Juneteenth

Last Wednesday was a federal holiday celebrating the freeing of slaves in Texas. It was also our 19th anniversary. 19 on the 19th. That only happens once.

A card I created for Ellen for our anniversary. ********************* It was very hot, so we decided get cool by going to the Amherst cinema to a double feature. We saw Songs of the Earth, a Norwegian film, and Tuesday -a film about death. Songs of the Earth was beautifully filmed, and featured an older man - 85 years old - hiking in mountains above the fjords of Norway. He and his wife were meditating on growing older and dying, so the film cut close to the bone, but in a gentle, lovely way. Tuesday featured a young woman who was terminally ill, her mother, who could not accept that her daughter was dying, and a parrot - a macaw, actually - who was the grim reaper, and had the ability to change size instantly, getting very small or very large, and it could also talk. This was not a gentle film. It was a very strange film. Ellen disliked it and I had mixed feelings. It raised a lot of questions, but parts of it were very uncomfortable to watch. We decided not to recommend it to our friends. It was timely, however, because the previous day, Tuesday the 18th, Ellen, John and I visited Higher Ground, a "Green Burial" cemetery near us in Williamsville, VT, that is just being formed and where I will be buried. Green burial means that you are not cremated, not embalmed, there is no vault, no casket. Your body is simply wrapped in a 100% cotton shroud, and placed in a hole in the ground, about 4 feet deep, and you quickly decompose and become soil. There will be no carbon emissions connected to my death as there would be with cremation, which I like. It is a beautiful spot. The cemetery is wooded, and will remain so. Graves will be scattered among the trees. Here are some photos:

The currant entrance to "Higher Ground" which is next to Mike Mayer's house. Eventually, there will be a road built into a lower part of the five acres, but they do not have a permit for that in place yet. The circular woodpile you can see in the background was built by Mike. It is quite a work of art.

Mike near his mother's grave.

The general appearence of the woods. Rupa Cousins, whom I also knew very well, is buried to the left of Pam.*************************** Higher Ground, which is five acres in size, has been formed out of a much larger parcel of land which was purchased decades ago by a couple who became good friends of Shirley and me, David and Pam Mayer. Pam was very involved with Hospice, where I worked with her in training volunteers, and she was also very involved in Vermont Healing Tools, which Shirley helped create. I also knew both through the Unitarian Church, West Village Meeting House, where, back then, I often preached. We became quite close as couples, often went to their home for a meal, or, for some reason, met at a restaurant for lunch up in Lebanon, NH. The Mayers called their large parcel of land "Manitou" and it became a place of healing and spiritual growth. They have both died, and their son, Michael, has taken on the role of developing the land and has done much of the legal and paper work needed to create Higher Ground. Many years ago, Pam was buried there, and her dear friend, Rupa Cousins, also. They were buried there before Higher Ground was formed, but you can do a natural burial on your own land - you just have to register the grave with the town. I think you could say they were the inspiration for Higher Ground. Rupa was not family, but when Michael asked about burying her there, the town clerk at that time told him (mistakenly) "he could do anything he wanted to in Vermont." Since he acted in good faith on her advice, he was later given a waiver. The main issue I had to resolve was not being buried where Shirley and Betsey are buried - in the Dummerston Center Cemetery. To be buried there I would need either to be cremated (as both Shirley and Betsey were), or be embalmed and in a casket. Our friend Elizabeth Christie showed me a way to resolve that. She had the same dilemma with her husband, John. She is saving hair and nail clippings, and they will be buried where John is buried when she dies. So that is what I am doing. I have the added feature of still having a small jar of Shirley's ashes, and they will go with me into Higher Ground. There will be a small flat marker at my Higher Ground grave, and I also will add my name to a marker in Dummerston Center. I seem to have solved the problem of how to be in two places at the same time! Going back to Juneteenth, after the movies, we met Katie and Brendon in Amherst for supper. We went to Beuno Y Sano which has been significantly remodeled since our last time there, which might have been before the pandemic. I had a delicious fish taco.

The newly designed interior of Beuno Y Sano .