...and the End

The Death collage also is a meditation but in letting go and letting be. I wanted to create a simple, clean but still earthy, textured idea of death as a calm, slow, peaceful event (not that either are most of the time but this is the effect I was going for).

The womb is now the core changing, the life evolving and going back to the earth. The avocado pit I used for life was vibrant and shiny and this one was left to die and is peeling its old layer, cracking in the center and dying in its burial circle. The circle also contains the peeled off piece and the symbol of the body from a teabag (I love these multi color effects varying tea bags give and use them often) and the background circle is from the tea paper showing the colors of the earth as the seed goes back to the dirt/nature in almost monotone earthen shade. The top thick branch I found looked so much like a dead bird to me that it seemed like the eagle watching over having passed on. [When my mother passed I saw a bird fly straight upwards outside her window and it seemed as if her spirit was flying up so this was an interesting idea for me and reminded me of Native American rituals for the dying or passing on of souls.

The old maple leaf symbolizes the cycle of the seasons and nature's cycle of birth and death. The natural coffin like pieces are from avocado skins and the bark wrapped around the branch bottom left is from a tree that was dying in the city. I added some healing teas as the bottom row to symbolize the healing that needs to come before dying and offers peace and healing to those who are affected...The dirt here obviously symbolic of the deep soil one is buried in is coffee and I added the one metal element from the bike wheel to represent the human wheel of life which can be in stark contrast to nature's cycle or circle of life.