a powerful part of our continued survival.��

Thus, this text and others published by the Contagion Press that are catered to people exploring the intersections of queerness, the occult, and anarchy have been surprisingly popular–meeting a need for ways to connect with queer ancestors. Some people the author spoke with have used the Goetia in a more modern way, opening the text and choosing a line at random or cutting the text apart and picking a line from a jar as an intention for the day as a form of internal transformation and secular betterment. And this focus on ritualizing the remembering of the queer dead also bleeds into the academic world, seen in Fintan Walsh’s book published this past year.

Image via the Broadly Gender Spectrum Collection

A Modern Revival

Walsh, himself a gay man, shared that in the post marriage equality moment, he was surrounded by progress and positivity seeing the LGBTQ+ Rights Movement as over and thus modern LGBTQ+ communities as disconnected from their predecessors. He pushed back on this idea, acknowledging that many queer people have a persistent sense of the past, that things and people seen frozen in the past and issues remain unresolved as witnessed by in the United States. Today more than ever, LGBTQ+ lives are at risk, from access to gender affirming care to representation in schoolteachers, books, and programming to the right to express and claim our identities and protect our bodies.

His work focuses on using theater to embrace and explore queer pasts with his students who he was shocked to learn were He is committed to “that kind of obsessive, repetitive work in inquiry. It’s not just kind of dusty, misdirected, historic work, but it’s also the work of culture making,�� he explained, “And that the past isn’t always a repository of the dead or embracing the negative, but it can also be a source of rejuvenation and richness and redirection.��

Thus, for many others, The First Protocols of the Queer Goetia is not just a text about self-discovery and intentionality but an instruction manual for seeking out queer ancestors who may be trapped in the past, who may be wandering the Earth just like the Ancient Greeks believed. Sitting alongside Becoming Dangerous: Witchy Femmes, Queer Conjurers, and Magical Rebels released the same year, this text has gained a following among trans, nonbinary, and queer communities who are seeking out magical representation. It reflects a growing interest in queer folk magic and ancestor worship in the LGBTQ+ community, seeking out queer spirits and deities in ancient traditions and recognizing and celebrating the power of recently gone activists.

The best example of this is the Trickster’s Apothecary (@tricksterapoth). This small online apothecary, founded by Filipino trans man Loki and his transmac nonbinary husband Robin in 2021, aims to give LGBTQ+ individuals the spiritual tools they need to connect with queer elders and the queer deities that they may have worshipped, with custom prayer cards, rosaries, pocket altars, and this upcoming Pride month, prayer candles of figures like Marsha P. Johnson.

With this goal, the pamphlet calls out to the queer ancestors who were killed, maimed, crucified, and destroyed because of who they were for which we do not have their names carved in stone like those at the AIDS Memorial in San Francisco, who persist without descendants to name and remember them. It connects these ancestors who fought to the ones who fight today, to a community hungry for elders through which to image queer futures for themselves. See the last line of the first page:

“These spirits, in life, feared dying alone. Assure against their isolation in death./
They died in prisons and camps and pysch wards, at the hands of inquisitors and gaybashers and cops./
Vengeance is sweet even to them./
The great vengeance is to live joyously on their behalf.��

As the author explained, this book meets a specific need–pioneering a way to honor, venerate, and celebrate the queer dead, outside of queerphobic religious institutions that cast out the queer dead, seen at Cecilia Gentili’s funeral service two weeks ago which was condemned by the diocese. While LGBTQ+ communities are often stereotypically seen as dichotomous with religious and spiritual practice, the First Protocols of the Queer Goetia holds a space for LGBTQ+ individuals of various traditions to seek out and connect with queer ancestors and thus for many queer people who feel disconnected from lineages, to find mentors to guide them.

