Rebirthing Our Old Ways of Dying~ Pluto, Uranus

Death has been weighing heavy on my heart & mind in recent weeks. Not because someone close to me has just died, but because Everyone close to me, as well as me, will of course die (our only shared guarantee in this lifetime) and Pluto transiting through my 12th house opposing my natal moon in Cancer is ensuring that I stay acutely aware of this fact. I’ve realized that unless or until I get pretty close to 100% comfortable with this inevitability, I will simply not be able to fully Live. In our cultural milieu, this is no small task. Most of us avoid thinking or talking about death at pretty much all costs– and this also includes the death of non-human animals and plants and our planet as a whole, too. But lately I’ve been happily surprised to see several folks posting articles about the big D- specifically, mostly, describing alternatives and alternatives and alternatives to our traditional funeral routes.

My beloved Mother passed away on an election Tuesday 8+ years ago in her DC home, surrounded by us, her family, as transiting Pluto opposed my Gemini Sun. Just a few days before, we’d positioned her borrowed hospital bed to face the large windows looking out at the autumn-beauty-trees of Rock Creek Park from their 4th story condo. Music had been playing around the clock, and she’d long before eaten what we’d learn would be her last bite (a tiny taste of vegan key lime pie that my dear friend Afi delivered). Our only immediate family member who’d been overseas that weekend had arrived back from her faraway trip~ and last live gestures of love & sweet nothings had all been exchanged. It was nearly midnight when she took her last breath. My sister felt for her pulse where there was none, clocked her time of death, and a fog settled into my soul as I cried myself to sleep for a bit. A few hours later in the middle of that hazy night, I awoke, returned to the living room where she was dead, and climbed onto the bed to snuggle up with her for a while. Getting to lay myself against her side, and rest my head against her shoulder, and give her lifeless body a hug and a kiss was, for me, one of the greatest gifts of her home death. The next morning, the hospice worker who’d been coming over to visit in the days prior came once again, this time to help with the cleaning and dressing process, before her body was to be taken away to the crematorium. I helped with that process, too. As did one of my siblings. We cut off the favorite shirt she’d been wearing, and dressed her in a beautiful and fresh white one. This was my other greatest and most tender gift of her dying how and where she did. I got to interact with her post-mortem body in a way that is so often typically denied to loved ones. In a way that helped make it real and final~ allowed it to be raw and primal. Not everyone wants to have this type of interaction with dead people, and that is okay. But for folks who do want and need to tend to their dead- it is essential (and all too infrequent) that they have the right & opportunity to do so. I’d researched home funerals quite a lot before she passed. I’d attempted to record an ethical will with my Mum, too, in the months before she died. We were blessed in knowing ahead of time that she would most likely be transitioning sometime soon. However, for many people, death comes suddenly, without warning, and far too often without preparation or forethought. If I had it to do over with my Mother, I would’ve discussed what I’ve since learned about cremation and its damaging environmental impacts. And we could have together researched these more sustainable, back-to-earth practices. I know that she would have wanted to physically exit the world in a way that created the least amount of harm. Having the chance to prepare for death is a privilege and a greatly humanizing gift. And, I believe that merging our humanitarian needs around life and death with our environmental responsibilities around humanly-created waste is the next step in our collective evolution. . .

As Pluto, the Lord of the Underworld, makes its final exact square in two weeks time to Uranus, the Lord of Earthquakes and Lightning Bolts~ we collectively feel the tension. We’ve been feeling it hard for several years now- and will continue to for the next year or two more. The last time these two planets interacted so strongly was in the later 1960’s. Mega businesses like Monsanto and conservative collectives such as the funeral industry are desperately trying to hold onto their antiquated, polluting, and profiteering ways of the past, while revolutionary individuals like Katrina Spade of the Urban Death Project, and Jae Rhim Lee of the Infinity Burial Project are bringing our attention to necessary alternatives~ brilliant ideas for more harmonious, connected, and environmentally sustainable approaches to caring for our living and our dead.

History well-demonstrates that groups in power will not willingly relinquish it, and society is generally painfully slow to accept radical change. However, as my teacher Steven Forrest aptly shares in his newsletter this month,

“Human individuals are an entirely different beast than human societies. Sting said it so well in his tune All This Time: “Men go crazy in congregations, but they only get better one by one.” The “least common denominator syndrome” that is so obvious in the news is far less relevant to the individual. We individuals are the quanta in a kind of collective social quantum theory. Some equivalent to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle rests inside of each one of us. Some of us will respond to any astrological stimulus in the worst possible way. . . But others among us will illustrate the highest possibilities of any astrological configuration.”

As Jae Rhim Lee explains their shared vision of a great cultural shift, “from our current culture of death denial and body preservation, to one of decompi-culture, a radical acceptance of death and decomposition. Accepting death means accepting that we are physical beings who are intimately connected to the environment, as the research on environmental toxins confirms. As the saying goes: we came from dust and will return to dust. And once we understand that we are connected to the environment, we see that the survival of our species depends on the survival of the planet… [Which is a step towards] taking responsibility for my own burden on the planet.”

And Katrina Spade shares, “I don’t want my last gesture as a human being, as I die, to be a big ‘fuck you’ to the earth… I’d rather have my last gesture be at the very least benign, or even beneficial. We are full of potential—our bodies are. We have nutrients in us, and there’s no way we should be packed into a box that doesn’t let us go into the earth.”

Now is the time to light and stoke the fire (Aries) of our inner revolutionaries (Uranus), and do what we need to do, as individuals, to create positive, grassroots change on a monumental earthly level (Capricorn), regarding our rights to live and die (Pluto) how we see fit, and to eventually become one with the earth again.

If you could decide right now how you’d like to leave this earthly realm, what would your ideal vision be?