Living on the corner of a T-intersection that connects neighborhoods, I’ve become accustomed to finding any number of lost or abandoned items in both my back and front yards: tennis balls, toys, notes from people unknown to others unknown, trash, and piles of dog poop for which the dog owners didn’t care to be responsible. Recently, however, I found an item that had clearly been intentionally placed on the bricks below my bay window. The discovery of this rock, carefully hand painted, was already strange even for me, but only became stranger once I figured out whose image was on this rock: Santa Muerta – Holy Death.

In learning more about the Bony Lady, I was struck by just how frequently some people consider this folk saint/deity—a personification of death—outright evil. Is death evil? As I thought about this, I couldn’t help feeling as though modern Western culture has taken our collective existential anxiety about death and dying and pushed it past “taboo subject” into “villainous bogyman” territory. Yet, for as much fear and avoidance as it causes, death is – as they say—one of life's two certainties: a certainty for which people are often even less prepared for than filing their taxes. 

Yet, it isn’t always, and doesn’t have to be, that way. Years ago, when my grandparents died, their preplanning helped make my family’s grief easier to manage, in no small part because all of the decisions surrounding what to do with them had already been made and arranged.  However, as I talk to more people, the now traditional, standard burial in the United States is both poorly understood in terms of what it entails, but more personally, doesn’t resonate with the beliefs of an increasing number of people.  When I would make mention of alternative possibilities, there was a sense of relief and a little surprise in finding out that not only might they be able to have the funerary procedures they preferred, but that in some instances, there was historical and cultural underpinnings to their preferences.

All of these instances have coalesced into this website, where the numerous facets of death – cultural, historical, religious and environmental—will be explored openly, and not euphemistically, so that in learning about these topics, more people will feel comfortable and ready to honestly discuss and plan for their own death and undertaking.  Posts will be up every other week except during the month of October when, because of the more open atmosphere around death, dying and related subjects, I’ll post articles weekly.

Welcome to Alternative Undertakings, where numerous facets of death are discussed, and where you can begin to plan your end.