Via Institute for Justice

The seeds were planted a decade ago; Peter Quakenbush, who owns Michigan Burial with his wife Annica, read by Bernd Heinrich. “It is a fantastic book about animal undertakers and the animal way of death. At the end, Heinrich considers his own death and describes wishes for a green burial on his land in Maine,�� he tells the Order. A few years later, he read by Peter Wohlleben, a forester in Germany; among the forests he manages is an ancient Beech forest. In the book, he writes about how the forest would be more valuable if it was left standing and used as a burial ground, than if it was leveled for timber.

“This is only a small part of the book, but it really grabbed my interest, he says. “I remember thinking about it all day while I hiked up and down a mountain that I climbed weekly at the time. I love how it is a way for an existing ecosystem to generate an income and pay for its own protection and restoration.

It is a perfect win-win.��

Today, that spark of inspiration is a 20 acre piece of land in Newaygo, Michigan; an aspirational burial ground currently the center of a legal battle between town officials and the Quakenbushes.

Via Institute for Justice

Their vision for the land is simple and revolutionary at the same time; to provide the state with its first , which is a type of cemetery where the land is preserved in its natural state. “The forest floor is covered in a blanket of bright green sedges and fallen logs covered in lush moss,�� says Annica. “Blue-green lichen is on the trees, mushrooms peek out of the ground, native wildflowers cover the ground in spring, and you can always hear a chorus of birds chirping. It is a really special forest, and we have loved it since the moment we saw it.��

are not new; far from it. In the United States, embalming the dead became common practice during the Civil War, when soldiers who died away from home needed their bodies to be preserved on the journey back. Enter: . But prior to the war, most American funerals involved a green burial, and the practice remains a mainstay in many cultures and religions to this day. Misinformation, fear, and stigma abound in the deathcare world and the concept of a green burial can feel obtuse to a society that is accustomed to�� practices like embalming and silk lined caskets �� but what defines a green burial is actually very simple. It involves burying the dead directly into the earth in an organic material; this can be anything from a linen shroud to a more elaborate wicker coffin.

“The forest floor is covered in a blanket of bright green sedges and fallen logs covered in lush moss,�� says Annica. “Blue-green lichen is on the trees, mushrooms peek out of the ground, native wildflowers cover the ground in spring, and you can always hear a chorus of birds chirping.��

Peter, who is preparing to defend his dissertation in Biology, used his clinical knowledge of the subject and his passion for plants and the earth to ensure their conservation burial ground found a perfect home �� the property sits at a high elevation with a dry climate, and has been covered in native forestry for over 100 years. Once they found and purchased the land, they undertook every logistical, scientific, and ethical precaution to bring their vision to life; more than that, the town was excited �� reception for a new and eco-friendly way to bury their dead was largely positive.

But the Township Board had other plans. To halt the Quakenbushes from proceeding with the development of the Michigan Green Cemetery, the board passed an ordinance banning not only conservation burial grounds, but the development of all new cemeteries in the township.

Via Institute for Justice

This is ��says the Institute for Justice, who are representing the Quakenbushes in their case.

“Put simply, the Quakenbushes own their own land and should be able to use it to operate a conservation burial ground that meets (and even exceeds) health and safety standards,�� says Katrin Marquez; attorney at the Institute for Justice, one of the attorneys representing Peter and Annica and their business in Quakenbush et al. v. Brooks Township et al. “There is no legitimate legal basis for the ban,�� says Marquez. “Peter and Annica have done everything right and the Township’s ban violates the Quakenbushes�� rights. Peter and Annica’s property rights and economic liberty rights—the right of individuals to earn an honest living free from unreasonable government interference—are at stake in this case. Put simply, the government can’t use targeted zoning to ban Peter and Annica—or anyone else—from engaging in a safe, productive, and otherwise appropriate occupation. And that’s exactly what Brooks Township is doing here.��

This case, she says, implicates a number of fundamental constitutional protections. The current lawsuit focuses primarily on property rights and economic liberty; Peter and Annica have a right to use their property as they see fit, and operate an occupation that is not harmful to the public. Furthermore, the Michigan Constitution doesn’t even allow a municipality to ban safe land use simply because it’s misunderstood, which is exactly what’s happening here.

