After Jordon died I spent a lot of time in nature.  My sensory mind was in overload and I needed to connect with what was real.  I noticed my immediate environment so much more and appreciated the beauty in the dying trunks of trees, the fallen leaves, the dead beetles on the ground.  I also noticed the new shoots of flowers and grasses, the bees buzzing all around me, and the singing of the birds.  Life and death were all around me in amazing glory and it all was happening harmoniously in sync right before my eyes. Seeing life and death in nature helped me understand what was untimely in my eyes as a source of an eternal answer as to Jordon’s death at the young age of 41. I was able to reconcile my grief through nature. Birth, living, dying, and death were cyclical for all things and some of it happens in a predictable way as we think it should and some of it not.  Our environment dictates.  Our human footprint dictates.  The decisions we make impact the world around us and we are all in this together.

As in nature, I have discovered there is a movement to return to true nature after death.  We as a society see funerals and memorial services as a “structured definite” in order to pay homage to those who have passed away and in some locations its even written into law.  We place them in coffins and bury them.  My husband was cremated into ashes and we keep them with us in an urn in my sanctuary. We had a very costly memorial service for him at the funeral home near the town where we lived which was not a good experience.  I now am thinking outside the ritual of what is commonplace and have decided that I want to be a tree.  I will be naturally buried under a sapling tree and continue to join the cycle of nature. Amen.

I took this picture in Telluride, Colorado of the Aspen Trees in the fall.  They are all interconnected and have “eyes” on their trunks.  I want to be an Aspen Tree so I can see and communicate and soak in the sun yet again.