If this comes to pass, and it becomes en vogue, the future will start to look a lot more like Futurama than I’m comfortable with.
By the way : some hints here and there on this board let me think that it’s customary in the US to have one plot for each person. For instance, a husband and wife will be buried in adjacent plots if possible but not in the same one. Over here, most graves can “accomodate” several bodies (for instance, there are 6 “spots” in my family’s grave on what are basically underneath shelves. Besides, if someday it’s full, older bodies will be “reduced”, ie the bones will be pilled in a very small coffin, to make room for the new casket). I take for granted I will be buried in this grave, along with my grand parents and parents.
When I think about it, besides this board, during burial scenes in US movies, the coffin appears to be plainly put in a hole in the ground, so there’s nothing (“walls”, “shelves”) which would allow to add other caskets. Such graves exist too here, but it seems to me that they became quite uncommon. OTH, movies aren’t necessarily representative of the reality (Thinking twice, burial scenes in french movies are generally depicted in the same way : a hole, a coffin, so maybe it’s just because it looks more climatic this way)
So, am I correct or not in assuming that the plots are generally “occupied” by only one individual in the USA?
And by the way, is “vault” the correct english word for the kind of family grave I described?
You are correct. This is probably due to the fact that we have historically had so much expanding room that there was no need to bury multiple people in the same plot of land. It’s not uncommon for families to buy multiple adjacent plots for future use, nor for family members to be scattered in different cemeteries, as each one has bought a separate plot. Some families do construct above-ground mausoleums in which multiple people may be placed, but these are significantly more expensive than just buying a piece of land and a headstone. All of the funerals I’ve attended have involved lowering a casket into a hole in the ground.
Sounds right to me, though they’re uncommon enough around here that I can’t be absolutely sure. Upon googling, it appears that vault in the US more commonly means a concrete liner for the grave, apparently intended to protect the casket from the elements for some reason. Mausoleums are the usually quite ornate buildings that have shelves inside for holding multiple people.
Dad was cremated, followed by Mom, 19 years later. There was only room left for that in the family plot. I plan to donate me to medical science, if I get around to it before I’m overcome by events. If it’s done with a medical school, they do cremate the remains after disection, anatomy lessons, investigations, etc. and then inter them usually on their grounds. If I forget to do that, then cremation, with sprinkling at sea, or wherever my NOK so desire.
But when you do it, use a reputable undertaker and follow up. A horror story was discovered in NC a couple of years ago when hundreds of bodies were found stored aboveground and in sheds on the rural grounds of the crematorium that had been non-functional for years. Never explained was why no one ever went looking for the final resting places. Don’t despair.
I’d go along with this if the local ordinances would…
I’d LOVE to know where the notion of *in perpetuity * comes from when you want to buy a gravesite. I guess people really believe that with enough preservatives, your body will last forever, so the graveyard had better make plans for that. With moderm preservative techniques, it might even be true, for all I know.
I spent a lot of time in Europe, where most of the village churches had ossaries–collections of bones that had been dug up in the graveyard to make room for the newly dead. We don’t have that in the States at all, to my knowledge. We use up acres and acres of land for dead bodies, most of which would no longer be recognizable as such because of primitive or non-existant preservative techniques, all in the name of keeping a gravesite sacred.
Traveling through Europe, I also learned that Christians avoid cremation because of the belief that the body will be resurrected with the soul. My counterargument to that is that God will have to recreate the bodies of all the Christians who died many hundreds of years ago, come Resurrection Day, so why can’t he also recreate mine?
I definitely choose cremation. While there is a minor amount of pollution involved, that’s nothing compared to the wasted landspace that my body would create if it were buried. OTH, DH wants a traditional burial, so we’ve pretty much agreed that if at all possible, my ashes will get buried with his body, to use up as little room as necessary.
I think among churches in the US, there may be something of a trend of constructing columbaria. The church I attended in Colorado built one a few years ago, and the church I attended last year in DC had one that wasn’t that old. A columbarium is a usually freestanding memorial wall with niches for storing the ashes of the deceased. It maintains the practice of interring people on church grounds and of providing a permanent, peaceful location for loved ones to visit, but takes up far less space than and avoids the other complications of an actual graveyard (including problems with zoning).
I think this is a nice compromise. If I’m a member of a church when I die, I think this is the option I’d choose. I like the idea of a traditional burial, but I think it is too expensive and wasteful these days, and too difficult to do “right”. If I lived in Europe, though, I’d go with the burial followed eventually by ossuary. I really like the idea of someone digging me up and saying, “Alas, poor Alan! I knew him, Horatio.”
Plus the whole zombie thing.
Just as an aside there is another option, the Parsees in India place the bodies of the dead in a special place (can’t remember the name) where it is consumed by the local vultures.
Probably better than rotting.