Mallory McDuff - Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love

Praise for Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love

A living testament to a conscious life because it does not shun death, but embraces it. Every household should have this essential book in their library as a reference point and a point of revelation, pragmatic and visionary at once. Freedom lives within these candid and composed pages. Our Last Best Act is a gentle and compassionate bow to the Earth. Let our decomposition be our resurrection.

Terry Tempest Williams, author of Erosion: Essays of Undoing

Our Last Best Act will change your death, and maybe even your life.

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

Mallory McDuff delves into the difficult topic of death with grace and aplomb, showing how dying, and the choices we make in the aftermath of death, is a mutual and intimate experience that extends across generations.

Devi Lockwood, author of 1,001 Voices on Climate Change: Everyday Stories of Flood, Fire, Drought, and Displacement from around the World

A worthwhile and decidedly pleasant book that aids a valuable purpose in our complicated times and truly speaks to one of the deepest responsibilities of being human: caring for and burying our dead.

Elizabeth Fournier, author of The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial

Mallory McDuffs commitment to explore in depth the options available to us when we die, and to complete her own end of life plans, in alignment with the earth, and the realities of climate change, is admirable in and of itself. Our Last Best Act exemplifies beautifully how one individuals intentions and courage can model new ways of being for others and help transform society for the greater good.

Lucinda Herring, green funeral director, home funeral guide, and author of Reimagining Death: Stories and Practical Wisdom for Home Funerals and Green Burials

This book is both practical and political, earthy and spiritual. It will help you think about not only your death. but also your life, with fearlessness and clarity.

Lauren F. Winner, author of Wearing God

More than a fascinating manual on how to plan for death, Our Last Best Act is a loving invitation to courageously face a great and sacred responsibility.

Janisse Ray, author of Wild Spectacle: Finding Wholeness in a World Beyond Humans

Mallory McDuffs heartfelt saga of discovery will leave you inspired by death and less afraid of it.

Amy Cunningham, funeral director and owner, Fitting Tribute Funeral Service

Mallory McDuff tells the story of the journey we are all on with wit, intention, insight, and tantalizing curiosity. Her vibrant description of conservation burial captures the essence of our mission that includes family harmony, personal resonance, and environmental justice when contemplating one of our most potentially impactful lifeand deathdecisions.

Lee Webster, former President of the Green Burial Council International and the National Home Funeral Alliance, and co-founder of the Conservation Burial Alliance and the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance

It has been a blessing to read Our Last Best Act while my attention has been on my own mothers death. I urgently want friends and family to read it as they plan for their peaceable end as a part of healing this earth.

Brian Sellers-Petersen, Agrarian Missioner for the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia and coordinator of Good News Gardens for The Episcopal Church.

Mallory McDuff

Foreword by Becca Stevens

Broadleaf Books

Minneapolis

OUR LAST BEST ACT

Planning for the End of Our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love

Copyright 2021 Mallory McDuff. Printed by Broadleaf Books, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email or write to Permissions, Broadleaf Books, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Cover design: James Kegley

Cover image: MUSTAFFA KAMAL IKLIL/iStock

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-6446-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-6447-3

While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Authors Note: This book has been written with the help of interviews, secondary research, field visits, social-media posts, and observation. In some cases, names and identifying details have been changed to respect and protect the privacy of others. Dialogue has been reconstructed based on extensive notes taken during interviews and my own recollections. In the text, I used the word earth to encompass multiple meanings (soil, ground, planet, home) and chose not capitalize it. I have tried my best to tell my story while honoring each of the many stories featured in these pages.

For Lyn and Margaret,

Friends forever

About ten years ago, I was walking with a friend in the woods outside Nashville, Tennessee when we passed indentations in the earth around some paw paw trees. My friend pointed toward the slight depressions in the ground: Those are where former slaves were buried before this became a natural area, she said.

Im a pastor who has worked for three decades with women who have survived the streets, jails, and trafficking, yet these words made me feel weak in the knees. Those unmarked sunken spaces in the earth seemed sacred, and I wanted to learn more.

Soon I became part of a small group that founded the first conservation cemetery in Tennessee, where natural burials help to protect the land and honor the dead. Now Larkspur Conservation spans more than four hundred acres of green hills and valleys, and we have laid many to rest in a way that honors the earth, our bodies, and the sweet burial rites from long ago. It has been a gift to learn that even in death, we can find healing and authenticity in ritual and burial practices.

As a young priest in 1996, I began serving women survivors of trafficking, trauma, and addiction. From my own history of childhood trauma, I knew that for healing to occur, caring for bodies was integral. I founded Thistle Farms because I believed with all my heart that we cant love one another without caring for the wellbeing of our bodies, our economies, and our spiritual journeys. The community offers this wellbeing to individual women and challenges cultural myths about why women are on the streets and what it takes to welcome women home. From the beginning, we believed that love heals. Women survivors first manufactured and sold healing oils because they were profitable, theologically grounding, and nurturing for both the producers and consumers. Now the healing oils and other body products sold across the country have helped thousands of women find sanctuary.

All justice work is connected. If it is not healing to our bodies, it is not healing to our spirits. If it is not healing to the earth, it is not good for us. This is true in our lives as well as our deaths and reflects the central themes of Our Last Best Act. With her daughters, Mallory McDuff spent a year researching options to revise her final wishes in a way that valued the climate and community, as well as her parents whose sudden deaths changed her forever. Through first-hand research and intimate storytelling, she explores how we can build those connections between life, death, and earth in our own communities, especially in a climate crisis.