Blog – Campo de Estrellas

Green Burial Council Certification

Last month, we were notified by the Green Burial Council (GBC) that our application was for their Natural Cemetery Certification had been accepted. This makes Campo de Estrellas the third cemetery in Texas to hold certification with the GBC, and the only cemetery in the state recognized as a fully-certified Natural Burial Cemetery.

This is thrilling news and marks a huge milestone for us. The Green Burial Council is North America’s premier natural burial certification and education organization, and to be included in their growing list of recognized practitioners is an honor. Our decision to pursue certification with the GBC stemmed from our desire to help expand the natural burial movement. The GBC has a long history of helping raise awareness of the benefits of ‘green’ burial and the more cemeteries certified with them, the more visible the movement becomes.

Founded in 2005 (back when “green” was still a new term associated with environmental concerns), they established the first set of standards for natural burial practitioners and products to ensure the highest levels of environmental sustainability, business integrity, and consumer protection. This helped to legitimize natural burial within a frankly hostile funeral industry and to a skeptical (read: uninformed) community. Beyond setting standards, they are a major hub of information and education for anyone interested in natural burial. We at Campo de Estrellas have relied on their free resources extensively in building our cemetery and regularly refer families to them for additional information.

The process of becoming GBC certified took us about a year. First, we had to determine which level of certification we wanted to achieve. The GBC has three tiers: Hybrid, Natural, and Conservation. A Hybrid cemetery allows for both natural and conventional burials (use of vaults, metal caskets, etc.). Many existing cemeteries opt for this level as it allows them to continue to offer their conventional services, while adding newer plots that are green.

A Natural Burial Cemetery allows only natural burials, requires an ecological assessment of the cemetery site, and sets aside a percentage of business funds into a perpetual care fund, among other standards. We had our ecological assessment done by Wildlife Habitat Conservation (WHF Texas). They provided us with a dossier of vital information regarding our land including the soil types across the entire acreage, elevation levels, and areas of ecological sensitivity. Crucially, they also provided us with recommended rewilding techniques to promote plant diversity and encourage a return of wildlife that had been driven away due to development and agriculture practices. Even if we hadn’t applied for GBC certification, we still would have pursued an ecological assessment as it gives us baseline of data upon which we can monitor our inputs and measure our outcomes to test out our theory that natural burial really does benefit the land.

A Conservation Cemetery must operate under contract with a conservation organization in the form of a conservation easement, conserve a minimum amount of land, and establish strategies to conserve and rewild that land. Land conservation and rewilding are at the heart of what we do here at Campo de Estrellas Conservation Cemetery. It’s so important to us that we put it in our name! The same goes for establishing a conservation easement. A conservation easement is a legal agreement between landowners and a land trust that protects the land from development and sustains conservation activities on it, in perpetuity. This means that even after the original landowners are no longer around, the land trust holding the easement monitors and maintains the land, ensuring it remains a natural landscape. When we first began planning, the longevity of our project was at the forefront of our minds and using an easement to protect it has long been our goal.

We are continuing to pursue a pathway toward establishing an easement on our cemetery as well as the additional acreage surrounding it. The process of obtaining a conservation easement is a longer one, involving sustained relationship-building with conservation organizations and significant financial resources for things like legal counsel. All of this is to say that while we may not have the easement in place yet, we have not abandoned our long-term land conservation plans and goals. Using natural burials as a way to protect land, assessing the land for ecological sensitivities and opportunities, and offering people a meaningful way to engage with nature is already central to our practice. Our GBC certification only deepens our commitment to these goals.

Cleaning up the Garden

Before the ice descended on us during these last few weeks of the January, I took the opportunity to clean up some of the areas of the cemetery that are most attractive to families during warmer months, when the trees that surround them offer shade and privacy. During the winter, however, they appear ragged and tangled, giving stewards like us a chance to see clearly where the particularly obtrusive plants have taken over. Smilax rotundifolia, a viney, prickly plant, grows aggressively out on the cemetery and loves to wrap its thorny arms around our more mature mesquite and just about anything else.

Inspired by a volunteer clean-up day I’d partaken in at Dowell Ranch for North Texas Prairie Association (NPAT), I bought a new pair of lobbers and a tougher pair of gloves to tackle the job.

Smilax vines climb up dead branches of a Eastern red cedar

This particular garden has two ‘motts’ on the east and west side. Tree motts are clusters of trees that grow together, creating areas of shade and protection for wildlife. Some landowners will chose to clear them out completely, to promote grass growth, but our aims are a bit different. We love having spaces for wildlife to bed down during cold months (I was joined by a brown rabbit during my work session!) and we don’t have many stands of trees to begin with, so we’re saving what we’ve got.

Each mott was pretty covered in smilax vines and out of control underbrush, things like Christmas cholla (pencil cactus – particularly painful to get pricked by!) and emerging Mesquite trees. We have plenty of Mesquite, so getting rid of the new growth isn’t going to hurt anything.

We also have a lot of prickly pear clusters around the cemetery and we tend to enjoy their iconic shape. I decided to keep one big one and clean out some of the smaller pups that had sprouted up nearby. I know by spring they’ll be back, but this gives us some time to see the space as we’d like to have it.

