'Life is wonderful and death enhances it,' says Simon Ferrar, natural burial advocate.
An interview withSimon Ferrar, the founder of Clandon Wood Natural Reserve and Natural Burial Ground.
Laura Dodsworth’s The Free Mind goes to 13,000 subscribers in 109 countries each week. Become a paid supporter to access every article and support independent writing.
Simon Ferrar is a grief advocate, soon-to-be author and the founder of Clandon Wood Natural Reserve and Natural Burial Ground. He advocates for an open discussion of death and natural burial.
You founded Clandon Wood natural burial centre, and it is now one of the largest natural burial sites in the UK. Most people are not drawn to the idea of working with death. What drew you to this vocation?
My interest in the way we care for our dead developed from attending my Aunt Rosie’s natural burial in 2005. A beautifully simple service in the Worcestershire countryside: an English weaved willow coffin simply decorated with wildflowers made me question, ‘Why don’t we do it this way?’
My experiences since have profoundly shaped my journey to make our preparations for death and for funerals better suited to our needs as human beings.
The purpose of Clandon Wood is to provide a permanent and sustainable legacy that connects people with funerals and rituals that are rich in meaning, in-tune with nature and kind to our hearts.
I am now convinced that everyone should be aware of what must be done when someone dies and all of the other options and choices that are open to them.
Clandon Wood is also a wildlife centre. Marrying death and life in this way is a beautiful idea, it signals an acceptance of death as part of life, but it is unusual.
A natural burial ground must be designed to work sustainably, to create a permanent and natural legacy for the future. Clandon Wood is now an important Nature Reserve, a haven and home for an ever-increasing population of native flora and fauna. 31 acres of wildflower meadows (now a very rare landscape in the UK), ponds, wetland and young woodland ensure that this protected landscape is a destination in itself and not just a final destination. A permanent green space where the four seasons reflect our own lives. Spring welcomes the birth of new life; Summer reflects the time to grow and flourish; Autumn mirrors our continuing maturity and Winter ably demonstrates that when everything dies and composts, it is the final contribution to life’s full circle.
Life affirming rituals such as baby-naming, coming of age and marriages also feature as part of the tapestry of Clandon Wood as well as performing arts and holistic events.
Once we used to lay out our own dead. Now we call 24 hour funeral parlours. Why have our attitudes towards death changed in this country?
Firstly, there seems to have been a gradual acceptance over the last century or so that the care and preparation of our dead be outsourced from the familial or neighbourly community. It is generally understood that carpenters or builders who would have made the coffin and probably having suitable transport, first ‘undertook’ the practical elements to get the deceased from home to the churchyard or cemetery. Since those times, undertakers seem to have ‘professionalised’ themselves into funeral directors that will service the whole process from the death to the grave or crematorium. Not just in the collection, care and preparation of the body in their own premises but they have also added in other elements, all under one ‘umbrella’ such as viewing, embalming, processions of vehicles, floral tributes, orders of service and memorialisation including stonemasonry. This can be viewed as a one-stop-shop that takes all the worry and stress away from organising a funeral or the dilution and suppression of a vital human ritual that we need to be a part of, for the natural process of grieving.
Secondly in my view, attitudes seem to have changed towards death with the improvement of health care especially with the reduction in infant mortality. Only a few generations ago it was not unusual and I think, generally accepted that many children would not survive their parents. The lives of people dying before an allotted and assumed long lifespan now seem to be regretted more than other deaths.
If someone dies young or before their parents, it is somehow not regarded as ‘right.’
Which leads to the next question….
Do you think people should be more accepting of death, more comfortable with it? If so, how could we achieve that?
Yes, absolutely, but we are human beings and death presents most of us with fear of the unknown and, in my experience, it is that fear that prevents us from addressing our own mortality.
Providing a space and opportunities to promote discussion on death and dying such as Death Café and Coffin Club are proven groups that helps to break the ice on the subject. This year I will be promoting a talking platform called Departure Lounge that will feature not only in fixed venues but also in shopping centres and high street pop-up locations.
For me personally, the recognition and acceptance of ‘Today, I might die,’ does not inhibit my life but enhances it. Acknowledging the fact, that an individual I am greeting or talking to or saying goodbye to, may be my last ever interaction with them certainly heightens every experience.
So, my recipe is to imagine that each and every moment could be your last.
What would be your last words or actions before leaving home in the morning if you knew you wouldn’t be coming back in the evening … ever?
Alkaline hydrolysis (aquamation) is now available in the UK and some people want human composting (terramation) to be made legal. To be honest, both processes somehow feel irreverent to me. What do you think of these new technologies used for body disposition?
Another huge question, Laura, as it touches on so many aspects of choice and ritual.
To try and put new technologies into context, it was only 139 years ago that mechanical cremation became a new technology. A change that many opposed, which consequently forced Parliamentary Approval for the first crematorium to operate in Woking in Surrey, which also hosted the first official cremation on the 26th March 1885. There were only three further cremations that year and it wasn’t until the mid-1960’s that cremation started to become the preferred choice of disposition. It is now the choice of over 80% in England and Wales and we think 90% in Surrey.
My view is that likewise, aquamation and composting (which are already legally approved operations in some North American states) will eventually find their place within peoples’ choices in the UK. Personally and perhaps obviously, I am not at all in accordance with their processes, albeit I do respect the choice of an individual.
Notwithstanding the environmental, respect or irreverence considerations (which are huge subjects in themselves) my personal divergence from all of these technologies including the unsustainable processes of burial in conventional cemeteries, comes from the view that they are not necessary.
