Remembering the Dead
When I was five, my family moved into a house that was less than a block away from a cemetery. My family is still living there, and this is the house that I go home to during school breaks. When I was five, I don’t think I really understood what a cemetery was. I knew that people were placed in the ground after they had died, but death was not a concept that I could really grasp at my young age.
Because the cemetery was the closest place to my house that had a big open space, my family, my dog, and I would go on walks there quite a bit. I remember running around and looking at all the grave stones. I remember my mom telling me not to step on the grave stones as it was disrespectful. I also remember asking her why all the grave stones were facing in the same direction. She told me about the religious belief behind the graves’ orientation.
As I grew older, I became fascinated with cemeteries. I loved reading all the head stones and seeing how long ago these people had lived. I have always thought it a little sad that there were graves over a hundred years old. Who would come visit them anymore? These headstones were very old. You could see how the weather had worn them down. Sometimes, I would find headstones that were so worn down that you could barely make out the name and dates on them. Moss covered some of the stones as well, also making them hard to read.
Now, when I go back home for school break, I still walk to the cemetery almost every day. My family has a different dog now, and we still take her on walks to the cemetery. There are a few grave stones that people visit quite a lot. You can tell because they leave a large number of gifts surrounding these grave stones. During Christmas time one year, there was a small Christmas tree that had been set up next to one of these graves. There were lights on the tree, and there was a mini train running around the tree on a track. This was the grave of a young child.
One of the things I’ve often wondered on my walks is, what do people do when they move away? How is it that they carry the memory of their loved one with them? A grave represents the final resting place of the body, but not of the person. To me, cemeteries almost seem like odd places to go to remember the dead. The person you are remembering never lived there while they were alive, and other than the grave stone, and the fact that you know their body is in the earth, there is no real connection between the cemetery and the person who was.
My grandfather died when I was fifteen. He is buried in a cemetery about an hour from my house, close to where my grandmother still lives. It’s a beautiful place. It’s up on a hill, and where the hill slopes away, you can look down and see the harbor. Off in the distance, you can see Mt. Rainier.
Other than the burial, I’ve only been to the cemetery one other time. And yet, I think about my grandfather all the time. To me, when the worst of the pain has gone, it’s important to have something to remember a loved one with.
There aren’t a lot of options out there for people who want something that will help them remember their loved one. It seems to me that the marketers want us to spend all of our money on the funeral, simply because we are in such grief we don’t realize how much money is being spent. I think this is extremely sad because no matter how money you spend on a funeral, the person whom you loved is still dead.
The funeral is a onetime thing. Once it is done, who will know how much money you spent on the casket? I think what is needed is for people to spend less money on expensive caskets and other things that the dead don’t need, and spend more money on something that the survivors can keep around. Something small, perhaps, with a little bit of the person inside.
One of the problems with this, however, is this leaves no options that I know of for people who choose to bury their dead rather than cremate. With cremation you can get small urns that can be worn as a charm on a necklace, or you can have some of the ashes made into a diamond that can then become a piece of fancy jewelry. If the choice is made to bury the person, rather than cremate, what then is left for the family? Can there be some way that they too can have something to remember their loved one by?
The trick would be getting around this problem without desecrating the body. How would you be able to carry around part of your loved one without removing part of the body? It seems to me that if you wanted to use a part of the person, hair would be the least offensive. Perhaps elaborate knots could be tied out of hair, and the hair could go in a locket along with a picture of the deceased.
Or perhaps you could make “memory box” filled with small items that were used by the deceased. This box could be a memorial to the deceased that you could take with you, if you were ever to move. It would also be something that could be handed down through the family, and that way the memory of the deceased would live longer. When a young child would see this box, they would ask about it, perhaps prompting their elders to talk about someone who had died long before the child was born. This child would then have objects to look at and hold while they were being told about the person who owned the items. This would leave the child with an impression of the person that a grave stone never could have given.
I think that how we remember our dead is something that we don’t think about enough. I don’t think it’s something that people think about until after a person is dead. I think how we remember our dead should be something that we think about before someone dies. It’s something that should be marketed and brought into the standard burial. I also think it’s something that should be designed so that even if the family chooses to bury their loved one, they still have something that they can hold onto and see every day. This could either be a small object that they could either carry around with them, like a pendent or ring; or something larger that would stay in the house but could still be moved if the family moves. I think this is a concept that needs a lot of thought, but I think that it would be time well spent. Perhaps, in the end, having something small that the survivors can hold on to would help ease the passing of their loved one.
