In some primitive cultures every person within a tribe is valuable and plays a part for their tribesmen. Each person has a role and that role keeps the tribe running smoothly. If someone cannot fulfill their role they are raised to recognize so and change it. This is most common with the elderly or terminally ill people.
If a person within the tribe grows too old or suffers an illness that prevents them from assisting their tribesmen in the survival of the village, they will take it upon themselves to designate a day to convene with the tribe and say their farewells. When that day comes they say goodbye the last time and walk into the wilderness without friend or foe, food or supplies.
Into the desert, forest, plains, jungle they go, in hopes of rejoining their creator and the mother earth in a way as tender and natural as how they were brought into the world. There is perhaps no greater way of dying than to reintegrate with the world around them and pass into God's hands in the wildness of the untamed world.
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