Dead branches and emerging mesquite around a large prickly pear

It may not appear like much, but after I spent about two hours chopping and hauling very thorny sticks off into a brush pile I was wiped! I was pleased with the results and happy to know that in just a couple hours, we can really tidy up a space.

This particular garden in actually quite large, with enough space for several plots. Next month, we’ll continue our clean up and spread some grass seed in the less shaded areas. By Spring, we should be able to see if the wildflower seed we spread last month has taken hold. Something to look forward to!

Garden area after clean up. It might not look like much but A LOT was removed!

Rabbit watched closely while I worked, making sure I didn’t fully destroy their home

Architecture of Memory

I wasn’t expecting to find my great-grandfather’s name carved into the yellow stucco entrance portal of the Panteón de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, the main cemetery in San Miguel de Allende, but there it was. My father pointed it out casually: Tomás Serrano, city councilman at the time the cemetery was established in 1948. I hadn’t even known he was a city councilman, just a leather worker and father of eleven kids.

And so while I’d come to Mexico to visit the dead for Día de Muertos, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I would be visiting with the dead—learning the texture of their lives, and extending the living memory of their stories out by one more generation.

In early November, San Miguel—that most and least Mexican of all Mexican cities—transforms into a very beautiful, very curated, rather Disney version of one of Mexico’s favorite traditional celebrations. Tens of thousands of tourists, Mexican marigolds and papel picado everywhere, doorways and vestibules set up with altars of varying degrees of commercial appeal…the joyous public theater of death.

But my dad knew where to look for the private celebration beneath the spectacle, and over the next few days, he would take me and my partner Andrew through three different architectures of memory.

Our first stop was for Stirling Dickinson, buried in what everyone (including the gringos) calls the “Gringo Section” of the cemetery. A fence and gate separate it from the rest of the grounds, and the contrast on Día de los Muertos is stark. On the Mexican side: riot and color, faded plastic plants alongside fresh flowers, families gathered around graves covered in marigolds (cempasúchil, to the Aztecs) and bottles of Coca-Cola, beer, and tequila…DIY memorials alive with personality and chintz.

On the American side: somber uniformity, no Day of the Dead visitors, each tombstone exactly like the others. Here there is disrepair and decay, but without warmth or remembrance around the graves.

Except for one. Stirling Dickinson’s gravestone stands out because my family had it specially made years ago to honor this remarkable American, a second father to my family and indeed of San Miguel itself. My dad had been saying that the stone would need to be remade soon, since it was falling apart when he’d visited a year earlier. But we were surprised to find that we weren’t the only ones to be willing to put out money to honor his memory: on arriving, we saw that the tombstone had been recently remade, in expensive granite but a perfect copy of my father’s original design. The new benefactors—an American-owned luxury rentals company—had added their name to ours at the bottom of the stone, and we were pleased. Stirling was painfully shy, but he was always making new friends…even in death, apparently.

Stirling had been my grandfather Simón’s best friend. When Simón left my grandmother and their eight children to start a new family in St. Louis, Stirling stepped in as family benefactor and friend—the American expat who stayed when the Mexican artist left. I have to believe that he would have much preferred to have been laid to rest on the other side of the gringo fence.

The next visit took us far back in time, to the main crypt of the famous Parroquia of San Miguel Arcángel, accessible only a few times per year via a wooden staircase below a massive slab of floor in front of the main altar. We descended with a Mexican woman who also wanted to visit her ancestors. Marigold flowers completely encircled the opening in the floor, lined the stairs, and ringed the edges of the crypt, where we and the woman started searching for our respective ancestors.

Not far from the ornate wall tomb of Anastasio Bustamante, Mexican president and independence fighter, we found the tiny floor stone of Maximiano Delgadillo, father of Francisca, who later married Tomás Serrano. Next to Maximiano’s tombstone was one bearing the same last name: young Pascual Delgadillo, died 1935, suicide, reasons unknown but speculated on by my family to this day. Apparently it took some doing to get the church to allow him to be buried there. I’d never heard of him before that day, and his story—just fragments, really, at this point—made me sad.

Independence heroes, my great-grandfather, a boy who killed himself, all resting together. And then tourists wearing Coachella hats and chatting a bit too loudly, a bit too cheerfully, started pouring down the stairs, and we left.

Emerging out of the famous Parroquia façade into the bright winter sun, we crossed the patio to the smaller church of San Rafael, more commonly known as the Santa Escuela de Cristo. No marigolds here, no other visitors. The columbarium was shut off by a floor-to-ceiling gate, and the lights were off. My dad pointed through the bars to the general area where he remembered Tomás and Francisca’s remains to have been interred—Tomás in 1973, Francisca in 1985. There are pictures of her holding me, and if I think hard, I remember her.

Standing there in the dark, looking through the gate at where my great-grandparents rest, I thought about that plaque at the cemetery entrance. Tomás had helped to create a space for the dead that is still today alive with remembrance. And now he and Francisca rest here, behind a locked gate, in the shadows, just steps from the marigolds and the tourists and the public celebration.

