Dying Responsibly with Baxley Andresen

Week of October 24, 2026

Dying Responsibly

Death will happen, let’s prepare. Learn about the choices to make sure your death can align with how you live.

Introduction: Dying Responsibly: Checking in with Your Choices
The choices to make around our own death and dying can be hard to do. In this first class, we start with the question for the week of “How Can I Create a Good Death?”.  We begin with prompts with an inquisitive advance directive which we will revisit at the end of the four sessions. Together we review how we like to be cared for when we cannot advocate for ourselves, and what we’d like to happen to our bodies after our death. It is with this reflection that we start to make plans about what we need and want around our death and dying.

Finding Your Support Team: No One Dies Alone
After a review of the first class, we will discuss how hospice and Death Doulas can be supportive to not only a person in the dying process, but even for the entire family. How can these allies serve you as a caregiver or yourself near the end of life? We will also deep dive into what can be pre-planned to alleviate any unknowns near the end of life. Practical, yes, but truly helpful to family and loved ones.

Home Funerals and Natural Burial: The old is new again!
Natural Burial and home wakes have been around longer than our most commonly known practices of today but have become more popular in the last thirty years in the United States. Having our dead at home is not commonly seen in the United States, but can occur legally. In this class, we go over what a home funeral looks like, and how to have a wake at home. Additionally, we discuss natural burial and what to expect at a green cemetery. Did you even know you may be able to bury on your own land?

The Newest Options and Revisiting Your Choices
We will learn about the newest options available in deathcare: aquamation, natural organic reduction, and other ideas not regularly offered or discussed. After this introduction, we can review the choices you have initially made on your handout and see if anything has changed.

What, if any, needs to be addressed when you get home? This will be a time for questions and an open discussion on your end-of-life plans, and a time to review your desires for your end of life that you previously recorded at the beginning of this series.

 

Baxley Andresen is an owner of a natural burial ground in Central California. Her journey in deathcare started with working for Alua Arthur of Going with Grace, then working as a Funeral Arranger at FRIENDS Funeral Home in Los Angeles. She found Creston Cemetery in 2021, an old pioneer cemetery in Central California, ready for some attention and an update. Baxley manages the land, trees, burials and other aspects of this small but revered cemetery alongside Ed Bixby of Destination Destiny Memorials. She serves as Vice President on the Green Burial Council and volunteers with the Valley Chevra Kadisha, a group that sits alongside the dead and performs ritual washings of the deceased. Baxley knows and believes that “though grief and loss is inevitable, being unprepared isn’t.”