Undertaken With Love

Additional Resources

Dealing Creatively With Death: A Manual of Death Education and Simple Burial by Ernest Morgan, an older source, focuses on the death care practices of several communities, including North Carolina's Celo community near Burnsville.

The Natural Death Handbook is another useful resource, written from a British perspective, but still containing advice and tips for the DIY funeral not always found in other sources.

Living Into Dying: A Journal of Spiritual and Practical Deathcare for Family and Community by Nancy Jewel Poer is an excellent guide to practical care that is also deeply spiritual in its approach.

Both Crossings: Caring for Our Own at Death and Final Passages offer training manuals that provide in-depth instructions on the skills involved, in addition to instructor-led training opportunities.

"Passing Through Our Hands," a DVD by our own Donna Belk and her colleague Sandy Booth, both of Austin, Texas, is an excellent portrayal of one home funeral committee's introduction to the practical skills involved. At only $15 per copy, it is affordable enough to purchase several for passing around among your own committee members or other groups in your community. 

Prepare for Chapter 5

The assignments for the next gathering of your home funeral committee are to:

• Read the text of the next chapter
• As individuals, write down what you might consider to be the basic aim of your committee. Which tasks would you associate with this aim? Which tasks would you consider to fall outside the scope of your aim?
• Come to the gathering with the dual intention of offering your perspectives on aim and scope as well as holding back from doggedly imposing your preferences on the whole committee if no easy consensus can be reached.