A Death Fest Tour of Asheville: What the Dying Can Teach Us About Community
I came to Death Fest expecting to learn more about death work.
I’m leaving thinking about community.
This weekend became an unexpected tour through the remarkably vast network of people around Asheville who are reimagining how we care for one another through dying, death, burial and grief. Death Fest at Rare Bird Farm called itself “Reclaiming the Art of Community Care,” and that turned out to be much more than an event title. The gathering brought together conversations and demonstrations around community-held death care, home and autonomous funeral practices, green burial, willow casket weaving, grief tending, ritual and death doula work. Rare Bird Farm
And somehow, over the course of the weekend, those individual threads began weaving themselves together.
Rare Bird itself felt like the right place for that conversation—a 98-acre farm and cultural arts space in the Appalachian Mountains built around creativity, ecology, learning and connection. Rare Bird Farm
We talked about things our culture often outsources almost completely: tending a body, carrying someone we love, weaving a casket, choosing a shroud, digging a grave, sitting vigil, grieving together.
There was a wonderful presentation from a willow weaver who makes caskets by hand. I was introduced to the Funerary Artisans Collective, a network of people making shrouds, burial blankets, woven and wooden caskets, urns and other funeral goods. Many work in materials such as willow, flax linen, cotton, wool, bamboo, seagrass and locally sourced woods, with an emphasis on transparency, ecological responsibility and accessibility. FUNERARY ARTISANS COLLECTIVE
Standing among these objects made me think about something we rarely discuss: capitalism and death.
At some point, many of us came to believe that caring for our dead required purchasing an entire professionalized experience. But death has not always belonged to an industry. For most of human history, somebody washed the body. Somebody made the box or wrapped the shroud. Somebody cooked. Somebody sat through the night. Somebody dug into the earth.
Usually, those somebodies knew the person who had died.
The conversations this weekend weren't really about rejecting funeral professionals. They were about remembering that families and communities still have a place in the room.
Holding Space
That idea became much more tangible because I had the extraordinary opportunity to stay at Holding Space Asheville.
Holding Space is a nonprofit home created by Gabriel and Erik that explores a shared-housing model for end-of-life community care. People living in the home may offer companionship and practical, non-medical support to a housemate living with terminal illness and to their caregivers—meals, errands, outings, everyday tasks, friendship and connection. The organization also hopes that what they learn can help others create similar models in their own communities. Holding Space Asheville
There is something quietly radical about that.
Not an institution.
Not isolation.
A house.
People eating together. Someone needing something from the store. Someone sitting nearby. Someone knowing when the caregiver is exhausted. Someone willing to be present.
It raises a question I haven't been able to stop thinking about:
Who will be in the room when we are dying?
And perhaps even more importantly:
Whose room will we be willing to enter?
The Care Circle
Perhaps the experience that has stayed with me most from Death Fest was the story of Katherine Savage.
Katherine is a death midwife, death doula and educator whose work, Death Seeding Life, is devoted to creating a healthier death culture and helping people and families find their own way through dying, death and home funeral care. Her work isn't built around a single person doing everything. She describes a collective of doulas, midwives, energy healers, body workers, musicians and artists who bring different gifts to the experience of dying. After listening to what a person wants and needs, they create what she calls a “constellation of supports.”
There is something beautiful about that word.
A constellation.
Not one person responsible for everything.
Different people, different gifts, different points of connection—together creating something that can hold a person.
Katherine has spent years helping other people build those constellations around their dying.
And now she is living it herself.
Katherine has been diagnosed with a terminal illness and is in the last stages of her life. She was unable to be at Death Fest because she is unwell.
Instead, two people who are very close to her circle came and talked about what it has been like to accompany her.
We watched a video. We heard stories. We saw pieces of her experience.
And what struck me most was the care circle she has created around herself.
There are apprentices. There are people with different roles and responsibilities. There are people learning, helping, witnessing and showing up. Her own death has become a living and dying experience shared among a community of people who love her and who are learning from the process.
This wasn't a presentation about Katherine as much as it was an opportunity to glimpse what happens when a death worker becomes the person who is dying.
The person who has spent years accompanying others now needs accompaniment herself.
And perhaps that is one of the most profound teachings of all.