Beyond that, the way we care for and bury our dead has deep personal, cultural, and religious ties that implicate even more constitutional protections. “The equivalent of green burials, for example, is required by some religions—including Judaism and Islam,�� says Marquez. This case even touches First Amendment protections on freedom of speech, and Marquez says the Institute for Justice is seeing. “Governments are trying to , in violation of their free speech rights, in order to create more business for funeral directors,�� she says. “In various states we’ve seen governments require people that just want to encourage others to engage in uncomfortable but important conversations about death to get funeral director licenses. But these requirements make no sense. They’d force someone to do things like attend mortuary school to study embalming, anatomy, and chemistry; embalm dozens of remains; work as an intern at a funeral home for a year; and build or purchase a full-service funeral—all just to talk about death.��

The way we bury our dead is already, not without legal protections �� though they’re perhaps not commonly known or understood, thanks to widespread stigma that shrouds conversations about death and funerary care. “For example, most places allow for family,�� says Marquez. “And practices like —where a family hosts a funeral in a private home with the deceased loved one lying in honor—are resurging in popularity. Another example is that no state requires a casket for burial. That said, facilities like cemeteries or crematoriums are subject to local zoning and state regulations.��

At the heart of the Township’s opposition to the burial ground is, without equivocation: misinformation. “It has largely been fear and misunderstanding that have informed opposition to our plan,�� says Annica. “There has been about water contamination, toxic human remains, murderers dumping bodies in the woods, animals digging up graves, cemetery neglect leading to bodies falling out of a mausoleum, lots of cars driving around in the woods…we’ve heard it all.��

Via Institute for Justice

The Quakenbushes have gone above and beyond to ensure their the plans for their conservation burial grounds exceed all the requisite public health and safety regulations Marquez says; they’ve received approval from the local health department and have even taken the additional step of studying the Green Burial Council’s publications, taken GBC’s courses and reached out to them to verify their once the burial ground is open.

For their part, in ��the Green Burial Council agrees that what the Quakenbushes are trying to do should not only be perfectly legal, but is in line with how we have been caring for our dead for centuries �� and how people increasingly want to engage with deathcare.

“Natural burial has been a part of the human experience for thousands of years,�� says Rachel Essig the Green Burial Council, Board Treasurer who has been a cemeterian for 16 years, “and green or natural burials are what people want.��

“I believe, unfortunately, that many people are so turned off by the natural cycle of life in death that they lose sight of thinking holistically, critically and scientifically about natural burial practices.��

Increasingly, she has seen an interest in green burial options over the last five years and more and more death care providers are offering alternatives, many within a religious framework. That hasn’t stopped pushback from local and state governments who she says often have a “knee jerk�� reaction to the proposition of green burial.

“I believe, unfortunately, that many people are so turned off by the natural cycle of life in death that they lose sight of thinking holistically, critically and scientifically about natural burial practices,�� she says.

Green cemeteries are not new or even uncommon �� not even in Michigan. But neither is pushback to the practice; just last year ��What is especially startling about the Quakenbushes�� case is the scope of the ban. It would impact all prospective cemeteries in the area, illustrating how far removed from reality these lawmakers are from the reality of deathcare. “Look at your community, imagine all your neighbors: will they fit in the existing cemetery? Will their children, their children’s children fit in your local cemetery? Are there enough grave spaces? Are your local jurisdictions working to ensure the ratio of residents to final disposition options are proportionate?�� says Essig. “This is a public health question. A green cemetery is not only a public health answer but it’s also an environmental solution �� anywhere in the US.��

“[Green burial] helps us face the reality of our mortality and invites meaningful participation in the burial process. It helps us see how we fit into the bigger picture, one where life goes on and we play our part. It creates sacred spaces in nature, where humans are a part of nature, not apart from nature.��

It’s certainly a complexity that Peter and Annica have appreciated in their thoughtful and careful planning of this. “Death is a touchy subject that can easily become emotionally charged,�� says Peter. “There is an established industry used to doing things a certain way and used to making a living a certain way. Change is hard and the uncertainty is scary.��

