I was walking my dog “Baby” this morning when we passed the local cemetery on Hardy Road. It is a small one, located in an out-of-the-way location, and it is relatively new, as Sun City Mesquite is a little over ten years old. I think the developers of our 55+ community included it as an “amenity”. (Gee, thanks for reminding us how old we are!)
I’m not sure who pays for its upkeep; perhaps it’s the developer (Pulte Homes), who is a decade into building 5,000 homes here in Mesquite. Maybe part of my new home purchase price helped fund the cemetery? Who knows?
Cemeteries are rare in new communities. In the Temecula-Murrieta area of Southern California, where we relocated from, an area with a total population of about 250,000, I don’t know where any cemeteries are… and I lived there for thirty years. It seems that cremation is in vogue with younger generations: cemeteries are for the old folks, so to speak.
In the former colonial States of America, like the Northeast and the South, there are cemeteries in every city and town, as well as many very old buildings, statues, and historical markers. Sometimes those cemeteries are smack dab in the middle of the town, an in-your-face part of the fabric of the community. Of course, in many of those communities, generations of families have lived in the same neighborhood, or even the same house, for a very long time. So, maybe it is socially comforting to have a reminder of one’s forefathers close at hand?
In Southern California, which developed much later than the eastern States, there is less W.A.S.P. history with a very mobile population which changes jobs and houses frequently, perhaps as often as every ten years (on the average). This more modern population is less focused on the past: most aging buildings are torn down and replaced by new ones and city acreage is too expensive to be used for burying corpses. Cemeteries in Southern California tend to be few and far between, very large, and located in outlying areas. Forest Lawn and Rose Hills, in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, are good examples of expansive and expensive “final resting places”. They are both 100-years-old.
I think cemeteries are going the way of horse-drawn buggies, high-button shoes, and good manners: the world has changed, like it or not.
For one thing, religion is a less dominant factor in society, and elaborate rituals involving death have always been an integral part of religious observance. I can recall attending Catholic funeral masses where Jesus was mentioned quite a bit more than the dead guy who was being eulogized. Nowadays, most Americans don’t attend church regularly and approximately one-third of the population is non-religious. In modern secular society, there are fewer funerals and graveside services and more cremations and informal “celebrations of life”. (I went to one of the latter years ago where attendees wore Tommy Bahama flowery shirts, as the guy grew up in Catalina Island. It was a fun event that the deceased would have loved to attend.)
Cost is another factor. Burying someone in a cemetery can be very expensive, what with the plot, the casket, the embalming, the flowers, the rigamarole of burial, paying the clergy to say some nice things, etc. Cremation is cheap and the family can keep the ashes or scatter them to the wind in a location meaningful to the deceased.
One more factor has led to the decline of the cemetery business, I believe. That would be the long-term security of the facility. All too often, there are reports of grave sites being desecrated and the hallowed grounds falling into disrepair because the owner of the cemetery has gone bankrupt or has absconded with the maintenance funds.
By the way, who funds the maintenance of a cemetery? How does enough money get set-aside to guarantee the care of a cemetery for 50 years, 100 years, 200 years, etc.? Who kicks money into that pot and who manages it?
Unfortunately, the financial well-being of communities can ebb and flow, industries can move away, as can the majority of the population. Think about the Rust Belt, in which many previously thriving communities simply withered up and died. Who is paying for the upkeep of cemeteries there? Probably no one.
I’ve always wondered about funerals, fancy caskets, and expensive gravestones honoring dead people. What is the purpose? The deceased can’t hear the weeping and the eulogies, can’t really enjoy the flowers and the soft pillow in the casket, probably doesn’t notice the expensive “view” afforded by the pricey burial plot, and may not even approve of the attendees at the graveside services. Sometimes the “bereaved” include relatives that the dead person detested and occasionally, when a murder was involved, the killer shows up at the services to gloat. Lots of downsides to burying a corpse, I say.
Another puzzler (to me) is the habit of some people to go to gravesites to grieve and maybe to “speak” to the deceased loved one. (Hey, he’s dead… he can’t hear you praying, weeping, or asking for advice!) I don’t know that any religion claims that dead people can communicate with relatives who are alive or that the departed (who are six feet underground) have the ability to “look down on” loved ones and such. The Bible, and its idea of “Heaven”, certainly doesn’t confer that power on dead Christians or their souls. Spirituality is just hocus pocus: something mysterious and magical that someone wants to believe.
Informal memorials of death have always intrigued me. They are common in the American Southwest where a (most often Latino) individual has met with a tragic end, usually in a traffic accident. At the site of the fatality, just off the road, it is common to find a wooden cross adorned with photos and fake flowers… in essence, a little shrine to a loved one. I don’t get it: there’s no body buried there, the corpse was taken by authorities from the site, and the accident victim was either cremated or buried in a cemetery, presumably through the loving care of the deceased person’s loved ones. What is the purpose of the roadside shrine? It seems to be an informal Catholic ritual (i.e. the cross) that venerates the act or location of the actual death, as if that matters in the great scheme of things. Who wants to remember a tragedy? Or, maybe, the shrine is a way of telling the deceased that they were loved? (Excuse me: they guy is dead!) As my parents advised me long ago, “Give flowers to someone you love while they can enjoy them.”
(Hypocrite that I am, Charlie and I have a “memorial garden” in our backyard where the ashes of our departed Boston Terriers “Booger” and “JayJay” are interred. There’s nothing spiritual about this grave: we just love to be reminded how wonderful those little creatures were and how much they added to our life. It puts a smile on my face every time I pass it… while picking up Baby’s, BonBon’s, and Vinnie’s dog poop in the morning. I don’t “talk” to the dead pets as I walk by, but Charlie probably does. She’s a Catholic.)
Let’s face it: death is, sadly, a phase of life that happens with all living beings. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, we come, we go… there’s no evidence that we have anything else to anticipate when our time has come to die. “Holy men” pretend that we humans are special and that there can be life after death, but… how would they know? Jesus Christ himself claimed that he would, after death, return as Messiah during the lifetime of his disciples. He didn’t.
I don’t really care what happens to my body when I am through with it. Bury me, burn me, feed the hogs with me… it doesn’t matter because I’m dead.
What does matter is the quality of life that I experienced while living. Hopefully, it will have been a life well-lived.
So far, so good.