Adapted from a letter to the Natural Death Centre.
I recently buried my husband in the green burial ground at Oakfield Wood, near Wrabness in Essex.
My husband had always assumed that he would be cremated, as being the most efficient and least demanding-on-precious-space way of disposing of his body. Indeed, we had both recently paid quite a large sum to join the Luxembourg cremation society following the recent opening of a crematorium here. However, I had always said that what I would most like for myself would be for my family and friends to dig a hole and pop me in and cover me over - but I thought this was perhaps too much to ask of people.
When Brian did die, regretfully in hospital but protected from its potential excesses by his living will and by me, and in the privacy of a private room where we could play his favourite music and do little things to make the place more 'ours', I found the last thing I was going to do was to hand him over to the professionals. I had heard about the Natural Death Centre some time ago - on the radio - and set my brother on to tracking you down. As it happened, my sister-in-law had also heard of you and actually had some information. And so I found my way to John Acton, the farmer who runs the Oakfield Wood burial ground.
When I telephoned John to make an appointment to visit, he suggested Hunnaball Funeral Services of Colchester as a firm who had buried people at the site before, and so I called them. I think this was quite important, as Mr Hunnaball warned me that the name Oakfield Wood belies the current nature of the site - the land was farmed until recently and it will be many years before it takes on the aspect of a wood. It was a cold, windy day when I visited and the area looked pretty barren, until you noticed the thousands of tiny trees already planted around the perimeter and the few deciduous saplings planted on some graves. Its saving grace was that there were skylarks singing, even on this cold day. So burying your loved one here is an act of faith in what it will become in the future - and in nurturing the skylarks of the present - and someone has to be in at the beginning!
We did not dig the hole - John Acton did that - and Hunnaballs fetched Brian from the Royal Marsden hospital. They also picked up the Connemara blanket from the Irish shop in London which I had ordered over the phone, and in which Brian was to be covered while lying on a board. No coffin. We helped carry Brian to the grave-side. I said a few words and read a poem, and then we helped the undertakers lower him into the grave. We then had more poems and some people spoke of Brian. And then we all filled in the grave. Very nice for John! The skylarks were still singing.
When we left I felt almost elated. I had asked a lot of the few members of our family and friends who were invited, and I think they were a bit nervous of the whole affair - no easy distancing from what is going on - but they all found it good and right and rather special.
Afterwards, we went to eat at the Stour Bay Café in Manningtree, which was rather special too. I had spoken to the proprietress over the phone and explained why we were coming and what we would have been doing, and that we might be muddy, and I didn't know just when we would arrive because I didn't know how long it took to fill in a grave. She said she didn't mind, and that they would wait until we got there, and she cooked us a wonderful meal and we drank some great wines.
So, that's nearly the end of the story except that it was Brian's birthday soon after I returned to Luxembourg and I used it to celebrate his life. Many friends came to eat, drink, reminisce, read poems, laugh, and cry only a little.
All this has helped me to gently close the door on that part of my life - 37 years of marriage - and open the door to whatever comes next.
Margaret Love, 8 Rue de L'Ernz, L-6196 Eisenborn, G. D. Luxembourg.
This webpage forms part of the Global Ideas Bank (www.globalideasbank.org).
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