They also see the Michigan Green Cemetery as part of a larger, greener future in death care; for the Quakenbushes, that means the hope of more people being able to access at home death care �� more autonomy in how loved ones care for their dead so their practices are in alignment with their wishes and beliefs. “Of course we think conservation burial should play a big role in this vision. It celebrates life, even protects it,�� says Peter. “It helps us face the reality of our mortality and invites meaningful participation in the burial process. It helps us see how we fit into the bigger picture, one where life goes on and we play our part. It creates sacred spaces in nature, where humans are a part of nature, not apart from nature.

It is a beautiful picture of harmony, balance, belonging, and long-term thinking.��

Good Death Fellow Olivia Matthews

Miscarriages of justice, like we saw with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin and countless others, unfortunately make this play relevant. In a better world, and in a more perfect union, this play wouldn’t exist, but as someone who has always strived to use my art and my platform to speak out against injustice and cruelty, it must exist.

In my play, Here Lies Vivienne Greene, the title character is called to smuggle a young Black boy out of her hometown after he is threatened by an angry white mob. Set in 1956, soon after the murder of ��she grapples with risking her life and the family business while her own personal grief hangs in the air. Throughout the play, we are transported back in time, to a not-so-distant past in Nashville: to smoky somber jazz clubs; raucous Sunday dinners with new friends; a quiet, quaint bedroom in the middle of the night with Hugo, a lost love of Vivienne’s. Through her memories we learn while why she struggles, but why she must act- and fast.

from the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

Emmitt Till and Mamie Till Mobley

Inspiration and Background

Here Lies Vivienne Greene was originally developed at Ohio University during my second year of graduate school. During this time I was inspired by the story of ��a Black woman who, after her husband’s death, took over his funeral home. It later became a stop on the Underground Railroad where she would hide runaway enslaved people as mourners in funeral processions or inside of caskets. This latter image struck me and became an essential metaphor within my play. While caskets usually suggest a finality to life, Duterte’s and then Vivienne’s use of it allows for a rebirth into freedom. However, as we know , that freedom for Black Americans is strained, with economic inequalities and systemic violence both physical and psychological.

As someone invested in ��my goal with this play was to speak to this movement and the ��To have a good death, one that is informed and has access to options, one that allows for a smooth transition, and possibly, as is part of Black culture, a homegoing, there must be a certain quality of life. Often, under such violent conditions, this is not the case for Black people and many disenfranchised citizens. How can one celebrate, how can one have a good death, when life seems so stifled?

Illustration via Damn Joan

“…how can one have a good death, when life seems so stifled?��

The Process

Throughout the course of the Fellowship much��of the play has remained the same thematically and structurally. However, with some exploration into what it means to have a homegoing service or a celebration of life, I really got to expand on one of the most important characters of the play, Abigail. While Vivienne seems very stern, Abigail is full of love and life. She mourns the death of her late husband she knows that he should be celebrated like a prince. This conflicts with Vivienne’s frugality around funerals (inspired by by Jessica Mitford) and her reserved demeanor, but also her grief. How can Abigail grieve and celebrate out loud? What will being vulnerable do to Vivienne?

Outside of writing, the bulk of this process has been organizing and recruiting collaborators for the project. My dramaturg is Janai Lashon, a theater artist and activist who read for Vivienne during my time in graduate school. Her insight and ability to speak to theater, race and gender has always been invaluable to my growth as a writer. As part of our website, she will be creating a resource page.

Headshot of actress Caisey Cole who has been cast to play the tile role of Vivienne Greene

Challenges and Barriers

When I initially applied for the Fellowship, I was planning to develop the play in Atlanta and work specifically with local actors and present it live with a talkback. However, circumstances occurred where it made more sense to do the play online, particularly as an audio play. This unexpected challenge turned out to be a blessing. I can now work with actors I normally wouldn’t have access to, and being available online the play will be able to reach a much wider audience.

