RSS
Home
Why do we bury people anymore?
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
A special place in Hell is being reserved for four cemetery workers in Illinois accused of digging up bodies from graves so they can sell the plots to other people
The workers allegedly dug up more than 300 graves, relocating the bodies into mass graves and reselling the plots to unsuspecting buyers.
The graveyard in Alsop, IL, is the final resting place of many prominent African-Americans including singer Dinah Washington and lynching victim Emmet Till.
Authorities believe the operation south of Chicago may have been going on for four years.
Cynically, my first thought was: Digging up graves in Chicago? Was there an election?
Not to make light of the event --it's a serious matter: laws were broken, and we can understand emotional distress that a family feels upon hearing that a loved one has been disturbed, but I have a couple of questions.
Has a loved one been disturbed? The individual is not in the grave. There are bones in the grave that once were the individual but the individual is long gone --to his or her reward if you happen to be a religious person, or into the ether if you do not. Or perhaps into the Karmic consciousness if you happen to believe in some of the Eastern religions.
But the other question is this: Why do we bury people anymore at all? Shouldn't we stop this practice? Isn't this practice a bit barbaric? Why don't we just cremate everyone who dies and allow families to dispose of the ashes as they see fit, as families do now when a cremation occurs? They can buy an urn and set the ashes in some place of respect and reverence, either on their property or in their house. Or as often is left in the wills of people who instructed they be cremated, they simply want their ashes scattered to the four winds.
In some cases people want them scattered in a specific place and there are organizations like the Neptune Society which arranges for every inexpensive cremation and disposal, scattering the ashes at sea, hence the name Neptune Society.
How we dispose of ourselves can raise ethical question as well. Are we not wasting a lot of land to continue to set aside places to bury the remains of people? Cremation is less expensive, easier, in a way, quicker, and less burdensome on the Earth, and I think, less burdomesone on the people you leave behind.
If you're religious, there is the Biblical admonition: Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.
So why would we be setting aside real estate to bury people? Why would we be taking up the space and then, in a situation such as this in a major American city where space is at a premium, inviting this kind of disaster which has befallen these families in Chicago?
It's likely you know people who regularly visit the cemetery on holidays, birthdays and so forth. They take flowers, they plant flowers, they pay their respects. You can buy blankets of flowers to put on graves at Christmas time and Easter. I don't get any of that. I don't know why anyone anyongo to cemeteries. I don't go to cemeteries; there's nobody there. I don't need to go to a cemetery to remember the members of my family who have passed on. I remember their memories, the time spent, the knowledge passed on, their personalities. I am many of the things that were my mother and father. They live on through me. I don't have to go to a cemetery to know that, to appreciate it, to feel lucky to have experienced it (because they were great parents). I don't need to go to some place where their bones are buried to evoke such sentiments. If you want to, that's fine; it's a free country --you can if you wish.
But I think we're wasting very valuable land here to have cemeteries and it seems to me that since we have the technology to reduce the human body once death occurs to a very small collection of ashes and fragments which can then be retained or scattered, why don't we do that?
Why do we bury anybody anymore? What's the purpose?
It seems to me to be selfish, actually. The deceased does not suffer any problem or disability by being buried. They're dead. They're gone. It's not as if we need to worry about them. But are we trying to keep them close by in a tangible way because we cannot reconcile ourselves to the reality of death and that people die and are gone?
Isn't it healthier to accept that, appreciate the memories and the mementoes left behind and move on? Imagine having buried a member of your family in Chicago 10 or 20 years ago and to have reconciled yourself to the death of a loved one, to have moved on, to have raised your family and to have life evolve --and now, to receive the shocking news that the remains of your loved ones have been dug up and disoriented. You don't know what to believe.
Whereby had there been a cremation, there would be no remains to disturb; the reconciliation would've been final.
I don't get it.
As a matter of health, space and common space, we oughtta simply stop the practice of burying people and go to a practice of universal cremation.
More About:
Sociologial Questions
Related Articles:
Comments
Most religious and least religious states? A new poll maps religion in America. According to the Pew Research Center, Mississippi is the most …
Pakistan is lovely this time of year! (AFP/Getty) Tora Bora was "one of the greatest military blunders in recent U-S history." That …
