Home funerals & green burials: lessons from our ancestors

It is simple and legal in New Zealand to create your own home funeral or undertake funeral, burial or cremation arrangements, providing an often more beautiful and personal experience without the expense. In most cases it is not necessary to hand your loved one over to strangers.

In days past family and friends did all that was necessary, from washing and dressing the body, often building a coffin (or there are many options for sustainable coffins and shrouds today), transporting the body and so-forth.

It is necessary to comply with New Zealand’s laws, including filing the correct paperwork. In the case of accidental or traumatic deaths, sometimes an undertaker is an appropriate choice.

You can buy a burial plot or crematorium services (little known, but sea burial is also available in specially designated areas off New Zealand’s coast).

It is legal to transport your loved one to their final resting place. (No need to pay an undertaker $500-600 to get from Raglan to Hamilton!)

If you would like guidance in caring for your loved one’s body at home, or designing an intimate home service, give me a call, I’m happy to help.

It’s not scary or dangerous, it’s grounding, uplifting and beautifully personal.

A family who honoured their loved one, their way

Caring for your loved one’s body at home is a personalised way to allow family and friends the time they need to say farewell. It can be followed by either a ‘normal’ funeral in a normal venue, or a simple funeral service at home

This is what’s possible:

• Family and closest friends washing and dressing their loved one.

• Vigiling/Wake for several days with the loved one at home, saying farewell in their own time and way, coming from far and wide…

• Grand-children, picking flowers and decorating their grandma’s hair.

• Real conversations and memories shared.

• All contributing in ways holding meaning for them; choosing clothing, doing nails and hair, choosing and singing songs and readings, photos, decorating the coffin, and transporting in convoy, it is an experience crafted in love.

A beautiful way to care for the planet is for our body to return to the very soil that has nourished us all our lives. There are numerous green burial sites throughout New Zealand.

Natural burial may follow either a traditional or home funeral service, all it requires is that the requirements for green burial are met. This means using decomposable items, from clothing to coffin or shroud, having a tree as opposed to a headstone, and definitely no embalming! Trees are planted and over time native forest is produced, becoming a sanctuary that feeds and homes birds, insects and (usually native) plants.

Green burial sites exist in the Waikato in Hamilton (Newstead) and Leamington (Cambridge), as well as elsewhere around New Zealand.

If you’d like to know about natural burial, I am happy to point you in the right direction of what you need to know. I believe it’s important for families to have choice in what suits their beliefs, needs and environmental footprint.