That said, something I’ve struggled with in this process has been nailing down a time to work with everyone. With people being in different time zones and having different work schedules, there’s always been some kind of snafu with getting everyone to meet. While this has delayed the project a few times I’m happy to say that we are in the final stages of casting and will be scheduling a start date for rehearsals in August.

The Future of Here Lies Vivienne Greene

We will be rehearsing and recording the play in late summer/early fall of 2023. Once the dining process is completed we will be making Here Lies Vivienne Greene��available to the public via Spotify and possibly other audio platforms. I am also speaking with other panelists to create companion content to��help promote the play and explore its rich history and themes. For updates follow along on Instagram @hereliesviviennegreene where we’ll be highlighting our actors and panelists, and sharing behind the scenes details.

Epilogue

I’m always concerned with “relevancy�� or “timeliness�� with my work. What in our culture is it speaking to? As I mentioned this play, unfortunately, is ever-relevant, ever-timely. Back in May, I had a conversation with my dramaturg Janai, and we noted that a few weeks prior to us speaking, Carolyn Bryant had passed, which of course brought up conversations of Emmitt Till. Through the play his memory and his mother’s legacy are forever present with us, almost 70 years later.

APPLICATIONS FOR OUR GOOD DEATH FELLOWSHIP WILL OPEN AGAIN LATE SUMMER 2023.

Fellowships are open to thought leaders and community organizers within the death positive community that have a project intended to make��death a more meaningful, sustainable, and equitable experience for all, including but not limited to��education, community care, art, events, technology, and/or advocacy.

This grant provides funding to selected Fellows to launch or advance their existing work on a specific project in their area of expertise. In addition to funding our Fellows receive expert support, access to resources, and connection to a community with a passion for changing the future of death care.

Visit our to learn more. Meet all of our 2022

Photo courtesy of Wake

The Order’s 2022 �� is a nonprofit based in New Orleans that offers their local community information and resources for meaningful, affordable, and environmentally friendly deathcare. We talk to��Liz Dunnebacke, Executive Director of Wake, to learn more about their work, the value and challenges of creating a community deathcare organization, and their Fellowship project, the program.

How was Wake founded and could you share a bit about its history?

I started Wake in 2020 after many years of interest in end-of-life issues. In 2012, I was working as a freelance producer of reality TV when my mother was diagnosed with late-stage terminal cancer. In the almost two years it took for her to die I was so overwhelmed with the process that it threatened to derail my life. Over the course of the next several years three other close family members died, and my experience with all of death’s attendant issues grew. These issues ranged from the most profound (how to memorialize your mother? What to do with her body?) to the most mundane (why is it so difficult to close down someone else’s cell phone account? Netflix? Credit card?) And the financial pressures were extremely difficult to navigate, even as a middle-class family. How would we pay the mortgage as we tried to clear out the grandparents�� home and sell it, all while living 2,000 miles away, and navigating a large, blended family with lots of competing interests?

During this time I constantly felt as though I were inventing a wheel that had likely already been invented. I knew that losing a loved one would be sad, but how could it also be so logistically challenging, if everyone has to deal with it? I wanted to create a resource to help people navigating these issues. I had worked extensively in nonprofit administration and I knew that I could create a small, grassroots nonprofit in my community that could provide direct service to families in need. We launched in June of 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, at which point my Dad suddenly fell ill and died that July. I was definitely walking the walk.

How does Wake put its mission into practice?

Wake has a number of programs that are meant to help connect folks to deathcare resources. These include our Death Concierge Program, and legal clinics, and ongoing education and outreach initiatives.

What are some of the barriers people in New Orleans are experiencing with end-of-life and funeral care?

