What To Do With The Dead

I just read that 75% of all people who die are still buried somewhere in the world in caskets in the ground. With only 25% being cremated I wonder if there will eventually be no more room to bury everyone who wants a casket. The world population is over 6 billion now, which is more people than have lived previously in all the time humans have been on earth. But there does seem to be a trend away from burials. And I wonder if being buried is really the best way to remember those who die.

If you ever visit cemeteries (most people bury and then rarely ever return to the burial site of their loved one) you know first hand that most graves are neglected or altogether forgotten. It's not because of a lack of love or thought about those who have died. I think it's probably because visiting often would make us feel sad and not allow is to move forward with our lives. Too much grief is a psychological killer for the living. Humans must live in the present and future or they wilt in the past.

I also think people today are too busy to deal with death in the ways we dealt with it the past. We have lost the privilege and convenience of "doing nothing" because there is so much stimuli for us to deal with every day . Just like not being able to stay home on Sundays and lazily rocking on the front porch or rocking in a hammock in the back yard, today our lives are governed by the forces and demands of modernity.

We no longer have time to pay homage to the dead the way in which it has traditionally been done. But humans must remember those who came before them. We do it more with our thoughts about them than via our cemeteries anyway, so perhaps changing the ritual from burial to cremation is a tend that is not so bad. But technology gives us a a better way for honoring those who have died that might make the departed longer a part of the living world . It might be better to stop burying and start recording ourselves or gathering written records left behind by the deceased. Why can not a written and recorded journal about our lives be an alternative to burying and forgetting the deceased?

It's frustrating for anyone who wants or needs to know his or her family genealogy. Other than my daughter, who has no interest in family history, I am the last survivor of my family, and what records, pictures, documents and words from long gone family I have is an incomplete one. I think most people have a similar gap in their own family histories. But the power of modern communication makes it easier to avoid that gap.

Even something as insignificant as what I write here is a revelation about this author that could be a posterity more noticeable than a grave site. Whatever reciord we leave behind gives us evidence of who we are and that can influence the living still.

We need to know our roots in order to have a stable foundation. Cemeteries are good reminders of those roots, but are insufficient in revealing the branches that make the family tree. Perhaps we should replace those graveyards with a written and recorded cemetery.