Honouring the dead: how cultures around the world pay their respects

A look at the traditional funerary rituals of the mainland, Asia and beyond

People paying homage to their ancestors during the Ching Ming festival in Diamond Hill.

By Hana Davis

[T]he veneration of elders holds significant standing in Chinese culture, and reverence for its rituals endures beyond any individual’s time of death. As a traditionally patriarchal religion, the celebration of lineage and ancestry is integral to what it means to be Chinese.

On April 5, Hongkongers travelled on roads and in air-conditioned trains to pay their respects for Ching Ming, a public holiday widely known as the grave-sweeping festival. At the final resting place of their loved ones, celebrants replaced wilted flowers with fresh ones, incense and paper offerings were burnt, and food was laid out before the headstones of tombs citywide. Three pairs of chopsticks get placed above a display of food, which often consists of an assortment of meats and pastries.

To the Chinese, continuing obeisance to their forebears is as symbolic as their initial burial. The bedrock of intergenerational customs, funerals are considered a normal element of family life. Amid this week’s festival of honouring ancestors, City Weekend explores traditional funerary rituals in mainland China, Asia, and beyond.

A Chinese woman prays at the grave of a loved one at the Babaoshan cemetery in Beijing to mark the Ching Ming festival.

China

The belief in Chinese folk religion is that people have multiple souls, known as ‘hun’ and ‘po’. Upon death, these souls diverge, with hun rising to the heavens and po descending into earth. Chinese funerary rituals vary with the age, cause of death, and marital and social status of the deceased, but they respond to the needs of the two souls. The primary aim is to provide comfort for the deceased and demonstrate ancestral veneration. Regional traditions and minority groups determine the precise practices, but in general, the ceremony is carried out over the course of seven days. The deceased is clad in white clothing; red, which symbolises happiness, is rarely worn. Rituals and gestures are often carried out three times in accordance with the number’s positive connotation.

Sky burial, the Tibetan tradition of disposing of the dead by feeding it to vultures.

Tibet

For thousands of years, Vajrayana Buddhists in Tibet and Mongolia have believed in the migration of spirits postmortem, the idea that the soul moves on as the body becomes an empty vessel. Because wood is too scarce for cremation and the terrain is too rocky for earthly burials, Tibetans believe the body must be chopped into pieces while Buddhist lamas chant and place it on a mountaintop – exposing it to the elements and to vultures – to return the soul to earth. The dead are placed in the fetal position and wrapped in cloth. The rogyapa, or person who breaks the body, unwraps it, saws away at the skin and strips it of its muscles and tendons, ultimately arranging it in a manner that attracts Himalayan griffon vultures to dine on the broken body. Consumption by the vultures is how the body is considered to be reunited with nature, where it can be of use again.

South Korea

Due to dwindling grave space, in 2000, the South Korean government passed a law requiring that the buried be removed from their graves after 60 years. Cremation has since become the country’s favoured form of funerary rite – breaking thousands of years of tradition. Several Korean companies offer “death beads”: turquoise, pink, or black gems made by compressing the ashes of the deceased. Traditionally, the funeral is similar to its Chinese counterpart, but infused with elements of Korean Confucianism.

Ghana

Funerals in Ghana are held to celebrate the life of the deceased and not merely mourn their departure. The approach differs from many cultures that regard the event as sombre rather than cheerful. This celebration of the dead is so revered that funerals are often the cornerstone of Ghanaian social life. As a result, they are often joyous social events with hundreds of attendees: the more, the merrier, and the more lovable the person must have been in life. Coffins are usually intricately ornamented and vibrantly coloured, adorned with items that represent the deceased’s profession or favourite things. A shoemaker’s coffin, for example, might come in the shape of a shoe.

Ukraine

Ukrainian rituals are heavily rooted in tradition. They organise banquet feasts on the third, ninth and 40th days after death, and again on the six-month and one-year anniversaries of the deceased’s passing. An even number of flowers is placed next to the coffin and expected from each funeral attendee. Water plays an important role because it is believed the soul of the dead drinks the water and uses it to wash away tears. Water is placed alongside a woven towel, with both serving as spiritual offerings. Mourners are required to avoid drinking water in the body’s presence. In accordance with ancient times, sleds are occasionally still used to transport bodies to burial sites in the mountainous Carpathian region of the country.

Open-air cremation in progress.