My dad was quiet for a moment. Then we left.

Later in the week, Andrew and I slipped into the Church of San Francisco during mass—one of colonial Mexico’s Churrigueresque masterpieces, all ornate stone and baroque glory. We followed women carrying flowers past worshipers to the vestry, past a life-sized Jesus lying in a glass coffin that has creeped me out since I was a kid, then down into the crypt chapel where my grandmother Irene rests, since her death about ten years ago.

The columbarium of the Church of San Francisco is…strange: aluminum doors the size and shape of bus station lockers filling the ancient stone archways, names in labelmaker letters, cempasúchil strictly prohibited. One metal wall has been overlaid with a giant overexposed photograph of Michelangelo’s Pietà, covering the grid of tiny doors like a bizarre, somber, tacky Advent calendar. Breathtaking colonial architecture above, storage facility below. But we maintained the ritual, sitting in silence for a few moments with about a dozen other visitors.

Anytime I’ve visited that place, I am at first saddened and almost offended by the fact that my grandmother rests there after the difficult and remarkable life she had. But eventually I come around—it’s ok. More than ok, it is right, it is fitting: there, in her favorite of San Miguel’s dozens of colonial churches and chapels, among the generations of neighbors who she’d lived her whole life with, where her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids can visit on the most Mexican of holidays, and where the architecture distills both time and memory for those of us who are still alive.

Deep Space

Two things were dead giveaways: she was exactly on time and driving a vehicle that was the opposite of all-terrain.

At 11 o’clock on the dot, a long, low, full-sized sedan slowly turned into our cemetery driveway, driven by a woman who had scheduled a tour with me. Aside from being good manners, her punctuality felt like an extension of the planning she had set out to take care of: selecting burial plots for herself and others. The exterior of the car reflected its city life, showing no streaks of mud and only the faintest sheen of gravel dust, presumably from having crept along the winding rock road that surrounds our cemetery.

Hoping to ease what I sensed was anxiety as she timidly stepped out of the car, I asked how was her trip to the cemetery. She shared that it was somewhat intimidating being so far outside the city on unfamiliar rural roads. I praised her determination as well as her bravery. Most people stop far short of coming out for a visit. Most won’t even think about planning for death until it becomes an absolute necessity. (I don’t recommend this, but I’ll let you find out why.)

We began our tour as I normally do, giving some background on the land and guiding her through the mowed paths and cleared gardens. I pointed out available plots and showed her recently occupied spots. Our conversation began to veer into a discussion on perpetual care and land stewardship, something she seemed deeply concerned about. How long is this land protected, and who is going to make sure it always stays a cemetery?

I responded with what I know: it’s deeded as a cemetery with the county, so it will remain so until the county dissolves it, either by some herculean effort enacted by an entity who has consulted with all living family members and is willing to pay to move the remains somewhere else. It will be cared for by our cemetery organization for as long as we remain an organization or transfer it to another group willing to steward it, whether a land trust or another cemetery organization. However, I gathered my answer wasn’t enough. I asked what was on her mind.

“I just want to know that someone isn’t going to be digging me up in a hundred years,” she said finally.

Again, I answered with what I know: it’s unlikely, but there really are no guarantees against that. Archaeologists excavate burial sites of ancient people regularly. But at the same time, think of all the small pioneer cemeteries dotting our countryside that have been there for a century at least, left untouched. To put it more bluntly, it will depend on the stability and length of our society. Eventually, it will be out of all of our hands.

We ventured further into the cemetery, into a grove of cedar trees adjacent to our pavilion. She fell in love with a shaded spot near the path. She had wanted a double plot, so I began flagging two spots next to each other when she stopped me. “Can they be buried one on top of the other?” she asked.

People have inquired about double depth graves before, but in passing (not seriously wanting an answer), and they never pressed further when I said I didn’t know much about them. But this was different. She had family buried this way in Florida. It made sense to her, as it appeared to use less space. Humbled, I told her I actually had no idea if it was even legal in Texas. I promised to find her an answer.

I began researching the laws. It is legal in Texas. Does any cemetery actually do this? I found a few examples of conventional cemeteries that advertise double depth plots. That makes sense, because these are cemeteries that use cement vaults that would protect the deeper grave from being impeded when digging the second. What about cemeteries that don’t use vaults, like ours?

Excavator digging a grave at Campo de Estrellas

I called Dan, our gravedigger, who has been in the business for over twenty years and has dug graves all over the state. I’ve come to think of him as my burial guru, as he has seen and heard it all. He confirmed what I’d researched and said he has dug double depth before, but for our cemetery he doesn’t recommend it. “That is a lot of soil to displace for the first burial,” he said. “And even though we do our best to compact it, it will cave in eventually, and you’ll be refilling after that first burial for 25 years.”

