What's a Pagan Burial Like?

I'm getting old enough now that I need to understand what a proper Pagan burial should look like. Ten years ago the first of my contemporaries died. She walked the Red Road and her family honored her in death with the customs and traditions of her path.  Five years ago a coven sister crossed over. She was no longer active in our group and it was only by accident that we learned of her passing. She'd requested no public services but my sisters and I gathered at my home to remember her, to honor her before the Goddess and process the grief of not only her death, but of losing contact with her through the years. Currently our circle is mourning the loss of another dear sister. We are not in charge of her public memorial, but her non-Pagan husband has given his blessing for us to celebrate her in ritual as she would have wanted.

I would love nothing more than to gather with my sisterhood and wash our beloved's body in salt water and wrap her in a shroud we stitched together with our own fingers. I'd love to smudge her with burning herbs like a sacred bundle and lower her into the waiting arms of the Mother Earth. But those privileges aren't ours to perform. Her body belongs to her husband and her parents, as it should be.

Have you performed or attended a burial rite for a Pagan? I love Starhawk's The Pagan Book of Living and Dying and have gleaned a lot of useful and thoughtful ideas from it. But as the years march on and I come to accept that loss will become an ever-more common part of my life I wonder how other Pagan folk are dealing with their losses. We, the spiritual family members, often know more about what a person would want than their biological family members, and yet we are not empowered to act on their behalf.

Our circle will gather this Sunday at sundown, to rejoice and weep and pray together for the sister we have lost. She is free, I know, from pain and longing. As the seed sprouts, grows, flowers, and scatters as seen again. so will she. So will I, someday. So will you. I pray that in death we have a loving circle to honor us in the traditions that enhanced our living. So mote it be.