Dear friends,
My grandfather passed away recently. When I was growing up he was at our house or we were at his house at least once a week. I lived with my grandparents for a few years before getting married, which was seven years ago. I always felt he handled himself with intelligence, diginity, and kindness. He always tried his best to take care of his family. I try to be like him.
He requested that he be cremated and his ashes kept until my grandmother passed away. Then he wants his ashes placed in the coffin with her. I always had some misgivings about cremation, and I wasn’t sure how I would handle this. I was able to be with him in his final moments. It was the hardest thing I’ve had to do, but it helped give me some peace and closure. At the service, I was heartbroken, but I didn’t feel like I needed a viewing or a graveside service.
I watched A Family Undertaking recently, a documentary on PBS about how different families care for their dead. If we live long enough, we have to think at some point how we want to be cared for after we die. When do you buy burial plots and make those kinds of decisions? The documentary made me think of these things. Not in a morbid sense, but in a realistic, pratical sense. I want my fmaily to have closure and be at peace when I’m gone.
The film examines the aspects of funeral services, caring for the body et cetera. People pay others to take care of these things, so they don’t have to while they’re grieving. Most people turn over the bodies of their loved ones to strangers to care for without really knowing what kinds of questions to ask or what options are really available. Funeral homes know this and take advantage of it. The film also examines Americans who decide to care for the bodies and funerals of their loved ones themselves. I didn’t even know you could do this, but it makes sense.
I didn’t necessairly agree with everything some of the families did, but it was moving and seemed much more genuine and profound that these people cared for their own dead. This is something Americans don’t do anymore. I have to wonder if it has affected our national psyche in some way. As a teacher, I have known a lot of students who have no real closure with the death of a loved one, and that grief is a heavy burden.
The second part of this train of thought is that I don’t subscribe to the typical funeral-home belief that we want to preserve the bodies of our loved ones as long as possible. Correct my science if I’m wrong, but I seem to remember learning that there is a set number of atoms in the universe. There are no new atoms; they just realign or break apart or whatever it is the do when they change from a leaf to dirt to tree food to fruit , et cetera. If this is the case, I don’t want to be stuck in a fiberglass coffin that will last to the end of time. I don’t want my body to be preserved. I want to go back into the earth. I want to complete the cycle.
Naturally, one side of the argument is it doesn’t matter; you’re gone. However, I’d like to at least be able to think now that a mortician is not going to be cracking jokes with his buddy while he’s draining my blood and pumping me full of pickling juice. No embalming for me. No fiberglass coffin either. I want it made of soft wood that will decay in a natural amount of time. I doesn’t have to be fancy. I don’t even need any cushioning. If I can’t be buried in a graveyard that way, I’d prefer to be on private family land, which is legal in the state of Virginia and most other states according to the film. This is the way it was done for eons.
It’s something to think about.
Live brave and kind and healthy and happy,
W. Knut