Curious to know if other natural cemeteries encountered this, I asked my other burial gurus, the practitioners of the Conservation Burial Alliance. Initially, most of the practitioners advised against it for the reasons Dan stated. They added that deeper graves place the body in anaerobic parts of the soil, meaning little or no oxygen is present. Aerobic, or oxygenated, soil is vital to the philosophy of being buried naturally, which is to return to the earth. Without oxygen, our bodies decompose at a much slower rate and therefore don’t provide nutrients to the living plant layer we seek to regenerate.

Then we heard from a practitioner who does dig double depth graves. They stated that their land is forested hillside with large trees and deep roots. Digging side by side isn’t always an option, as it would disturb too many root systems. Double depth graves offer them the ability to accommodate two graves in a smaller footprint with less disturbance to their surrounding ecosystem. They did acknowledge that if they were burying in flat grassland, shallow side-by-side graves would be ideal. It all comes down to ecosystem specifics.

Mound of dirt removed from a grave

Fascinated by the exchange and differing perspectives, I thought about the points raised. We all agree that decomposition is the goal but seem to differ on the rate at which it occurs. Burying as shallow as legally possible (in Texas, that is 3½ feet) will give us the best chance of breaking down into regenerative material quickly. In deeper, more compact graves (double depth), bodies can develop adipocere, or “grave wax” as it’s poetically called, which slows decomposition by preserving tissue.

Then there is the issue of land occupancy. A lot of people balk at the idea of burials in general because it feels like they are “taking up space.” This may be true of conventional cemeteries, where bodies are surrounded by concrete vaults and paved roads that inhibit any other land activity (natural or otherwise) from taking place. But in natural burial grounds, you are meant to decompose, to become part of a natural world that will inevitably move in and consume you. You are not taking up space; you are becoming space.

People generally don’t like to think about decomposing, but they also don’t like to think about a world where there is no natural space. If we don’t allow for decomposition, if we paved everything or poured concrete everywhere, or coated everything in a sealed wax, we would run out of space very quickly. The more we let go of our attempt to control the future and of ourselves, the more space we create.

Filled in grave at Campo de Estrellas

Eventually, we decided that double depth graves aren’t appropriate for Campo de Estrellas, and I reached out to the woman to share my research with her. I also confirmed that she did find her way back from the cemetery, though I sensed it was different than the way she came.

Joining the Conservation Burial Alliance

Recently the Conservation Burial Alliance invited us to join its online network, a nationwide list that spotlights conservation burial grounds. Of course, we were thrilled to be included on their growing list of burial spaces and honored to be included alongside so many thriving conservation cemeteries across the United States.

The Conservation Burial Alliance is a nationwide organization focused on bringing together providers of conservation burial, land trusts, as well as interested individuals to share resources and create networks that foster our unique type of burial. The group began meeting in 2017 after Freddie Johnson, one of the founders of Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery, realized that the movement was taking off, yet lacked a central node where providers and allies could come together to support each other. They held their first call in December of that year with participants from eight conservation burial grounds and have since grown to include at least 18 cemeteries across the United States. Along with holding regular monthly calls they also offer written guides to help out those who are interested in getting a conservation cemetery started, information for working with land trusts, and hold webinars and events occasionally throughout the year.

Scene from our 2024 Winter Solstice mycology walk and burial workshop

In a space that can often feel like one is working in isolation without much support from the traditional funeral industry, the CBA’s effort to build community and create a central repository is extremely helpful. Knowledge sharing is something that we’ve been particularly passionate about at Campo de Estrellas. In fact, our cemetery started by giving workshops for groups on the benefit of natural burial before we began meeting with families to plan for burials. We also spend a lot of time talking to landowners or potential landowners who want to establish this type of cemetery in Texas. When we first started exploring the idea of conservation burial there were only a handful of conservation cemeteries in existence that we could look to for insight and perspective, with none in Texas. Since then, we’ve seen the establishment of another nearby conservation cemetery that we can call on to swap trade tips and tricks. However, we hadn’t yet had a chance to widen our circle nationally. So it was exciting to have the opportunity to join this month’s CBA Zoom call to meet other members in the space, ask questions, and just generally talk shop.

The CBA call was lively and supportive, full of very passionate and hardworking people. It was promising to hear several participants share how busy they had become over the past few months, with one group stating that they often hold six or more burials a week. There were also several members who stated that they were participating in or hosting their own events on their land in collaboration with local organizations.

As promised, shop was talked! Topics included:

the use and legitimacy of new green funeral products like biodegradable plastic soil amendments and shrouding boards
(re)enforcement of cemetery rules when working with funeral homes unfamiliar with the tenets of natural burial
how to handle severely decomposing cases in a way that is respectful to families and the earth
hiring administrative help because business is blooming!

There was a sense of affirmation after the call ended. This growing alliance is already holding both families and land to the same high standard, and the CBA keeps that circle aligned. As demand for natural burial rises (and it is!), it’s reassuring to know a practiced, principled network is ready to meet it.

We Know Where the Bodies Are Buried

On a hot August afternoon, muggy with the remaining moisture of this particularly wet summer dampening my skin but not my spirit, I put in another call to the Bastrop County Clerk’s office with this month’s edition of “how to flummox the county authorities” (hint: just mention anything about operating an all-natural burial cemetery!) However, it was my turn to be surprised. To my delight, they had an immediate answer to my question about where to send our burial records.

