DeathCare BC

11/11/2024

A little over five years ago I registered “DeathCare BC” in the province of BC.

The path is not always clear. My chosen trade is funeral service, and I absolutely love it. There will be a time when I am a full-time funeral director again. I have profound love and respect for all of my colleagues doing the vital work day in and day out serving families.

I keep coming back to this Other Thing that I am trying to define. The thing of preparing people *before* they enter the funeral home. The thing of ensuring that the circle of care understands what each other are doing in order to provide excellent support. From family, to healthcare providers, to first responders, to your neighbours.

How do we reach the living in order to connect to their dead?

In hindsight I see that I created DeathCare BC as a place to sit while I contemplate my role in this field. It is a place for thinking and offering what I can to the conversation about community deathcare.

Thank you for following along, may the next five years reveal more insights of the heart, mind, and practice.

In care,
Emily
🍂🖐💛

20/10/2024

Family support is so important 😅

Excited to be co-leading a cemetery storytelling walk at the cemetery in Kamloops today. Rain or shine!!! (spoiler: it’s rain... in the desert... typical).

Thank you to the for the opportunity to dream up this session with amazing Bonnie .farm.tannery also special thank you to for helping us in a pinch 😍

See you at the spot with warm drinks in hand ❤️🎉

xxE

10/10/2024

Life in progress... If you feel like you're hanging on by your fingernails, hello!

I keep opening my profile and considering how aesthetic I could (should) make it, then I squirm and close the app. Will try again another day, but in the meantime here's a slice of fall. Mostly personal, though the work continues.

Had a moment while adding this early morning CBC cemetery meeting where I thought, "it could be I'm doing it, it's happening".

Amongst the reeds peeking out at the shy first sliver of daylight.

Welcome Fall 💫😶‍🌫️😍

xxE

17/08/2024

13/08/2024

For YEARS I've digitized photos for families to use in slideshows and I *love* doing it. 📸

Decided to put this on offer because:
✨I have the equipment and capacity and,
✨I love to connect with people and,
✨The earlier we save and share these memories the better.

Feel free to screenshot or share this with anyone you know with a pile of photos in their closets.🥰

Love!
Emily

11/08/2024

Sunshine Coast friends! Join myself and your friendly local RMT Kate Taylor for a community death conversation. 👻

What is the future of deathcare in your community?🤔

Registration on Eventbrite just so we can have an idea of numbers (for snacks). 🥐

This is a free event. 🦅

If you want to share a donation to help cover costs a PayPal link will be available but absolutely not expected 🫶

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/sunshine-coast-community-death-conversation-tickets-984024472687

01/07/2024

Shelley Joyce from CBC Kamloops Daybreak invited me in to chat about my work a couple of weeks ago. The interview aired last week and I finally had the chance to make the audio available on YouTube.

I love finding new ways to work in community, DeathCare BC is where you can go if you want to follow what I'm up to.

If you or anyone you know ever wants to connect for a project, workshop, or just talking it out person to person, my door and DMs are always open.

Grateful grateful grateful.

27/06/2024

Mortality & Me Workshops starting next week! ⏳⚰️🎨

Comox Valley - July 6
Nanaimo - July 13
Saanich/Victoria - July 20

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/mortality-me-comox-valley-tickets-921597511967

Since I began death work in 2016 I have used creativity as a way of connecting to hard things.

We see death in fiction, art, popular media, the news. Are we connecting to these representations?

Mortality & Me Saturday Sessions are the first time I am integrating my art background with the death education I have been doing for years.

Fact is we are surrounded by death, loss, and grief all the time.

If you are reading this you are likely with me among the privileged folks on earth who have the time and space to contemplate these things philosophically. What to do with that opportunity?

Together we will cultivate compassion, community, and connection.

I'll be on the island in July hosting these one-time workshops, I hope you can join me.

https://emilybootle.ca/saturday-sessions/

21/06/2024

In the 90s on the beach in Bamfield, drawing in the years before writing was possible. I've been nothing if not consistent in this particular way.

Catching the boat today with my beloved friends and to celebrate love and also the birth of - been supported by these women since our teens 👯‍♀️👯‍♀️

In everything I do these days I think about this little nugget, the person I was before I realized I was a person. It is so cool sometimes to be able to take this perspective, to be complicated me juggling the stuff of life but also to have this journaling 6 year old in there somewhere chilling at the beach.

Beaming gratitude today. For friendship, for ferries, and for growth... And the beach.

✨🫶 Emily

12/06/2024

Screenshots I love - there’s so much I want to share but my words are just wisps right now. 🍃

June is: funeral directing/embalming, collecting goodies for my workshops in July, making plans to lay next to water, and synthesizing my practice into digestible pieces. 🧜‍♀️👻🎨

Yesterday I cosmetized someone for their viewing, it was 30 relaxed minutes considering their life, our lives, and the fact that despite expensive makeup that exists just for the dead sometimes the best thing you can use is Covergirl concealer, sorry Eckels. 💅

I’ve been thinking a lot about accidents, mental health, and war.

Titrating billions of pieces of data into a conceivable philosophy that permits me to function and show up for my community. 👁️👁️

Walking to work and stepping over someone sleeping on the doorstep, wanting to give them privacy but knowing that they have to move so the bereaved can come in. Being-reavement.

Not incredibly coherent, but here it is.

🌚Emily❤️

07/06/2024

Since I began death work in 2016 I have used creativity as a way of connecting to hard things.

We see death in fiction, art, popular media, the news. Are we connecting to these representations?

Mortality & Me Saturday Sessions are the first time I am integrating my art background with the death education I have been doing for years.

Fact is we are surrounded by death, loss, and grief all the time.

If you are reading this you are likely with me among the privileged folks on earth who have the time and space to contemplate these things philosophically. What to do with that opportunity?

Together we will cultivate compassion, community, and connection.

I'll be on the island in July hosting these one-time workshops, I hope you can join me.

https://emilybootle.ca/saturday-sessions/