By far the greatest barrier to meaningful deathcare across this country is financial, and New Orleans is no exception. The majority of our clients cannot afford the deathcare they are seeking. In-ground burial, which is a common choice of disposition in this predominantly Catholic and Baptist community, is becoming increasingly expensive in American cities, where land prices continue to increase dramatically.

has become the most prevalent method of disposition as it is the most affordable. But even this choice, with a price tag of well over $1,000, can be prohibitively expensive for families, and many clients are forced to surrender their loved one to the state’s indigent burial program, which takes over disposition in a potter’s field that is not open to the��public. is handled differently in each state, and even from region to region, across the U.S. Many coroner’s offices will return cremated remains to a family; not in New Orleans.

For those who are able to make arrangements it can take days or even weeks to crowdfund the money to pay for these, often leaving a loved one’s body long enough that the funeral home will require that any visitation, even just an identification, will require costly embalming.

Furthermore, New Orleans has a high rate of death as a result of gun violence; in 2022 it was the highest in the U.S. And deaths from overdose are also among the highest in the nation. Many families are losing loved ones in tragic circumstances, which further complicates an already difficult process. These deaths almost always result in an autopsy being indicated, which causes delays and makes visitation more expensive for families.

Photograph courtesy of Wake

A traditional Muslim burial

How does Wake work with their local community?

The Death Concierge Program is how we respond to community deathcare needs. Folks call Wake and let us know what they need, and we respond by providing direct services (often logistical/administrative) or connecting the family with relevant resources in the community, or both.

Because the vast majority of community needs tend to be financial, it is crucial that we be able to provide this service free of charge. People need to be able to pick up the phone and call us to get their questions answered. We operate a virtual hotline, where folks can call or email with questions or needs, and one of the staff or volunteers helps to connect each client with the resources they’re looking for.

During our first couple of years, the majority of the calls came from people who had just experienced a loved one’s death; mothers who had lost their sons, daughters who had lost their fathers, sisters, cousins, and sometimes neighbors or friends. All were reeling from the loss and overwhelmed with the tasks before them. There were living arrangements to see to, custody arrangements to contend with, but first, always, a body that needed respectful disposition.

Increasingly we are receiving calls from folks who are preparing for death. A client might have just received a scary diagnosis, or decided it was time to get their ducks in a row. Sometimes we’re doing basic Advance Planning paperwork, and sometimes we’re figuring out how to provide more comprehensive support (like giving rides and helping with tasks around the house) when someone is no longer ambulatory.

Our model is to have one full-time, paid, staff member who is the main point of contact for all clients, while services and support are delivered by a group of volunteers. We are working to formalize this group and standardize the services we offer, and we are pursuing options that will allow us to reimburse our deathcare providers for some portion of their labor, without having to pass that cost on to our clients.

Could you tell us about your Death Concierge program, and how it benefited from the Good Death Fellowship?

The Death Concierge Program is how we meet the community where they’re at in terms of need. From Day One we’ve operated a VOIP phone line that takes calls from anyone who is needing help. We listen to what those needs are and do our best to meet them.

We also listen to the needs and passions of deathcare workers in our community, and have established an ongoing, monthly Community Deathcare meeting at which we network and share information with local and regional providers about important resources at end of life. We work to develop and maintain relationships with social workers, grief counselors, and death doulas in our community, as well as with local funeral homes and hospice agencies. We are continually looking for gaps to fill, and for opportunities to partner with like-minded organizations and individuals to enhance the benefit for all involved.

Over time, we’ve developed some parameters around what we can and can’t provide, but we still get calls from some of our first clients when they’re struggling to connect with a service we don’t offer, and we do our best to help them.

We help families navigate purchasing funeral services, ensuring they can easily compare prices and put together the package they want and that they can afford. Some families want help setting up a crowdfunding website, or negotiating with the funeral home, the hospital morgue, or the Coroner’s office, for more time to come up with funds. We support families�� memorialization of a loved one by helping draft obituaries or creating a funeral program as a keepsake. When we can’t cobble together the hefty fee for any method of disposition, we encourage families to still memorialize somehow, gathering in a home or a park, to share stories and distribute keepsakes.

The Good Death Fellowship provided critical funding to ramp up the Death Concierge Program during Wake’s second year of operation. Funding helped Wake to stabilize the program, define a scope of services, and create a workflow, including an intake process.

