![]() It talks of dying as standing on the seashore watching a ship carrying cargo which disappears over the horizon. ![]() That reading was one I first heard at the funeral of the father of a good friend. He died last year, just before our wedding. One of the moments during the service that made me wobble a bit was the readings as they used one – sometimes called “ What is dying?” – that we had at my Dad’s funeral. For me, a quiet, sunny space filled with leaf-whisper and the dappling of sun through the leaves is perfect for dealing with grief not lonely silence, but filled with enough sound and movement to keep your brain occupied while your heart quietly breaks, and quietly mends itself, though it takes a long time. They’re tall and proud at the beginning, when you need the marker, but gradually as the sadness of grief fades and the happiness surfaces, the mound also fades and the woodland stops being background to grief, and comes back into focus as a place of peace to sit and be thankful for the good memories. It was really lovely, actually, and looking around at the other grave sites, I really liked that slowly, the mounds settle back into the ground and become part of the woodland. The sun glowed through the higher leaves, and now and then there was a blink of blue sky as the branches shifted and whispered in the breeze. I looked up during the service, and was fascinated by the moving mosaic of leaves, layer upon layer of them. The grave was under the canopy of a most beautiful beech tree, with other trees closely around. The coffin was made of wickerwork, and the bouquets were simple cut flowers, no oasis or cellophane. Most were covered in woodland flowers and undergrowth – not as if they were unkempt, but as if they were being reclaimed by nature. There are no grave markers, though you can see the mounds for a few years till the soil settles a bit, and as we walked down the path to where the grave was, at first it’s a bit disconcerting, seeing all the mounds under the trees, some more recent and others barely discernible. Went to a funeral which was held in a natural burial place not a graveyard, but a very beautiful stretch of woodland sloping down to the sea.
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