Her website describes a model where a dying person is listened to first, and then a team is assembled around the person's particular wishes—help with advance directives, home-funeral planning, body care, ritual, music, healing touch and support for family and friends.
She has spent years creating those possibilities for other people.
Now other people are creating them around her.
That stayed with me.
Because I think we often imagine preparing for death as a solitary act: write the documents, make the decisions, choose the cemetery, plan the funeral.
But what if preparation for death is also building the constellation?
Who are the people who will be there?
Who will bring food?
Who will sit vigil?
Who will make the phone calls?
Who will help care for the body?
Who will know my wishes?
Who will know how to support the people I love?
And who will I be willing to do those things for?
The more I thought about Katherine's story, the more I realized that a care circle probably cannot simply be summoned at the end of life.
It has to be cultivated.
It grows out of friendship, trust, apprenticeship, reciprocity and years of showing up for one another.
Katherine's own work is an example of that cultivation.
And now, as she moves toward the end of her own life, we get to see the circle come back around her.
There is something incredibly human about that.
The death doula needs a death doula.
The caregiver needs to be cared for.
The teacher becomes the student.
And the person who has spent her life helping others cross a threshold is now being accompanied toward her own.
I think that is what I am taking home from her story.
Not a fear of death.
Not even necessarily a lesson about how to die.
A question about how to live in relationship.
Because perhaps the real preparation for death is not something we begin when we are dying.
Perhaps it is the community we build long before then.
The constellation we create.
And the circles we are willing to enter for one another.
Returning to the Earth
My final stop on this little death-care pilgrimage is Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, a conservation and green cemetery in Mills River, just outside Asheville.
The sanctuary describes itself as both cemetery and living landscape: meadow, woodland, creekside and wetland protected through conservation while providing natural burial for people, companion animals and cremated or aquamated remains. Carolina Memorial Sanctuary
Today I want to walk the land.
I want to walk the labyrinth nearby.
I want to see what it feels like when cemetery does not mean manicured lawn and rows of stone, but forest, meadow, water and decomposition—the body becoming part of the ecology rather than being separated from it.
Maybe that is an appropriate ending to this weekend.
Earth.
Body.
Community.
Return.
What I'm Leaving With
Death Fest ended, but I don't think the real lesson was about death.
It was about interdependence.
Death makes painfully visible something that is true every day of our lives: we were never meant to do all of this alone.
Perhaps building a death-care circle doesn't begin when someone receives a diagnosis.
Perhaps we are building it right now.
Every time we make dinner for someone.
Every time we sit beside grief instead of trying to fix it.
Every time we learn how to listen.
Every time we allow ourselves to need one another.
Every time we build the kind of community we hope will still be there when the time comes to carry us home.
And after this weekend in the mountains around Asheville, that may be what I understand differently:
Preparing for death may be less about planning how we will die and more about tending the relationships in which we hope to be held when we do.
Places, People & Resources From My Asheville Death-Care Journey
Rare Bird Farm — Spring Creek, North Carolina
Home of Death Fest: Reclaiming the Art of Community Care and a farm and cultural arts center devoted to creativity, folkways, ecology and connection. Rare Bird Farm
Explore Rare Bird Farm
Holding Space Asheville
A nonprofit exploring shared housing and community-based support for people living with terminal illness and their caregivers, founded by Gabriel and Erik. Holding Space Asheville
Learn about Holding Space Asheville
Funerary Artisans Collective
A resource for discovering independent artisans creating shrouds, burial blankets, caskets, urns, memorial art and other handmade funeral goods from natural and responsibly sourced materials. FUNERARY ARTISANS COLLECTIVE
Explore the Funerary Artisans Collective
Carolina Memorial Sanctuary — Mills River, North Carolina
A conservation and green cemetery in Western North Carolina where natural burial and ecological conservation share the same landscape. Carolina Memorial Sanctuary
Explore Carolina Memorial Sanctuary
Death Seeding Life — Katherine Savage
A Western North Carolina death-care collective offering death doula and midwifery support, education, home-funeral assistance, advance-care planning, ritual and after-death care. The site describes a team-based “constellation of supports” tailored to each person's wishes. Home
Death Seeding Life — Services
