Green Funerals Vermont

 

One hundred and fifty years ago, about almost all funerals were green funerals. Death was more common. People died more frequently from disease and injury. After a loved one died, families bathed and prepared the body in a plain wooden coffin. Embalming a body rarely occurred. The body was kept in the home in the parlor room for family and friends to visit. The body was buried in a family plot on the family farm or in a simple town cemetery. In many countries, these customs are still common today. Slowly, Americans became less familiar with death and an entire funeral industry evolved to take care of matters of death. Natural funerals all but disappeared.

 

Twenty years ago the Natural Death Centre opened in England. Their goal was and still is to help people arrange inexpensive, family-organized, and environmentally-friendly funerals. At the same time, natural burial grounds began appearing in England. Today there are over two hundred natural burial grounds in England.

 

Today green funerals are making a slow but steady re-appearance in the USA. The first natural burial ground in the USA, Ramsey Creek in South Carolina, opened a little over ten years ago. Today, there are over twenty natural burial grounds open and another twenty planned. Jerri Grace Lyons in California has been the leader in the growing home funeral movement. She has assisted in hundreds of home funerals and now trains others to be death midwives.

 

Green funerals are moving from being a new phenomenon to being more common and available to all. Five years ago, the opening of a natural burial ground or occurrence of a home funeral made national news. Today practitioners such as Green Funerals Vermont assist many folks to make use of these same services.