Critical awakening around death: Exercising agency over our mortal remains

What happens to our bodies after death? This is a discussion we often avoid in our sanitised Western culture. We would perhaps rather bypass it and allow funeral experts to manage key death care choices and simply provide us with perfunctory choices about coffin handles and funeral hors d’oeuvres. However, our dead bodies can have a significant impact on the earth, and the choices we make for our final disposition can be personally empowering whilst connecting our loved ones to the process in a manner that can be deeply healing. This paper highlights the need for a critical awakening around death care practices and suggests that becoming aware of our choices, and the impact of those choices, can help us exercise agency over our mortal remains. In this, our deaths can become a legacy of our lives and a way of reinstating our commitment to values we hold dear.