Luke Perry passed away in early March after suffering a massive ischemic stroke at his home in late February — and we were all heartbroken. Perry was a genuinely kind man, father, and actor (he was most recently starring on Riverdale, but got his start on 90210 in the ’90s), and he will be remembered for all the good he did.
A difficult part of anyone’s passing is the pain and grief that their families have to go through. And one of the ways people often heal as they memorialize their lost loved ones is to get a tattoo, which is exactly what Perry’s daughter, Sophie Perry, did. In fact, she got a tattoo of a mushroom, as she told her IG followers in a story. In this case, it wasn’t exactly a food mushroom, but a different kind of mushroom.
Here’s why she tattooed a mushroom on her wrist:
Perry, before he passed, requested that he be buried in an eco-friendly, biodegradable suit made of mushrooms. Apparently, Perry had found out about the suit and fell in love with the idea. “My dad discovered it, and was more excited by this than I have ever seen him,” his daughter shared.
“He was buried in this suit, one of his final wishes… They are truly a beautiful thing for this beautiful planet, and I want to share it with all of you.”
Last year, Sophie actually visited San Francisco to see the Redwoods. While there, Sophie took a picture of mushrooms growing, because she thought they were so beautiful.
Now, she explains, the mushrooms mean so much more to her:
“Now, mushrooms hold an entirely new meaning for me,” she wrote on Instagram. “Any explanation I give will not do justice to the genius that is the mushroom burial suit, but it is essentially an eco-friendly burial option via mushrooms.”
She continued, “All I can say is that you should all look into them at coeio.com or just by googling ‘mushroom burial suit.'” How beautiful is that?
The company’s infinity burial suit cleanses the body and soil of toxins that would typically seep into the ground. It also delivers nutrients from the body to the earth, and it helps to boost life around the body so that nature can continue to grow and flourish.
More so, it’s entirely biodegradable and made without chemicals or preservatives. It was beautifully designed to “reunite the body with the earth and the ongoing cycle of life.”
The best thing? The company states, “We plant 2 trees for every suit or shroud bought, compost our scraps, and our manufacturers are converting to using all renewable energy.”
Wow. That is so meaningful. Tears are starting to crop up just thinking about it.
Eco-friendly burial is something more and more people are talking about — especially in the death-positive community.
The death-positive movement states, “Adopting green and natural burial practices has the potential to change ourselves and the world.”
In fact, as Caitlin Doughty (author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory and From Here to Eternity; Traveling the World to Find the Good Death) writes in Natural Burial and Embracing Decay, there is a great, existential benefit to an eco-friendly burial:
“If we work towards accepting, not denying, our decomposition, we can begin to see it as something beautiful,” she writes.
“More than beautiful— ecstatic. The ecstasy of decay begins as disgust and revulsion, the way we feel when we imagine ourself as a corpse. But disgust and revulsion turn to pleasure as we use that feeling to realize we are alive now. We will someday be dead, but today blood pumps through our veins and breath fills our lungs and we walk the earth.”
In terms of Luke Perry, we think it’s beautiful that his body has merged with the earth thanks to the style of burial he chose for himself.
And we’re so glad that his daughter is finding some peace by tattooing herself with a mushroom as a symbol. Grief is so hard to move through — but with little reminders of the people we love, it can be a bit easier.
90210, which has been set for a revival, will respectfully nod toward Luke Perry. However, they won’t exploit his passing in the reboot:
“We don’t want to go and make a success out of the show based on that, so we’ll definitely tilt our head to that, but I think that we don’t want to go and in any way try to glorify that to make our show successful,” said Gabrielle Carteris, who played Andrea. “And I don’t think Luke would want that. So, we’re going to do it in a very respectful way.”
We will miss Luke Perry, but we’re so grateful for his daughter’s message following her dad’s thoughtful and earth-friendly burial.