Colorado, USA

Colorado is home to the Crestone End-of-Life Project – billed as the only legal, public, open-air crematorium in the United States. In the town of Crestone, mourners place juniper boughs, piñon pine and spruce tree logs on the body of the deceased; they encircle the subject of cremation. The materials are chosen for their high flammability, and the mourners watch as fire overwhelms the body. Many are drawn to this funerary ritual, but residency in the small town is a prerequisite to take part.

Complete Article HERE!

The ‘Outside Lands of Death’ is coming to SF

In just a few weeks, almost every corner of San Francisco will have death at its heel. The topic both universally experienced — and stigmatized — will be up for discussion in a variety of forms around the city.

A worker changes the Great American Music Hall’s marquee before You’re Alive, an event staged by You’re Going to Die, on Friday, Aug. 11, 2017, in San Francisco.

[R]eimagine, a nonprofit sprouted from IDEO, is putting on the Bay Area’s first so-called “death event series.” More than 100 events, each hosted by an individual organizer, will be offered to the public beginning on April 16 up until April 22. The nonprofit expects 7,000 people who are still alive to attend.

The events will cover all the ways death alters our lives — from the pragmatic (working with physicians to get Advanced Directives straightened out) to the artistic (drinking from ceramic cups made using the ashes of 200 anonymous people) to the literary (the science around the use of psychedelics and death with Dr. Richard Miller).

There will be highly-mortal film screenings (including a talk with Lee Unkrich, director of “Coco”), comedy shows (Mortified: Let’s Talk about Death, Baby), and psychodrama taken to the next level (Dead for a Day: Attend your own funeral to “altar” your life). Actress Francis McDormand will also be at the Castro Theater on April 19. for a “Theatrical Exploration of Death, Dying and Suffering.”

Aside from the arts, the events will draw on the subjects of healthcare, design, and spirituality. Brad Wolfe, Executive Director and Founder of Reimagine, wanted the event series programming to be valuable for — and reflective of — as many people as possible.

The death-positive movement — which is broad enough to contain anything from Caitlin Doughty’s Ask a Mortician YouTube series to amateur banjo sessions about the beautiful uncertainty of our mortality — has valiantly taken on the challenge of eliminating a major stigma. But in some cases, it has also been critiqued for being white-centered, and glamorizing a topic that has never, and will never, for many communities of color, feel whimsical.

That concern is exactly what Reimagine’s founders kept in mind, in the pursuit of designing an event series that would be inclusive of people outside death talk’s main demographic: middle-class white people who have the luxury of mortal musings. One such event will be hosted by Dr. Jessica Zitter, a Critical and Palliative Care Specialist at Oakland’s Highland Hospital in conversation with Pastor Corey Kennard at Glide Memorial Church.

The talk will explore the wealth of research behind racial inequities in healthcare at the end of life, and discuss the divide between dying African-American patients and a healthcare system that falls short of providing the right kind of support.

Zitter wrote an insider’s perspective on the problems with the way the dying are treated in our current medical culture in her 2016 book, “Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life.” The book has been lauded by the likes of BJ Miller, a UCSF doctor and triple amputee and Lucy Kalanithi, a Stanford doctor and the widow of a Stanford doctor whose memoir on dying from cancer was released posthumously.

Her conversation with Kennard will also touch on her anecdotal experience with an aspect of healthcare that’s untaught in the medical world: finding a common language with patients who are dying that’s beyond the withdrawn and overly sterile protocol.

In her practice, she said, she underestimated the role that things like prayer, miracles, and hope mean to her African-American patients, who, “come into a hospital in their darkest hours and are met with language and concepts that feel like in a way that they’re robbing of their humanity, robbing of their opportunities for being whole.”

It was only through the years she’d been working with Betty Clark, an African-American chaplain, that she began to notice the vital components of healthcare support for her patients of color that she’d overlooked.

“There are many, many areas I had wished to delegate to others that I felt were not part of my job that are absolutely part of my job.” Zitter said.”But I really have to say that it’s really powerful to [pray with my patients]. It’s not necessarily about God, but it’s about connecting to them, and supporting them.”

The second in her series of discussion with Kennard will take place at the Oakland Museum of California on April 17., and cover the intersections of faith and medicine at the end of life.

A full event schedule is available on Reimagine’s website. Some highlights are in the slideshow above.

Complete Article HERE!

