[SEMCO] Considering Your Final Footpring

[Tompkins, Laurie (DCR)]

Considering Your Final Footprint: Green Burial and Choices for After-Death Care

Community members are invited to the Waquoit Bay Reserve Visitor Center on Tuesday, August 25 from 7-8:30 to learn about the concept of green burial and natural death care.  Heather Massey of the Natural Deathcare Collaborative and Carol Coan of Green Burial Massachusetts will present "Considering Your Final Footprint," a program that will introduce options to make informed decisions on this topic.

Most Cape Codders have come to realize the importance of paying attention to environmental issues in every area of life but few consider the impact of choices for after death care. This presentation  includes a brief overview of the issues and alternatives, and in addition, focuses more specifically on one option that can be better for the environment, natural or conservation burial. This workshop will help you think through issues and have the information needed to explore natural death care, and to discuss options with family and friends.

Volunteers continue to make progress on starting natural burial cemeteries in Massachusetts, joining a growing number that already exist in America and worldwide.    This workshop will provide basic information on what one needs to know to care for a loved one at home directly after death, and will also explore options for natural burial and discuss the work being done to establish Massachusetts' first green cemetery.

Heather Massey is a Family Deathcare consultant and educator. She offers trainings and presentations through the Natural Deathcare Collaborative and "In Loving Hands", a center for natural deathcare education on Cape Cod.  She is facilitator for the Cape Cod Death Cafe and Living with Dying. She is a director emerita of the National Home Funeral Alliance and Cape Cod volunteer contact for the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Eastern Massachusetts.

Carol Coan, PhD, is an anthropologist with a special interest in human anatomy and in what we do with our bodies after death.  She regularly teaches classes on end of life options and planning.  She is a former president of the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts, and continues to field calls to their information line.  Carol is also a founding member of Green Burial Massachusetts, whose mission is to start Massachusetts' first conservation cemetery.

Heather explains, "In practical, as well as theoretical ways, this workshop will help you stay true to your values during the momentous transition of death. The way we've typically come to take care of our dead in America has environmental ramifications that most of us haven't been aware of. Natural burial in a biodegradable casket provides the opportunity for the body to simply return to the earth, rather than thwarting the natural process with the use of embalming fluid, metal or hardwood caskets and concrete burial vaults."
The program will be held in the Waquoit Bay Reserve Visitor Center, 131 Waquoit Highway, Waquoit, MA 02536. For more information check www.waquoitbayreserve.org<http://www.waquoitbayreserve.org>  or call 508-457-0495 x107. The program is free and open to all.


Laurie Tompkins
Event Coordinator
Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve
P.O. Box 3092
Waquoit, MA 02536
Tel. 508-457-0495 x108
Fax 617-727-5537
www.waquoitbayreserve.org<http://www.waquoitbayreserve.org/>

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