Bring Me a Shrubbery!

When I was in high school Mom was driving Amanda to school one day and they saw a cat get hit by another car. Amanda was really upset so Mom promised to go back and check on the cat after dropping Amanda off. The cat had wondered off the side of the road, but had ultimately died. Mom decided to put it in the trunk of the car and take it home so Amanda could achieve some peace by giving the cat a burial.

Of course I ended up providing the muscle for the endeavor. You see, our back yard is full of red clay and tree roots. I took a pick ax and chopped up the dirt before trying to scoop it out of the hole with the shovel. To make matters worse, Jack (the name Amanda gave the dead cat) had gotten stiff, so we couldn't make him a more compact shape. We finally had to bury him in a standing position with his front legs on one side of a tree root and his back legs on the other side.

I conducted another burial in the yard this weekend. We are still in the process of moving everything out of Mom's house. Even now we don't have everything out, but Mom told me she wanted to unplug the big chest freezer in the garage. The placenta from Virginia's home birth was in that freezer, so I took this as motivation to finally do something with it.

Back when I was planning the home birth I asked the midwives what would happen with the placenta. They said some people like to encapsulate. Other people bury it. When I kept looking at them like I was hoping for another answer they said it was possible to donate the placenta to people who train cadaver sniffing dogs. This third option was my personal plan, however, months after the placenta was already in the freezer I looked up how to make a donation to the cadaver dogs and discovered that I should have stored it differently and donated it more promptly.

On to plan B. I was never interested in encapsulation (and even if I was, that also would have had to happen soon after birth). I'm not as grossed out by it as I was initially, but still - not for me. So that left burial.

I was hoping that being older and wiser I would have less difficulty digging this hole than I did digging Jack's. I did pick a location that had fewer roots but I still had to battle red clay. It was a hot and challenging morning.

Rather than burying the placenta unceremoniously in the yard, I decided to plant an azalea on top of it. After all, life comes from life, and although the buried placenta will surely feed any number of plants and animals before it fully decomposes, it will be kind of neat to look at one of those plants and know that it is being fed by the same organ that fed Virginia for nine months.