How complementary therapies can positively impact end-of-life care

By Mary K. Spengler

One of the most common misconceptions about end-of-life care is that the focus is solely on pain management. While that is a key component of any hospice care program, many providers, including Hospice of Westchester, recognize the importance of a holistic approach to treating the patient, not just their symptoms. It is a proven fact that patients diagnosed with a life-limiting illness greatly benefit from alternative therapies, in addition to medical treatment.

Often called complementary care, these therapies can maximize patients’ comfort and peace of mind and provide relief for their primary caregivers.

Caring for the “whole” patient is an essential feature of hospice. Mind-body complementary therapies such as massage, reflexology, music therapy, art therapy and pet therapy can help ease tension, reduce anxiety levels and improve the overall comfort of the patient.

A good hospice provider should arrange for these therapies to be provided in the patient’s residence, whether that be their home, a hospital or a skilled nursing facility. Together, the patient, their family and hospice team decide which therapy would best address symptoms of pain, stress and anxiety.

We are proud to offer all of the above therapies, at no cost to our patients, through The Anna & Louis H. Shereff Complementary Care Program. While they all can be useful depending on a patient’s needs, here is a closer look at how massage therapy and reflexology can positively benefit hospice patients and their families.

MASSAGE THERAPY
It is widely accepted that power of touch can have a healing impact on pain and decrease stress. Massage is a form of structured therapeutic touch, which can relax patients, relieve muscle tension, reduce anxiety levels and blood pressure, boost the immune system and moisturize the skin.

Licensed massage therapist Maria MacIlvane first recognized the positive effect of touch years before she started her massage career. When her mother was on hospice care, MacIlvane was awed that simply rubbing her mother’s shoulders would instantly bring upon relaxation.

“I continued to massage her every day. It was so beneficial and I could not believe that just touching someone compassionately could affect the process they were going through so deeply,” MacIlvane said.

After the death of her husband in 2007, MacIlvane needed a change and wanted to pursue a career she was truly passionate about. She became a licensed massage therapist in 2010 and expanded her therapies to hospice patients three years ago.

MacIlvane said there are many benefits of massage therapy on patients diagnosed with a life-limiting illness, including helping with muscle tension, circulation and anxiety. She also works with patients’ family members to teach them what they can do in between sessions to help their loved one, and even gives them tips for acupressure that can help with their own anxiety and stress.

“When patients know that someone is with them, holding their hand and providing a compassionate touch, the effects are amazing,” MacIlvane said.

REFLEXOLOGY
Reflexology is based on the belief that specific areas of the feet and hands correspond with specific parts of the body. Gentle stimulation of these areas with the thumbs and fingers relieves stress and tension, improves circulation, promotes normal body function and results in a feeling of deep relaxation.

Gabrielle Zale, a nationally certified reflexologist, began working with hospice patients shortly after starting her career 17 years ago. However, her knowledge of how touch could help those with an illness started many years earlier. She remembered how people pulled away from her own mother when she was sick, as if they were afraid to touch her.

“No one should feel that alone,” Zale said. “Ultimately, touch is the greatest healer, particularly at this final journey in life. Even though some patients may not be awake and alert, by touching them in this way you are acknowledging that they are still there and still part of the world.”

Zale said that, even if a patient can’t speak, she is able to sense small body changes that show the effects of her practice. “It’s a subtle energy shift. Their breathing slows down — you can tell they are relaxing and may be feeling less pain and anxiety. They can tell that you are acknowledging them and are really present with them,” she said.

“This work is a really sacred thing for me. I’m not just holding another person in my hands, I’m holding their soul in many ways.” 

A history of dying-and-rising gods

A detailed view of coffin of Peftjanoeneith

by Derek Beres

[M]y cat, Osiris, is lying at my feet as I type this article. That’s his normal nook while I’m in my office, which doubles as our guest room—the futon behind me is also a suitable sleeping option. Celebrating his eighteenth birthday soon, I’m thankful he’s stayed healthy and vibrant for this long. The same was not the case for his namesake.

On Sunday many Christian faithful celebrated the resurrection of their savior. Yet the story of Christ is an oft-repeated motif in mythological literature. Resurrection tales abound across the planet. This was first brought to broader attention thanks to James Frazer’s The Golden Bough, an exhaustive survey on world mythologies that was originally written to show their inadequacies by a skeptical Frazer, yet turned out to influence entire academic departments in the comparative mythology and comparative religion fields that grew from his work. 

