I’m only 29 and this subject has long been on my mind… how I lay to rest. For my age and experience it seems a bit cryptic. It is. Regardless, when I pass:
Dear Family and Friends,
I don’t have many phobias, but being buried alive seems to be the only one I can identify. Waking up and being caged and then screaming and scratching and scratching and scratching… until you really die. Truly, it’s not really the being buried alive part but being buried in a box. It’s our contemporary burial process that just doesn’t feel right. Pumped full of chemicals, dressed in our Sunday best… it’s creepy. It’s damn creepy. Again, it just stems back to the “it just doesn’t seem right” thing for me, i.e. it’s not natural.
I’ve always just wanted to die with the boots on, as they say. It could be an accident and I go quick but if my life is to drag out and I am nearing death to the point where I am to die in a bed I say, “fuccckkkk that, I’m going on a never returning walkabout. If you want to remember me put a gravestone in the yard, peace.”
One day, when preparing a lesson for a class, I came across this video: Jae Rhim Lee: My mushroom burial suit
The gears in my head started to spin and, “Wow”, I thought, “this is actually possible”. I go on my walkabout lay to rest and quick decomposition takes place. I’m no poison to the earth but, rather, quick the refreshing intake.
Neil deGrasse Tyson put it best when he rebutted an odd inquiry (go to minute 1:12:01) asking what he would request at his time of execution: “ I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime” ….
Now that feels natural. That feels right. That I can be at peace with considering how I will remain “ Requiescat in pace”. Thing is, I don’t want to be a dirty meal. I’d like to be gourmet. I enjoyed the loin of the deer my family hunts and the potatoes, tomatoes, etc. that we grow in our garden. I would like to be a delightful meal but with all these toxins currently in my system and then the embalming toxins that just isn’t possibly. Luckily, Jae Rhim Lee presents an ingenious solution for that.
So don’t stand in the way of my walkabout in my mushroom burial suit. I’m going into the mountains and I’m not coming out. Don’t delay my cosmic journey with chemical embalming and lacker covered coffins. My energies and content are going to be dispersed properly in this life cycle — the thought pleases me so.
Love,
Draegohn Kihn
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Also, if you love mushrooms: Paul Stamets: 6 ways mushrooms can save the world