Given that our cemetery is planned with a commitment to working around and with nature, its meandering paths and garden locations look random. The minimal headstones aren’t easily visible, and folks often wonder how we keep track of who is where. They’re not alone, even funeral directors ask us how we know where the bodies are. In an effort to provide an extra layer of security and accountability, we decided to share our records with the county. Since I wasn’t sure of that process, I went ahead and called the office I’m most familiar with to ask.

The County Clerk’s office said there was a project underway to collect cemetery records from around the county, with plans to digitize them and make them available on their newly redesigned website. They shared the number for the Historical Society, who I promptly dialed next. I spoke first to a woman who said she would personally walk my information downstairs, to the office that would call me back with more information. This, I learned, was not because my request was so precious it must be handled with care, but because of the new phone system.

“I don’t know how to transfer calls yet,” confessed the woman on the other end of the line. Turns out their phone system was also new, and its mysterious transfer protocol had not yet been explained to her. She’d settle for doing it the old-fashioned way, by walking my information over to the appropriate personnel who would, she assured me, call me back shortly. Moments later, my phone rang.

It was the Collections Manager at the Historical Society, and while she didn’t exactly know what I was talking about when I referenced the county cemetery archival project I’d been told of, she certainly wasn’t dismissive. Rather, she proved to be a thorough and attentive researcher, adamant about closing any gaps in her knowledge and not missing a good archival opportunity. Determined to find the best possible route to preserving our little archive, she consulted ChatGPT about some concerns she had around collecting burial data.

“Archives,” she explained, “refer to records that are no longer ‘alive.'” Despite being records of the dead, cemetery records potentially contain personally identifiable information (PII) that can be traced to the living, therefore presenting a risk to their privacy. Her concern touched my heart, thinking I’d found one of the last remaining practitioners of privacy in this world of increasing surveillance. I clarified that the intent is actually for these deceased to be found! Our records only document the name of the deceased, the plot number, the garden name, the longitude and latitude, and date of purchase. Assured by my explanation (and ChatGPT’s failure to provide anything more useful than we already knew), she pointed me toward the Bastrop County Historical Commission, a different archival entity, though she understood the confusion. “We’re an independent but hard-working group of folks unaffiliated with the County offices,” she explained. Indeed!

hand-held GPS device with coordinates

So I put in another call and left another message, this time on a decidedly less personal answering machine. Shortly thereafter, the self-appointed head of “the Department of I-know-everything-there-is-to-know-about-Bastrop-County-History” (his words!) returned my call. He confirmed the rumors of the county cemetery archival project and that the records were “all ready to go, just waiting on them to finish the website.” Until then, he’d happily take my records and upload them at the appropriate time. I emailed him our spreadsheet of data, musing on the various communication technologies employed to make this happen. Phone, LLMs, email and plain face-to-face conversation finally resulted in our records being shared with the county. In our hyper-connected world, one can forget that outside of urban areas or tech spaces, things move at a more regular pace.

Our own system for mapping and plotting grave is similarly old-school and slow as well, save for the hand-held GPS tool we use. We first map out areas where we want to open graves by walking around the property either with a family or on our own, in search of areas that aren’t ecologically sensitive (near tree saplings, for instance). Once a plot location has been selected, we find the exact location using our GPS tool. We use a receiver manufactured by Bad Elf, which sounds appropriately mischievous and whimsical for the task at hand. On our master spreadsheet, we note the data I shared with the Historical Commission. After a burial occurs, we reinforce the location in the physical world, by stamping four stainless steel grave caps with the longitude and latitude coordinates, and place them in the corners of the plot. Finally, we note the burial date in the spreadsheet.

Plot cap with coordinates

For easier access, we also maintain a Google map, available on our website, that includes plot location, pictures and descriptions of our plots and landmarks. We’d love for you to check it out and add your own pictures!

Image of Google map of Campo de Estrellas

In addition to our commitment to sharing our information with our wider community and county officials through technology, we still maintain analog backup systems: compass, paper maps, landmarks. Like all competent celestial navigators, we can traverse our small domain through traditional wayfinding should Google go dark or the new historical archives website never go up. Just give us a call.

Should I Become a Funeral Director or Death Doula (or both?)

Here at Campo de Estrellas, we are frequently asked how we got into the cemetery business. Our professional backgrounds include funeral service, as well as the medical and legal industries, so our pivot into establishing an all-natural burial cemetery is certainly unique but not entirely unconventional. Our prior expertise has served us well in navigating the bureaucratic complexities of funeral planning and land management, instilled empathy in us for the difficult circumstances our families are experiencing, and provided a network of people we can call on for assistance. It’s also opened up conversations with other professionals in the end-of-life space looking to expand their work in death care.

More and more, we’re hearing questions from our network about becoming a death doula or a funeral director. We’ve heard it often enough that we decided to look more closely at what each of these roles offers in terms of actual work, as well as what the path to becoming a practitioner currently looks like.

