A way to celebrate me after my death

Come to my funeral dressed as you
would for an autumn walk in the woods.

Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission
to be late, even without good cause.

If my day arrives when you had other plans, please
proceed with them instead. Celebrate me

there—keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live
well. Don’t stop. Think of me forever assigned

to a period, a place, a people. Remember me
in stories—not the first time we met, not the last,

a time in between. Our moment here is small.
I am too—a worldly thing among worldly things—

one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still.
Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed,

compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful,
wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow

and decay, let me be lovely yet
temporal, like memories, like mahogany.

“Gloria Mundi”

By Michael Kleber-Diggs

Chloë Rain

Chloë Rain is a spiritual director and ceremonial guide whose work is rooted in the initiatory cycles of nature and the deep intelligence of living earth traditions. After more than a decade of apprenticeship within North and South American medicine lineages — and graduate research in the Arctic Circle exploring sacred landscape and Indigenous cosmology through a Master’s degree in Indigenous Studies — her work now continues from a small island in the Cyclades in the heart of the Aegean Sea.

She offers one-to-one spiritual direction and private retreats for those navigating profound change, life transitions, and soul alignment.


Learn more about → private spiritual direction
or explore retreats → seasonal ceremonial work.

Next
Next

in praise of i don't know