While much speculation has been offered as to why resurrection cycles persisted, the annual birth, death, and rebirth of the soil provide an important clue. The plants that grow, wither, and die seasonally only to return to nourish us once again makes for a convenient segue to the concept of souls. Frazer consciously linked this fact with the cults of Persephone, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, and Dionysus. As he writes, 

It remains to see whether the conception the annual death and resurrection of a god, which figures so prominently in these great Greek and Oriental worships, has not also its origin or its analogy in the rustic rites observed by reapers and vine-dressers amongst the corn-shocks and the vines.

Easter Sunday, known as Resurrection Sunday to the faithful, marks the third day of Christ’s burial after his death on the crucifix. Missionary Christianity spread Christ’s story across the planet; over the course of centuries those other resurrected gods were discredited, rewritten, or forgotten. The uniqueness of Christ’s story has been challenged by modern scholarship, notably by tablets such as Gabriel’s Revelation. Frazer just brought that reality to the forefront.

Unlike many older stories, the Christ motif was unlinked at some point from sexuality and regeneration to focus on the soul. This speaks in part to the establishment of Christian ethics, yet the desexualization of Christ did a disservice to our understanding of ecology and the environment. The below figures are all in some way connected to fertility and nutritional sustenance, two necessities for the continuation of life. The Christ story is mainly metaphysical, unchained from the earthly cycles even though those annual renewals provide the foundation upon which the Christian mythology was founded.

Beyond the cited figure in each historical mythology is the theme, which is essentially more relevant to the living than the dead. Sure, we discover emotional comfort by the notion of life beyond the grave, but what really matters is picking ourselves up after deaths during lifetime—divorce; the death of relatives and loved ones; losing a job; watching a child leave the nest. Our character is defined by our response to tragedy and suffering.

As the characters below demonstrate, some achieve greater glory after the tragedy while others are trapped in an unforgiving underworld for eternity. What unites them is the human imagination that dreamed up each figure to communicate a primal idea about how to navigate life.

A detailed view of Osiris

Osiris

The Egyptian deity of the afterlife, underworld, and dead is the classic tale of regeneration. There are many variations on his theme, but each poem centers around his love for his sister-wife Isis, a jealous brother that murders him, Set, and his son, Horus, who avenges his father’s death. In every variation, Isis copulates with Osiris’s briefly resurrected body before he once again perishes. In one telling, his body parts are scattered across the planet, which Isis has to collect before stitching him back together. The agricultural connection is clear: Osiris was associated with the annual flooding of the Nile River and the crops dependent upon its rising. He was also linked to the positioning of the stars, Orion and Sirius, at the beginning of each new year, another resurrection motif.

People take part in a reenactment of an ancient celebration dedicated to the Greek god Dionysus, marking the carnival season, on February 11, 2018, in Athens.

Dionysus

The Greeks offer the most famous mythological motifs in the West, unsurprisingly as they’re the basis of our culture. Maybe the drunken god of grape harvest, wine, fertility, religious ecstasy, and ritual madness waking up the morning after was enough of an impetus to make him a resurrected being—sulfites pack a punch. Dionysus was never crucified, but torn to bits by cannibalistic titans; he was somehow reshaped from the remaining heart, which flies in the face of anthropological data that our ancestors were organ eaters. Regardless, mythology is not about facts. Rituals celebrating his prowess remain beloved to this day. 

Tammuz

Tammuz

In one of the world’s oldest pieces of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king references Tammuz, an ancient Mesopotamian lord of shepherds, as an ex-lover of Ishtar who was turned into a bird with a broken wing. The scorching Mesopotamian summers needed a hero to resurrect the fertile soil every year—the link between sex/fertility and vegetation, noted above with Dionysus, is another common motif—and that duty fell onto Tammuz, who was also known as Dumuzid. A midsummer month was even named in his honor. Tammuz’s legacy lived behind himself, as gods do. He was incorporated into myths in the Levant and Greece, where he became known as Adonis.

Adonis

Adonis

Being the mortal lover of Aphrodite is no small task. As his harbinger, Tammuz, was already firmly secure in his sexual prowess, Adonis has echoed through the generations as the ideal lover. Born from a myrrh tree and raised by Persephone, whose own myth centers on the regeneration powers of vegetation, Adonis’s good looks created a feud between Aphrodite and Persephone. Zeus declared that the boy would spend one-third of each year with each of them, then choose where to spend his final third term. He must not have been a fan of Hades, as he chose Aphrodite. Then he was gored by a wild boar, dying in Aphrodite’s arms. Adonis is reborn with gardens planted in his honor each summer, the result of his dying blood mixing with Aphrodite’s tears to form an anemone flower.

