Too Many Bodies

Cemetary burial can’t continue

A leading newspaper carried a story about the limited burial space in New York and other big cities. We are running out of space. I remember a cemetery in New Orleans. It was very old. Many of the burial plots were above ground due to the fact that much of the city lies only a few feet above sea level. I was told by a native of the city that burial plots are leased, not purchased. If the lease is not renewed, the remains are removed and the plot is rented again. This occurs when relatives of the departed one have all died or moved or have lost interest.

That is one solution to the burial problem, but it is more suited to a time when there were many fewer people than there are now. Since the baby boomers are now nearing the end of life, the problem is quickly going to multiply. Other solutions will have to be found.

A former monk from a small monastery in Boston told me that departed fellow monks were wrapped in cotton and buried in the land formerly used as a tennis court when the grounds of the monastery were in private hands, before the monastic order bought the property. After five years, the bones were dug up, placed in a simple box, and stored in an ossuary in the attic of one of the buildings. That way, the ground could be used over and over again for burials.

We must face the fact that, within 100 years, all 7 billion of us living today will have died. One hundred years from then, another 8 or 9 billion persons will have died. Since the nations of the world seem to have no interest in reducing population, we must face the fact that there simply won’t be enough room to bury its dead.

All other creatures in nature die and their carcasses are reclaimed by nature through the actions of bacteria, fungi, and the lesser animals. The molecules and atoms are recycled.

So it must be with humans. We must learn to venerate our departed loved ones in a manner that allows the physical body to be returned to the earth. The Bible says, ‘ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.’ We were never meant to be filled with chemicals toxic to the organisms of decay, placed in hermetically sealed metal caskets, and buried in water impervious concrete vaults.

We must have a paradigm shift in our thinking about what immortality means. It is not the physical remains, but the memory of the person that carries the evidence of the departed loved one. Of course that memory fades with successive generations. Only a few outstanding individuals in the history of nations are so venerated that their memory is preserved in our monuments and text books. But, how many of us could recall, with any certainty, where the bodies of those individuals are located. It is not the body that is honored, but the memory of the individual’s accomplishments.

At the cemetery there is the symbolic throwing of dirt on the coffin as it is about to be lowered into the vault. let us return to a time when the reality was that the dirt was thrown on the shrouded body before it is actually returned to the earth.

Even that practice must fail us at some future date because earth will be too precious a commodity to allow such a practice. We must move the symbolism away from the actual earth to some significant, yet symbolic, recycling of the remains. I imagine the day, in the not too distant future, when death will be followed by respectful removal and disposal of the body. A funeral will be carried out with the assistance of a holographic burial simulation. The event will be marked by creating an electronic record which is then given to the loved ones so they can remember the solemn burial event.