How can death reconcile you with your loved ones, the environment, and God? Bishop Brian Cole interviews Dr. Mallory McDuff, author of “Our Last Best Act” in his latest Reconciling Thought.
Transcript
Hi, East Tennessee Episcopal friends, I’m here today with a really, really good friend of mine, Mallory McDuff, who teaches at Warren Wilson College. Mallory and I have known each other for well over 20 years, meeting first at Warren Wilson College and lots of other deep connections. Since then, it’s been a joy to watch Mallory. Both her teaching life grow and her writing life grow. Her most recent book, Mallory, do you have a copy of that on hand? Is that is that somewhere? Oh my gosh, there is our last best act, planning for the end of our lives. It is just a great book. And Mallory, I’m curious, why did you choose? How did this topic come to you? Well, the full title is our last best act planning for the end of our lives to protect the people and places that we love.
And actually, Brian was an inspiration for the title. Apparently, as the story goes, Wendell Berry’s father’s funeral was described as his last best act, and you had mentioned that to me. And as I was grappling with titles going back and forth with the publisher, I proposed that as just, OK, let me see if this lands. And they loved it. And so, so I’m appreciative of that. This book, actually the impetus for this book, was my father and my mother’s sudden deaths in their fifties and early sixties. They were both killed in two mirror image accidents, biking in my hometown of Fairhope, Alabama. I’m now living in Asheville, North Carolina, Warren Wilson for more than 20 years. After my mom’s death, my father sat us down, his four children, and read to us a two page directive of his, essentially his, funeral plans. Even though he was in the best shape of his life, he wanted a funeral that relied on family and friends. What we now know as a green burial. So, no embalming, no concrete vault and really family involved to the end. And we thought this was just a way he was grieving the loss of our mother. But two years later, he was also killed by a teen driver in a cycling accident.
And in our total shock, his two pages of directives gave us the grounding and momentum. Because we had a plan, we had some things to follow. So in the aftermath of his death, my final wishes were for cremation. And everybody I know that’s how that’s how they want their bodies to be handled after they died. And but I started to learn in the years after my parents’ deaths about options that were available that were more sustainable than flame cremation, and I didn’t even know some of these options existed.
So the book is a one year journey for me to revise my final wishes with both climate change and community in mind and quite frankly, the lives of my two daughters who will be the ones who will have to handle my death when that time comes.
Well, it seems to me, I mean, as a parish priest who has sat with so many families as they made decisions about a liturgy or worship, you know, as far as related to the body, it was just casket or cremation, right? It was. I didn’t. I didn’t have a larger idea of what could happen. And I remember when your father died and you talked about the ways in which you and Margaret in particular, just the role you all had in the care of his body. I remember thinking, I’ve never heard anyone do anything like this before. So, I think your father put many of us on this journey of what this could look like. And it now, whenever I look at the burial office, after knowing you and after having read this book, if I can read this from the burial office in sure and certain hope the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God, our sister, and we commit her body to the ground., earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The one thing I’ve never noticed until after I read your book is there is an asterisk after the word ground and the asterisk takes you to you can either say the deep, the elements or its resting place. And so for me to think about returning your body to the elements, I mean, so much of green burial is like, let’s let’s give this creation back to creation, you know, and it doesn’t need a vault. It doesn’t need the casket. It doesn’t need these things that we think somehow protect the body because the body doesn’t need to be protected because God is protecting the body. And so, yeah, after reading this book, I have changed my plans for what I hope to do or what I hope others will do with my body.
And I was noting the other day that Archbishop Desmond Tutu made use of aquamation. Can you tell folks what aquamation is? So, after at his death, he asked for the process of aquamation. What is that? Well, you know, that choice really put aquamation on the headlines, and it was an act of education, an act of outreach and an act of justice in many ways. Aquamation is a form of cremation that uses water and lye like l-y-e, and so it uses fewer fossil fuels than flame cremation. And the funeral directors that I interviewed for the research for the book really thought that aquamation was going to be a decision that was going to really take off, a process that was going to take off in the U.S. and beyond. It’s legal now in 20 states, but that is also expected to increase over time.