The Shrine of Attis

Attis

This Geek deity’s story went down over a millennia before the Christ figure appears. His first cult was linked to a Phrygian trading outpost, Pessinos, whose great mountain was thought to be a daemon. Attis’s mother, Nana, became pregnant by laying an almond from a mystical tree on her bosom. She had second thoughts about this motherhood job, though, as upon his birth she abandoned him. Attis was subsequently raised by a he-goat. He fell in love with Cybele, but his foster parents sent him to Pessinos, where he was forced into an arranged marriage to King Midas’s daughter. Eventually, he went mad and cut off his genitals, so that he would not betray Cybele. He too died and was reborn, concurrent with the spring planting and autumn harvest the locals experienced every season.

Complete Article HERE!

A Sunny Day at the Death Cafe

What if talking about death didn’t have to be a downer?

By

Good morning on this pleasant Tuesday.

[T]he last place you might think to spend a sparkling spring day is at a death cafe.

But that’s exactly what we did this month, and what we found, to our pleasant surprise, was anything but bleak.

On the second Tuesday of each month, the landmark Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn hosts a “death cafe,” a salon-style gathering in which visitors can speak openly about death and mortality.

The death cafe movement, started in England in 2011, is now a global tradition taking place in coffee shops, offices and other unlikely spaces in dozens of countries. Its goal is to make conversations about dying — from the philosophical (is there an afterlife?) to the mundane (metal urn or marble?) — less taboo.

When we joined a recent death cafe at the cemetery, we expected an evening of tissues and tears with a group of New Yorkers in mourning.

The reality was quite the opposite.

We met a lively bunch of strangers, ranging from young adults to octogenarians, most of whom were not grieving at all; they had, instead, come for an intellectually stimulating, if at times uncomfortable, discussion.

“Death cafes are a kind of beautiful rehearsal for coming closer to death and understanding it and grappling with it, so that when we do have a death pending in our families, as is inevitable, we might be a little more prepared for it and slightly less rattled,” said the funeral director and death educator Amy Cunningham, who facilitated the get-together.

“There’s no agenda — nothing is sold or prompted — so it can go in all kinds of interesting directions in a totally natural way,” she said.

Between sugar cookies and laughs, our group jumped from religion to social media to psychotropic drugs to contemporary ethics.

“Can you be buried with your pet?” one woman, a documentary photographer, asked the group, following it up with a conversation on approaching death from a nonreligious perspective.

“How do you handle the loss of an estranged family member?” another wondered, prompting a third — who had lost a relative the week before — to speak about the death of her distant father.

She and her husband then debated the pros and cons of learning of a death through Facebook. Several minutes later, he told the group a separate story about the deathlike “static peace” he felt while tripping on the drug DMT.

(My contribution to the discussion: sharing how self-conscious I feel about what to say or do at funerals.)

“As frightening as it may seem,” Ms. Cunningham said that night, “there are many amazing things that can occur and ways to grow and carry grief through the next chapters of your life, and this is the way we evolve — through moments that seem so painful but then have hidden miracles of ecstasy.”

Green-Wood will host its next death cafe on April 10, and you can learn more through Death Café New York City or the Death Lab at Columbia University.

Complete Article HERE!

Waking the dead a balm to the grieving process

Thanks to the kindness of fantastic friends and neighbours, we gave ‘Nan’ a great send-off

In some rural areas, the practice of watching over the recently deceased from the time of death to burial is still followed.

By

[A]s this is an Easter column, I thought I would share some recent reflections on death. Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In the New Testament, the event is said to have occurred three days after Jesus was crucified by the Romans and died in approximately 30 AD. Although a holiday of high religious significance in the Christian faith, many traditions associated with Easter date back to pre-Christian, pagan times.

I hosted my first wake recently.

It was for my mother-in-law Marie, a lovely woman with whom I enjoyed 40-plus years of friendship and a shared sense of humour. Almost 94 when she passed away peacefully surrounded by her grandchildren, there was never any doubt that we would wake her in our home, which she shared with us for a decade or so.

