"new baubles and gewgaws of the funeral business — coffins emblazoned with sports logos; cremation urns in the shape of bowling pins, golf bags and motorcycle gas tanks; 'virtual cemeteries' with video clips and eerie recorded messages from the dead; pendants, bracelets, lamps and table sculptures into which ashes of the deceased can be swirled and molded."Yikes!
Long suggests that our phobia of dead bodies and our love of consumer culture have robbed our death rituals of their meaning:
"At upbeat, open-mike 'celebrations of life,' former coaches, neighbors and relatives amuse us with stories and naïvely declare that the dead, who are usually nowhere to be seen and have nowhere to go, will nevertheless live always in our memories. Funerals, which once made confident public pilgrimage through town to the graveyard, now tread lightly across the tiny tableau of our psyches."
After reading this story in full -- which I encourage you to do -- I turned to the spouse and said "Promise me that you will never, ever turn my cremated remains into a key chain or any other tacky knickknack." He promised me he wouldn't, and I promised the same.
One thing that bothered me: The story appeared on All Saints' Day, sometimes known as Dia de los Muertos ("day of the dead") in Hispanic cultures. There was no explicit mention of that in the paper, that I could see. I wonder how many people got that connection.
2 comments:
Eerie and weird! I don't want to be put inside a bowling pin either. And the sports logos...can we say DENIAL?
I am curious if you have funeral plans in place for your passing.
These ideas may be eerie and weird for you. But for some the long standing religious funeral traditions are not fitting anymore. People want something different, they want a service that functions to remember the person as they lived.
I agree some of these new baubles and gewgaws are a bit extreme however there is something for everyone. No funeral or grief is alike... it begins with one person.
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