11/07/2025
When people gather for a ceremony at Recompose, their person is laid in this cradle, wrapped in a shroud, then nested into wood chips, alfalfa, and straw—the plant materials we use in the composting process. Toward the end of the ceremony, friends and family are invited to come forward and lay organic matter onto and around their person’s body. They may have gone to the farmers market to get their person’s favorite flowers, or brought moss or herbs from the backyard garden. Sometimes, people write love letters, and those are also composted together with the person who has died.
At a recent open house in Seattle, Recompose guests participated in a ritual where they wrote notes about a feeling, person, or thing they were missing or mourning. Several weeks later, our Soil Team composted these notes—without a person this time—as part of a regular practice they have of creating a non-human compost batch for ongoing research and maintenance.
Through this ritual, our visitors' grief—their organic matter—was carried forward in Recompose's day-to-day work, becoming part of the cycle of death and rebirth.