The origin of the wake may date back to the ancient Jewish custom of leaving the burial chamber of a recently departed relative unsealed for three days before finally closing it up, supposedly so that family members would visit in the hope of seeing signs of a return to life.

We were introduced to wakes for the first time after moving to the west of Ireland. Until then, our funeral experience had followed the more urban tradition of an evening removal from hospital or funeral home to a church, followed by a formal service the following morning. But in the rural area we live in, the practice of watching over the recently deceased from the time of death to burial is still followed. I have come to appreciate how a wake is an important part of the grieving process.

Thankfully, the more raucous alcohol-fuelled wakes of Irish folklore are no longer with us.

Marie was brought home to us by the Burke family, our local undertakers. She had been embalmed and looked great when the coffin was opened in her living room. Thus began a two-day wake. At no time was she left alone, with family and friends taking it in turn to sit with her throughout the nights – an important part of the waking tradition.

Unbidden, neighbours appeared with chairs, flowers, sandwiches, soup tureens, cooked chickens and salmon. Cyclical pots of tea and coffee emerged from the kitchen. There was no fuss and soon we felt shrouded in a welcome, slow-moving blanket of grief.

At one point I jumped up, concerned about traffic building up on our country road. I needn’t have worried – some neighbours were already directing traffic around our house as those paying their respects came to visit.
No one is invited

No one is invited to a wake.

If you knew the deceased or know any member of the deceased’s family, you should consider attending. The atmosphere is unique. Memories of Marie triggered both crying and laughing as people paid their respects. Groups formed around us and beyond us. Prayers were said. Some people stayed 10 minutes. Others were with us for hours.

There is no formula for a wake.

Things happen spontaneously, but slowly. And this, I think, is key: rather than rushing through your grief you are transported with it at a natural pace. It is hugely comforting as the deceased’s life is remembered and treasured.

Another advantage to having a wake is it allows relatives who live far away time to get home. My son travelled from western Canada; he appreciated being able to spend an entire night sitting with his granny before her burial.

Wakes may not suit every person and every family circumstance. Private, low-key funerals have their place, too. But waking someone close to you – literally staying “awake” to watch over them – seems to set up a soothing of the grief to follow.

Along with fantastic friends and neighbours we gave “Nan” a great send-off.

Thank you everyone.

Complete Article HERE!

Death is changing — can the Catholic Church change with it?

With cremation on the rise, cemetery space dwindling, and cryogenic freezing around the corner, the Vatican is facing some tough decisions.

By Leah Thomas

[T]he Catholic Church preaches the importance of following ritual, especially when it comes to burial practices. It stresses that, if possible, one’s whole body should be buried in a Catholic cemetery after carrying out a traditional Catholic funeral service, which involves the wake, the funeral mass, and the final interment prayer at the gravesite. If it was good enough for Jesus, reasons the Vatican, it’s certainly good enough for everybody else.

But in 2018, choosing cremation over full-body burial is so popular even Catholic priests are planning to skip out on classic casket burials. “I haven’t signed up for it yet, but yes, that’s what I will do,” said Father Allan Deck, a priest and professor of theology at Loyola Marymount in California.

“I think it’s a bit more practical,” he continued, laughing. “It’s easier to move the cremated remains around than it is a coffin, right?”

Cremation is prevalent now more than ever, with over half of Americans opting to be cremated rather than having a standard burial. And this percentage is projected to reach 78.8 by the year 2035, according to the National Funeral Directors Association.

Whether the Catholic Church felt pressured by the decreasing number of standard burials or by its own priests choosing the alternative, the Vatican released a statement in 2016 outlining the church’s new, more relaxed stance on cremation and the handling of cremated remains.

The new guidelines clarified that while cremation is acceptable, full-body burial is still preferred in order to (hopefully) emulate the Easter Day resurrection of Jesus Christ. “In memory of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord, burial is above all the most fitting way to express faith and hope in the resurrection of the body,” the document stated.

“More and more of our funeral services are with cremains rather than with coffins,” Father Deck said. “It goes up every year, and the church has tried to respond to it in a constructive way, indicating certain things that should be observed if at all possible, like that cremated remains be put in one place, either in a cemetery or a mausoleum.”

The Vatican’s statement also made it clear that cremated remains, or “cremains,” should not be scattered, divided up, kept in one’s home, or preserved in mementos, pieces of jewelry, or other objects. But why is it so necessary for those ashes to be buried?