It’s important to note that while these roles are being discussed together in this post, they serve different purposes and appear at different points in end-of-life care. And, as mentioned in an earlier post, they are not mutually exclusive.

Funeral directors largely handle after-death tasks, including removal of the deceased, filing of death certificates, body preparation, and facilitating memorial or graveside services. It is a formalized, highly regulated profession that requires licensure through an accredited program.

Death doula work, on the other hand, tends to be less structured and, crucially, intervenes earlier in the dying process, when the client is still able to make decisions, or with the next of kin of a dying person in need of support and guidance.

In terms of deciding which role you are more suited for, this distinction may be the deciding factor. While some funeral directors offer pre-need planning services (which often requires obtaining an insurance certification), they mostly encounter families after a death has occurred. Death doulas walk with people right up to that line and help them cross it – with control and dignity.

To give us some insight into what it’s like to become certified and work in each of these roles, we talked to professionals we know about their education and experience in the fields. Ezra Salter is a funeral director who works for a large corporate-owned funeral home in New Orleans, LA, and Sam Reyes-Godbee, also a funeral director, works for a small funeral home that focuses on direct cremation services in San Antonio, TX. Sandy Travis and Wayne Beamer of Central Texas are both death doulas and co-founders of Life Transitions Doulas.

Education and Cost

In the U.S., death doula training differs from funeral service in that there is currently no standardized set of requirements to obtain certification or licensure, nor any degree-earning program attached to it. Unlike the U.K., where End of Life Doula UK operates as the main national membership association for training and standards, in the U.S. there are hundreds of certification courses that guide participants through training for different aspects of end-of-life care. Cost and structure vary, as does the length of each course.

Sandy and Wayne became End of Life Doulas in 2022, after completing the ABODE End of Life Doula 3-month certification course from International Doula Life Movement (IDLM). In 2023, they received their Life Planning Doula Specialist certification from IDLM, which also lasted 3 months and cost $600.

Continuing education is not required but is often pursued by practitioners to expand their offerings. For Wayne and Sandy, their focus is on improving how they provide services. To that end, they are currently pursuing an End of Life Yoga Doula certification to fine-tune their contemplative, meditative approach with clients. They also regularly volunteer with local end-of-life organizations and facilitate Death Cafes to give participants an opportunity to discuss death in a supportive and non-judgmental environment.

Obtaining a funeral director’s license, on the other hand, typically requires admittance into a degree-earning program, which includes an apprenticeship, classroom work, and sitting for a licensing exam. Every state has continuing education requirements to maintain the license.

Ezra graduated from Delgado Community College’s Funeral Service program in 2018. The two-year associate’s program estimates its tuition to be $4,078 per year (including textbooks). Sam graduated from Gupton-Jones College of Funeral Service in Atlanta in 2015. The college currently estimates the total cost of admission at $35,546. Her associate’s degree program was slightly shorter than Ezra’s, at a year and a half, with an additional year to complete her apprenticeship. That portion could have been completed sooner, she notes, but working for a large funeral home that moved her around frequently extended her apprenticeship.

Compensation and Workload

According to ZipRecruiter, the average income for a funeral director in 2025 is around $65,886/year, though this varies depending on location and firm size. Ezra and Sam both work full-time and serve around 100–120 families a year. This often includes everything from being on call, performing removals and body preparation, making arrangements, and also performing the service.

For Ezra, who works at a larger funeral home, her day-to-day primarily involves family care. She is not on call or doing removals, but instead arranges services with families, prepares the location, and directs the funeral. This includes setting up keepsakes or photos, playing music, working with clergy, and directing pallbearers. She also handles administrative tasks like contacting life insurance companies, filing death certificates, and ordering funerary items like caskets and flowers.

Sam’s funeral home is smaller and offers more limited services, so she and her coworker take on-call shifts 3–4 times a week, including weekends. She works with families to arrange services, issues cremation paperwork, and schedules cremations. Body removal and preparation are handled by another team.

Death doulas earn an average of $49,220/year, according to ZipRecruiter. However, Sandy and Wayne note that it can take time to achieve stable income. “Something no doula wants to talk about is money,” they write, addressing the question: “Will pursuing a career as an End of Life Doula provide a steady, reliable income stream?” Their answer is yes and no. In their experience: “In the beginning, understand that it will take a while to establish a practice in the community. That’s why it’s important to keep an open mind to exploring additional ways to support ourselves at the onset.” Some death doulas, they note, offer their services on a strictly volunteer basis.

Their client interactions vary from year to year, as is common in doula work. Initially, they connected with clients through ABODE’s Doula Dispatch Program and their own social media and website. They began seeing around 15 clients a year but have recently scaled back due to personal circumstances. This grow-at-your-own-pace method is typical for death doulas, who often operate in a more entrepreneurial atmosphere. Wayne and Sandy, for example, began their practice by helping people complete their advance directives in response to a growing community need.

Unique Aspects to Each Role

Ezra came to funeral directing with a background in costuming, stage makeup, and technical theater, which she sees as an extension of her funeral work. “When you think about it, a funeral is technically live theater,” she wrote. Applying her stage production knowledge keeps the job interesting. She is also a cemetery enthusiast and loves interacting with historic cemeteries across New Orleans.

