Dear Sara,

February 2023: Precompose Payment Number 2 of Seventy.

Sara and me at the 2016 Subdued Stringband Jamboree, photo by a family friend.

November 2, 2022

Dear Sara, my sweet dead sister,

I was thinking of your body on this Day of Dead, when your final act poisoned the earth. We were all for it. I captured a video of your cardboard coffin entering the furnance while brother Pete and nephew Robert sang.

We didn’t use the word, “poisoned.” Katrina Spade used it in a tour I took this past Saturday afternoon of her company’s facility located in the industrial area of south Seattle. Katrina is the founder and CEO of  a company that uses Natural Organic Reduction (NOR), the legal term for human compositing, called Recompose.

Remember when you told me about a way of death where family members carry the body of the deceased, up a ramp to the top floor where the shrouded body is placed on bed of wood chips and straw … and with final farewells the loved one’s body  decomposes as it descends to where the loved-one is soil? 

Well, the tower idea was Katrina’s as part of her Masters Thesis: Of Dirt and Decomposition: Proposing a Resting Place for the Urban Dead, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Master of Architecture,  May 2013 –  I knew you would be impressed, it’s on the website – recompose.life.

Recompose started accepting bodies for human compositing in 2020, two years after your death, leaving cremation an immediate choice. Besides, it was a confusing time with your body, then your mind growing weaker. 

The time to decide on death care, of course,  is when we are well, which is why I am signing up for a prepayment plan they call Precompose. My payments will be $100 a month, which will run for 70 payments over 5 years and 10 months to reach $7000. Recompose will pick me up in Snohomish and return me as soil!

Don’t you love it Sara, my body is turn into enriched soil … D I R T!

Included in the plan is a biodegradable container (64 oz) of enriched dirt that can be added to the garden where we buried your ashes along with our parents! Of course, I could request all of the soil I’ve been turned into but you all would need a pick up truck – as my body will produce around one cubic yard of soil! Consequently,  the remainder of my dirt will be donated to Bells Mountain, a 700-acre nonprofit land trust in southern Washington. 

I still have a strong memory of your smile, dear Sara, we miss you everyday. You are the Best dead or alive. 

 ~w.

Attached is the receipt for my second payment.

Receipt from Recompose

Dear Readers: For the next 70, now 68, months I will continue my letters to Sara with the news from Snohomish. You are invited to read along with a free subscription.

And happy to announce my Letter to Sara will be included in an art exhibition titled: “Act Inspired: Art In the Climate Crisis,” a one day exhibition and discussions in the Snohomish Carnegie Building on October 25, from 2 to 8p.