“The preservation of the ashes of the departed in a sacred place ensures that they will not be forgotten or excluded from prayers,” said Andrew P. Schafer, Executive Director of Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Newark.

“We’ve had situations where homes have been sold and the next buyer finds an urn with human cremated remains in it simply because as the generations passed on, the family forgot about that person,” Schafer recalled. “And so it’s important to remain part of the Christian community and to be buried properly so you will always be remembered, especially in prayer.”

The fear of being “forgotten or excluded from prayers” derives from the church’s belief in the concept of purgatory, which is described as a post-death cleansing process where prayers from loved ones and other Catholics can pass a soul into heaven. If one’s body or ashes aren’t in one place — particularly a Catholic cemetery — they may not be remembered. The person may not receive prayers in their name. And they may never leave the eternal waiting room that is purgatory.

Catholics also stress the importance of burial in completing the church’s funeral traditions — traditions they maintain allow families to heal and grieve properly.

“There’s something psychological about bereavement and loss, and there’s a beauty that we offer with a funeral ritual,” said Peter Nobes, Director of the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

The funeral rituals Nobes is referring to being the three parts of the traditional Catholic funeral service.

“Rituals are important, particularly when there’s a loss in the family. Avoiding things, not wanting to do particular things or not spend money on a particular thing or cut corners here or there, can all be harmful to the family’s grieving process,” Nobes said.

But some attribute the rise in defying Catholic traditions to the high costs of Catholic traditions.

“You’re supposed to get buried in a catholic cemetery, which is also an income generator [for the church],” said Norma Bowe, a Kean University professor who teaches a course called “Death And Perspective.” She added, “I just have to wonder: are they continuing this tradition so that they’re still making money? Because it’s expensive to die.”

She’s not wrong. The average funeral, including embalming and burial, rings up to around $11,000.

The Catholic Church’s mandated burial practices not only present the issue of cost but have also led to a separate issue of cemeteries running out of room.

By the year 2030, the average baby boomer will reach age 85, increasing the death industry by 30 percent, according to the International Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral Assocation. Moreover, individuals over 80 years of age are less likely to choose cremation and more likely to opt for a full-body burial, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, further contributing to the space issue that Catholic cemeteries are attempting to alleviate without defying traditions.

Catholic cemeteries are beginning to feature “green burials,” or eco-friendly burial pods that recycle into the earth over time.

Other cemeteries are “doubling-up” — or placing the cremains of an individual inside an already used burial plot.

The rules for doubling, tripling, and quadrupling-up vary by region and diocese. In Nobes’ diocese, for example, up to three cremated remains are allowed to be buried inside one traditional full-body burial plot.

Some Catholic cemeteries are building up, rather than down.

“Many of our Catholic cemeteries have been building mausoleums for years now,” Schafer said. “So we’re kind of using the dead space above the cemetery — no pun intended.”

The Catholic mausoleums resemble that of the illustrious above-ground cemeteries in New Orleans, created as an adaptation to the city’s swampland rather than lack of burial space.

The rise in cremation is somewhat helping to alleviate the space issue, as cremated remains take up a significantly less amount of space than full body burial plots. Cremation “niches” can be as small as 12 inches square, according to Schafer.

Bowe, a Catholic, has faith that the church will eventually allow for more choice when it comes to what one has done with his/her ashes.

“I see the church changing,” she said. “I see them embracing folks they haven’t embraced before. Religion serves the people, so they have to think in terms of what the people want.”

When it comes to other modern death practices (or death avoidance practices) the Catholic Church is taking a stronger stance.

“People think they’re going to be frozen or do things to prevent death,” Father Deck said in regards to cryonics, or the practice of freezing bodies in order to potentially be revived in the future with scientific advancements. “But no one in human history has ever avoided death. Even Jesus died on Easter.”

Father Deck went on to clarify that while the church does believe in combating diseases and other health epidemics with medical research and advancements, it does not believe in preventing natural death.

“Death comes to us all. And as Christians we believe that the hour of death leads to the hour when we begin eternal life with the lord,” Father Deck said.

Regardless of Catholic burial recommendations, Bowe still plans to be cremated and have her ashes scattered.

“We have a cabin in New Hampshire that’s been our family retreat for years. I pick blueberries off an island that’s right in the middle of the lake,” Bowe said. “And that’s where I want to go. I want to be among the blueberry bushes. And I don’t think that makes me less of a Catholic.”

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