Sam’s favorite aspect of her role is being involved in the administrative tasks of funeral planning—handling insurance, filing death certificates, receiving floral arrangements, making casket sales, writing obituaries, and coordinating with the medical examiner. Paramount to her work is educating families—and the public—about how the death care industry works. “Being the last person to bathe the deceased, arrange their jewelry, or comb their hair is an honor,” she writes.

Death doulas bring varied experience to their roles and often find ways to integrate their expertise into end-of-life care. A hallmark of doula work is tailoring care to the specific needs of clients. “Newer doulas may not realize they’ll provide very diverse services throughout their careers,” Sandy and Wayne write. “In the beginning, we helped quite a few folks complete their advance directives because there seemed to be a large need.”

Other clients may request more long-term assistance. In one case, a family needed help navigating a recent terminal cancer diagnosis and the hesitation of an oncologist to provide clear communication. “Many times, we offer a safe, sacred space for the person who is dying and the family to talk and grieve,” they write.

Working Together

While she hasn’t yet worked with a death doula, Sam is eager to. She hasn’t considered becoming one herself but has worked in hospice and organ donation—two areas that often intersect with both funeral and doula work. She also advocates for green funeral options in her current role.

Ezra once considered becoming a death doula but finds that her work as a full-time funeral director doesn’t allow the time commitment the role requires. She serves on the advisory board of Wake, a local nonprofit, where she engages with the doula community and advocates for alternatives like natural burial and education for LGBTQ+ communities.

Death doulas may collaborate with funeral directors but are careful not to assume responsibilities that require licensure. “The laws in Texas are fairly strict in that regard,” Sandy and Wayne write. “We can assist families with funeral planning and coordination, but we cannot arrange or provide licensed funeral services in exchange for payment.” They often assist with research, planning, and general support. For example, they recently compiled a list of green funeral sites in Central Texas for families to reference—without endorsing any specific business. Like Sam and Ezra, Sandy and Wayne also work as educators: writing and editing course content, giving local presentations, and offering workshops on preparing for the end of life.

Clearly, there is a great deal of crossover between these two roles, and much to consider when pursuing either. Becoming a dual practitioner is not uncommon in end-of-life care and can make it easier to perform certain tasks that require licensure, thereby streamlining service offerings.

But as the participants in this piece illustrate, dedicating time to serve families in both roles can be a challenge. End-of-life work doesn’t follow a typical schedule and is often more demanding than expected. That’s when a strong community of fellow death care workers becomes invaluable. Maintaining those relationships allows you to step in, wherever and however you’re needed.

Music For Reflection and Inspiration

Greetings! Cindy Ybarra here, a co-owner of Campo de Estrellas. Since opening our cemetery, I’ve noticed that music has played an important element in the burials at Campo de Estrellas. Some families make their own while others bring favorite or particularly evocative recorded pieces. I got curious about music other families have found especially meaningful and started a collection. I’d like to share some of those with you here.

But first, I’ll tell you about one that I’ve chosen for myself: Tierra Mestiza (meaning roughly “land of cultural fusion”- which we all are). It was one that a dear young friend of mine often played with his musical family and one that he’d agreed to play at my funeral. Since he died an untimely death, the music holds additional significance for me.

Here are others that families have found particularly meaningful:

From Danny Schmidt, an extraordinary singer/ songwriter and all-around delightful person, we have Company of Friends. It was used at the funeral of a beloved friend of mine. Her company of friends felt like it captured perfectly who she was and expressed the sweetness of our years of friendship.

Gabriel’s Oboe from the movie “The Mission”, composed by Ennio Morricone, my favorite composer of movie scores. The tenderness at the beginning touches the heart with its poignancy and the triumphant ending speaks to the joy of remembering a life well-lived.

Barber’s Adagio, which was used as the theme song of the movie “Platoon”. It seems that many soldiers from the Vietnam era hold this music near to their hearts as it reawakens memories of both deep comradeship and the deep pain of loss.

The Adagio of the Concierto de Aranjuez. (And if you’ve never heard the complete Concierto, you’re missing out.)
From Wikipedia:

It was written in 1939 by the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo. Rodrigo and his wife Victoria stayed silent for many years about the inspiration for this second movement, and thus the popular belief grew that it was inspired by the bombing of Guernica in 1937. In her autobiography, Victoria eventually revealed that it was a response to Rodrigo’s devastation at the miscarriage of their first pregnancy and Victoria’s grave illness following that event.

Home funeral

Natural burial fits into what could be called the ecosystem of alternative death care. This is the network of events, people, and decisions that occur when someone dies, typically outside of what is considered to be conventional end-of-life institutions.

Two death care alternatives associated with natural burial are death doulas and home funerals. Like natural burial, these options mirror institutionalize practices like hospice and funeral homes, but forefront the family’s involvement in death care.