It was hugely legitimizing to receive this support from such a beloved and trusted institution. In addition to the funding’s critical role in sustaining our program, we also benefited from the recognition of being profiled as a Good Death Fellow. The Order of the Good Death also published a call for volunteers on Wake’s behalf, which has been significantly and positively impactful for our small organization.

What are the challenges you encounter running a community death care organization?

Funding is the greatest challenge to running a community deathcare organization, which is no surprise as it’s also the main barrier to accessing quality deathcare.

Furthermore, if a deathcare provider (a or any person providing non-medical support in dying) wants to earn a living wage providing this important care, then the burden falls to the dying person or their community to be able to pay for the care. This means that often only affluent families can afford to hire deathcare providers outside of whatever is available via their insurance benefits (hospice, palliative care, home health, etc.). An individual can choose to offer this care on a volunteer basis, but doing so can be unsustainable, financially and/or emotionally.

As a result, most families end up just muddling through their deathcare needs, cobbling together the care they depend on through an extended community of family and friends. As you might imagine, this has mixed results that often play out along socio-economic lines.

Another challenge is the restrictive legal landscape for end-of-life care. Deathcare is inordinately restricted, especially in Louisiana, requiring a licensed funeral director to handle many basic deathcare tasks such as transporting a body, holding a wake or memorial service with the body present, etc. , a body must be in the custody of a licensed funeral director from death until disposition, so a family must hire a licensed funeral director to chaperone any activity (bathing, wake, funeral, etc.) with their loved one. This can be prohibitively expensive for families.

If someone wanted to start a death care collective in their community what are some of the initial things they would need to do?

Do your due diligence to understand what resources already exist within the community and map these, to determine where the greatest gaps are. Start with where there is perceived need but, above all else, listen to your community. Survey care providers in your region and ask what they see as the greatest need. Be sure to speak to those dealing with end-of-life within the healthcare system, but also look at those dealing with death after it has occurred �� which will primarily be those in the funeral industry. Look at your local laws, particularly at your state’s indigent death program, and how it may change from region to region throughout your state. What happens to someone in your area when a family can’t afford even the most affordable disposition? Understand how many people are “lost�� to the indigent death program. Try to find these people’s communities. There’s almost always a family member or friend trying to see to that person’s needs, but they might not be able to raise the money, or they may not be able to get in touch. Try to meet your community right where it’s at in terms of need and be prepared to pivot as the needs change.

Wake was recently featured in the Washington Post article for your ��spearheaded by board member Ezra Salter, who is working with The Order to expand to other states. Could you give an overview of the guide? What has been the response to it?

The Louisiana LGBTQ+ End of Life Guide is a comprehensive primer on end-of-life care in Louisiana with the explicit inclusion of issues relevant to the LGBTQIA+ community. The guide covers specific steps people can take to protect the inclusion and agency of chosen family (as opposed to or in addition to biological family) at end of life. Examples of topics the guide covers include a document called a Primary Right of Disposition, which assigns the right to make decisions about what happens to your body after death to a person of your choosing (rather than to legal next of kin), information about how to ensure the correct gender marker is used on a death certificate, and how to advocate for oneself in the hetero- and cis-normative healthcare and deathcare systems.

The response to the guide has been so positive and we’ve heard from many folks across the U.S. who are interested in seeing something similar for their state. We’re thrilled the Order of the Good Death will be working with Wake board member, Ezra Salter, to develop similar resources for other states.

Applications for our Good Death Fellowship will open again summer 2023.

Fellowships are open to thought leaders and community organizers within the death positive community that have a project intended to make��death a more meaningful, sustainable, and equitable experience for all, including but not limited to��education, community care, art, events, technology, and/or advocacy.

This grant provides funding to selected Fellows to launch or advance their existing work on a specific project in their area of expertise. In addition to funding they will receive expert support, access to resources, and connection to a community with a passion for changing the future of death care.

Visit our to learn more. Meet all of our 2022