Simply, from birth our bodies grow and are nurtured by the fruits of this earth — is it not a responsible and respectful decision to give it back to Mother Earth when we die and in a manner that protects existing valuable landscapes; creates new, sustainable and productive landscapes or improves existing, unmanaged and/or unproductive land?
My answer to the question of irreverence and disrespect is that they rest only in the opinion of others.
I feel that the reverence of acknowledging a life lived is felt within our own hearts and held in our own minds, for that respect and those feelings and memories are ours alone.
The choice of disposition made by others should not negate or impinge on the essence of what the deceased’s life meant to us personally.
What is vitally important though, is that a ritual of recognition and gratitude of the life lived is performed in some other way if the ‘official’ funeral does not fulfil or satisfy an individual’s needs.
What have you got planned for your own funeral?
I have had two funerals for myself already.
At our first two open days at Clandon Wood I invited everyone to ‘Come To My Funeral’ to illustrate what a funeral at a natural burial ground might look like. Two of brothers helped to carry my willow basket (I wasn’t in it — I was commentating!) and placed it on the horse drawn haycart. The gentle procession to graveside began with a Frank Sintra tribute singing My Way. In the meadow was an a capella group harmonising Swing Low Sweet Chariot and a beautiful violin piece by Boccherini welcomed us at graveside. My coffin was placed over the grave and four volunteers helped to lower it into my shallow (3’ 6”), hay-lined grave to the sound of the Last Post played by my mate on his trumpet. My daughter then let a dove fly free. Afterwards she said, ‘Well dad, that was a bit weird!’
Many then had a ride back on the haycart.
I believe in the power of compassionate, grounded and intimate rituals for healing and by opening my ceremonies up to members of the public it not only offered a different perspective but also human connection in a moment of reflection and collective grieving. So much so, a young lady came up to me afterwards, gave a me a big hug and with tears in her eyes, said ‘Thank you, Simon, that was the funeral for my mum I never had.’
Something as emotionally remote as a demonstration funeral had had that impact and it made me realise then, just how powerful the funeral ritual can be and without one we can carry on grieving for years, perhaps until the day we die.
My next funeral is on May 20th 2024 at 12noon – this time I am going for a shroud not a coffin. Everyone is invited.
My epitaph is – I Hope I made a Difference
What is your proudest and most important achievement?
The creation of the Natural Burial Trust Fund that should ensure Clandon Wood remains a Nature Reserve for centuries to come.
What is the aspect of your work that people most disagree with and why?
I don’t get much disagreement or criticism. Most discussions are about how and why natural burial differs from the conventional norm. Some ‘conventionalists’ feel that natural burial is disrespectful for any number of reasons such as family arranged funerals not involving funeral directors, using a family car for transporting the deceased, not dressing in black, an apparent lack of solemnity and the absence of physical memorialisation or ‘proper’ coffins.
For me Natural Burial is the traditional way of things as we have been caring for our dead this way for thousands of years. It is a responsible way to care for our dead and the living in equal measure.
It is easy on the eye, kind to our hearts and gentle on our world.
Describe your biggest epiphany and how it shaped you?
The ‘why don’t we do it this way?’ question on a cold and sunny November day in 2005 was the one event that has changed my life, my being and my thinking.
It has made me aware of the importance of ritual in caring for our dead and how we acknowledge the life that had been lived.
And the real biggy — ‘am I ready to die?’ — not practicalities like insurances or a Wills but in my heart and mind — ‘am I ready to die?’
If you could rewind a few decades, would you choose a new career, or would you do something differently?
I wouldn’t change a thing.
Nothing can compare to the privilege, joy and rewards that my service gifts to me and the joy, peace and happiness that it brings to others.
I have had so many hugs and shed so many tears with families that have thanked and blessed me for helping in their lives at such a painful time, being a part of their grief journey and even changing their perception of life and death!
How could I want to change any of that?
If you were an absolute monarch for a day, what law would you introduce?
Regular, compulsory contributions into a personal end-of life trust fund that could end funeral poverty.
What is the most interesting thing you have learned in the last year?
Not just over the last year but over a growing period of time (and it isn’t learned yet, this is an intense period of realisation and a gradual, unhurried understanding for me) I am just beginning to distil the things I have learned, through the dead I have cared for, the families I have supported and the exquisite rituals I have had the honour to be a part of. Then I weigh all of that, against the utter wretchedness of the isolation of a death through a pandemic or the lifelong grieving because of the absence of a meaningful ritual.
In one sentence perhaps…
Life is wonderful, death enhances it.
Death is not be feared. I don’t care what my family does. Funerals are for the ones left behind. I know whom I have believed and know where I will be… God is good.
Thanks Laura and Simon. Lovely article and energies. IMHO and experience, death is the key to life, and suicide (grief, survival) is the key to death. We remain brainwashed children (and that's an insult to children) until we disintegrate almost completely, via soul-rending trauma(s), and so grow spiritually and emotionally (usually physically and healthily too) through these painful gifts. And then onto the ethereal dimensions of 'realities', beyond the physical realm. We are vibrations, frequencies and energies. Fearlessness is love. Letting go our soul before we die is a freedom not taught in schools. Love is infinite, whether we believe in gods or a God or creator or chakras or auras, or whatever. All that we imagine to be real is sensed in our mind, heart, gut, and being - of consciousness, subconscious; individual and collective - and so in the physical realm this is our repeating, perhaps recycling reincarnating, chance to learn. It's a soul thing. A love thing. Self-love and self-forgiveness. Enjoy every beautiful or harrowing moment, and be kind and grateful, especially for our traumas.