If you aren’t familiar with the concepts, here is a little background. Death doulas are individual caregivers that provide guidance and validation at the end of one’s life. Each death doula offers a unique type companionship to clients and their families during times of high stress such as helping to organize resources, creating a legacy plan or offering spiritual support. They share similarities to hospice workers, however they do not administer medication. While death doula training has not been standardized in the United States, certifying organizations like International End-of-Life Doula Association (INELDA) have a well-established set of standards and ethics along with certificates for those who want to work with the dying.

Home funerals are funeral services held in a private residence with the body present. Even if a death does not occur a home, families can still chose to bring the person back home for a service, the way you might typically bring the deceased to a church or synagogue. This may mean you transport the body yourself as well as keep the body cool using a form a dry ice while the service takes place. It is an incredibly unique and personal experience that takes some planning (like natural burial!) The National Home Funeral Alliance has resources to connect you to Home Funeral Guides as well as legal resources so that you can be informed of your rights in holding a home funeral in your state. Death doulas may also be helpful in arranging a home funeral.

The interesting thing about each of these services is that they are not mutually exclusive with institutionalized option. You can use a hospice facility with a death doula present, then have a home funeral and then be cremated. You can have a service in a funeral home and then be buried in a natural burial cemetery. You can have a home funeral and then be cremated. There is a tendency to think that if you don’t use one end-of-life institution, you can’t use any. However, we’ve worked with families who have used a mix of both alternatives and institutions with beautiful results. It really only depends on what you have the capacity to handle and what is the most meaningful to you.

Selecting a Natural Burial Container

Here is a bit of cemetery lore: Campo de Estrellas originally started as an idea for a direct-to-consumer casket company. Co-founders Michael and Cindy had the idea of providing low-cost, eco-friendly caskets that could be flat-packed and shipped to people’s homes, along with assembly instructions. With their friend Brooke of MakeShift ATX, they came up with a design and created a prototype. During this process, they mentioned to Brooke their interest in natural burials, so she introduced them to her friend Sarah, a funeral director focused on natural burials in Austin. When Sarah told them about the concept of conservation cemeteries, they soon shifted gears and began to focus completely on that project. Their casket idea, while on hold for now, still intrigues them, especially when helping families make decisions about burial containers.

Prototype of the flat-pack casket

Burial containers, aka caskets or shrouds, are typically required for earth burials. As usual, natural burial is a bit different in this regard—but not so different that it’s a challenge to find one that aligns with the mission of being gentle on the earth. Funeral providers have come a long way in that regard, acknowledging the demand for burial containers that are biodegradable, beautiful, and affordable. Essentially, what makes a burial container suitable for natural burial is that it is intentionally biodegradable—meaning it is made out of natural material like wood or fiber and forgoes materials that prevent it from breaking down. Metal, fiberglass, and concrete are not allowed. However, a few nails to hold the wood together are generally seen as fine – we shouldn’t let perfect get in the way of good!

Choosing a burial container

There can be a tendency to dismiss the importance of the burial container decision, to fall back on the idea that “it’s just going in the ground.” That may be true, but burial containers can often serve as the last offering to our loved ones that speaks to their personality and demonstrates our care. Knowing that we wrapped them in love or enclosed them in a vessel that is beautiful shows grace and dignity, even when we can’t always see it. Functionally, burial containers help with storage and transportation of the body, particularly if there is a period of time between death and burial. Visually, burial containers create a softer image during a difficult time, and spiritually, can bring us into connection with our values in a tangible way. Wrapping our departed in a beloved quilt that brought them comfort during their lives or placing them in a hand-decorated casket covered in messages of love are just a couple of options as burial containers for natural burials.

Shrouded body

Aesthetics, along with price and availability, tend to determine the type of burial container chosen. There are some other considerations when deciding between a casket or shroud as well. Shrouds provide less structure, so the shape of the body will be visible during the burial. Many people find this comforting and embrace the opportunity to have this final image. When transporting a shrouded body, if there are no handles or straps sewn into the fabric, the body will be placed on a rigid board to assist in carrying them to the grave and placed on the lowering device. The board can be removed before burial or remain if it’s biodegradable. Caskets tend to be bulkier, so you will need to have a few people who are able to help carry the casket to the grave.

Where to purchase

Purchasing a casket or shroud can be done on your own or with the help of a funeral director. Some funeral homes offer a selection of natural burial containers. It’s important to remember that you DO NOT have to buy what they offer—it is perfectly legal to provide your own burial container. Our co-founder Cindy often cites her experience in this regard. When burying her mother, the family chose a lovely casket handmade by nuns at a monastery. The funeral home attempted to push back, saying they were not allowed to use a container not sold by them. Shrewd as ever, Cindy cited the Funeral Trade Commission rule that “The funeral provider cannot refuse to handle a casket or urn you bought online, at a local casket store, or somewhere else—or charge you a fee to do it.”

Wicker casket

We’re lucky today that there are many, many providers of natural burial containers available for you to choose from. A good place to start your search for one is on the Green Burial Council’s product provider list, which will give you an idea of what is available. You do not have to select a GBC-certified company, however. Any container that meets the standard of being biodegradable should be fine, whether it’s made by a company or by your own hand.