I understood quickly why these caregivers would be an appropriate audience; they could use the guide in their work, and cemeteries, though I thought they would put the book in their public spaces for bragging rights, wouldn't necessarily spread the word about other natural burial cemeteries.
But it wasn't until the National Home Funeral Alliance biennial conference that I understood the profound connection between natural/home funeral care and natural/green burial.
It took my father's death for it to sink in that burial or cremation alone doesn't constitute afterdeath care. What happens between death and disposal (an unlovely term that encompasses both the above options)?
By not talking about it our death-phobic culture has lost the language to define what happens after death. Because of this, the most foolproof way to get from death to disposition is to call your local funeral home, though even this act becomes difficult for someone who hasn't thought anything about death--where IS the local funeral home and do I just call up?
What will the funeral home do? It'll pick up the body and transport it to premises where it can be prepared for cremation, or washed, embalmed, made-up, dressed, laid out in a chosen casket, and driven to the cemetery for burial. Paperwork will be filed, a funeral ceremony designed and executed. All for a fee--you can argue the fee is too high but not argue that like any American business, the funeral home needs a profit to survive.
It makes sense to a green burial advocate that someone choosing green burial would want their body handled through this phase in an appropriate way and not embalmed before joining the earth.
For those who address death ahead of time, the conventional route can be exited at some point or bypassed entirely. This is where home funeral guides come in. (I'm not talking here about death doulas, whose alternative to conventional care starts before death.) Home funeral guides help families arrange things after death so that some or all of the tasks are under their control. This may not be for everyone; the thought of physically caring for my father's body after his death didn't appeal, though I could imagine getting to that point myself, perhaps with my husband's body. My father was left in the care of a funeral director who is a strong advocate for green burial, and had the facilities to wash, keep him without embalming, to shroud him and transport him to the burial ground.