And also had several people, particularly in Knoxville, who once they read the book they’ve said to me Mallory is so funny, They mentioned that, you know, this is a difficult topic. This is a hard topic, but they’ve appreciated your humor and I’m curious for you and having done the work on whether it is a heavy, heavy topic. Is there is there a way in which you think about how you both tell a real story, but also keep some hopefulness or some lightheartedness in this? My two daughters don’t think I’m very funny because one is 16. And that’s her role is to not think I’m funny. The 22 year old now thinks I’m funny. You know, for me, teaching environmental education and spending my life with young adults who are trying to figure out how do we engage in the climate crisis, how do we engage in a world in pandemic right now?
I don’t know any other way to do this life without humor. I just don’t know. And so for me, levity is, is is life. And and if you try to, part of this book was my conversations with my youngest daughter about all these choices. So I would like, Oh my gosh, I went to the body farm today and this is an option I’m so excited about. And she would just be like, You want to put your body on the ground like naked for students to study decomposition. And if you can’t find some humor in an engagement between a mother and a daughter about these options, you know, it’s pretty funny. Just this those discussions. But the reality is that with that, with that, that lightness, I think that the lightness allows us to approach heavy subjects. And with a little bit more balance, and I think I want to be really clear that I don’t think I could have done this journey, I couldn’t have walked these steps of this of the year exploring all these options, from aquamation to human composting to body farms to green burials, conservation cemeteries.
I could not have done that if I was facing the immediate death of my child or myself. I mean, there’s not so, but to the levity also comes from the privilege of I got some time, you know? And we all know when our time is obviously that our lives will end. But these these decisions are better talked about, integrated into daily lives instead of some power talk that you have to make because the time has come right now. Well, I love the phrase levity is life that might be the next title of your next book. And I think because and for me, when I think about talking about death before you die is also, for me a way to disarm it of an appropriate power that especially as Christians, if we say, you know, we attach ourselves to life eternal, so death is not something to fear.
But I think if we don’t talk about it, then it can grow into some outsized role in our life as opposed to talking about it here are the plans really disarms it and puts it in proper perspective that our attachment is to life. How we go to the threshold of death says a lot about how we understand life in our bodies and the community around us. Speaking of community around us. Thursday, February 24th at 6:30 p.m. Church of the Ascension. You and I will be together. Full disclosure This is also where your cousin Betty Corey attends, much beloved member of Ascension and Knoxville and a very proud cousin of Mallory McDuff. Whenever I see her at the Kroger Knox Plaza, we do catch up on how you’re doing. She is proud of you and will be bringing many people for this event. So looking forward to you being there. Union Avenue Books, a great independent bookstore here in Knoxville, will be on hand to sell books. Thank you for making the journey from Warren Wilson to Knoxville next week to be with us really looking forward to your time with us. Well, I’m looking forward to it too, and the last time I was there was when you became a bishop. That’s right, and that ordination took place and you were there and grateful for that. Also, I don’t care what Annie Sky thinks. I think you’re hilarious. OK, so there you go.
She will remind you that we came to Knoxville on her birthday right.
Her 11th birthday present was going to my ordination, which 11 year olds think is really, really cool.
So again, thank you for taking on the subject. And again, and reading this book for me, really what you’ve given us a theological framework for how to think about the body and how to think about death and how to think about making decisions that are a final blessing to family, to community and to the Earth. So thank you for doing really hard work in a light hearted way. Well, in my closing remarks, I just want to share, is that to me, the this journey is really about how do we carry the love of those who have died with us? And that is a journey of how do we carry God’s message with us despite the painful losses that we all experience. What can we, what practices can we put into place that their love is present in us and in our bodies as we continue to live?
Yeah, Anne and Larry would be really, really proud of you. So thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thanks for being my friend. We’ll see you next week. All right. Bye y’all.