“Fuck lawns” energy, but for graveyards. (no not like that, stoppit!)
Or postmortem services in general. If you want to give something to someone, do it when they’re still around to appreciate it. Once they’re dead, they won’t give a fuck about the fancy funeral or coffin or w/e you bought for em.
Everyone gets together for an event that’s seen as important, comforting things are said, then everyone goes and eats together and tells each other stories about the person they lost. Seems like a great way to go about it to me.
Eh, there’s a line to be sure. if folks want to have a potluck in remembrance of a loved one, I have have zero issue with that. I guess it’s more the industry surrounding it that offends me - the expensive venue, specialty vehicles, the resources dumped into making a fancy box to keep the corpse in, and then just bury, and ofc the insanely wasteful use of land to give basically housing to corpses. It all feels very exploitive, like you ‘owe’ your dead mom the nice polished marble tombstone. …and I’m here to tell you, your dead mom doesn’t give the tiniest shred of fuck what her tombstone’s made out of. Or that she has a tombstone at all.
Well, in particular, my Mum was cremated as per her wishes, and that’s what my Dad plans too, but I don’t begrudge the coffin or the cars - none of us were in a fit state to drive and we weren’t about to shove her in the incinerator in a body bag out from someone’s boot. I don’t know what else you wanted us to do instead. She has a little stone in the kerb lining the path to the crematorium, because we didn’t want there to be nothing physical left after we scattered her ashes. The funeral directors were very good at their job, very useful to have around, and a great help on a difficult day. All your contempt for having a ceremony and making an event out of it, by contrast, not so helpful. If you ever meet anyone on real life who’s grieving, please don’t talk to them like you vent online.
I work in healthcare, I meet people grieving pretty regularly. My opinions stay at the door - I’ll even go as far as praying with patients, and I don’t have a shred of religion in me… to the contrary, I fucking despise religion; but if that’s what brings them comfort, then fuck it, I’ll play along.
Your case is basically the same gig - if having a mom urn brings you comfort, then you do you. Difference is that you already know my opinion, so we’re bashing heads right out the gate, but I’ll remind you of the thread topic to proclaim an unpopular opinion that we know doesn’t mean shit.
I don’t know what else you wanted us to do instead.
Dude, you don’t need to justify your decisions to me, and you certainly don’t need to change your behavior based on an internet stranger’s ‘hot take’. Where you see comfort in ceremony, I see an industry that relies on predation of people during an extremely vulnerable time. Engaging with that industry makes me feel taken advantage of; but there’s a lot of social pressure to conform which makes it feel even more uncomfortable. Our opinions don’t need to be reconciled.
I am tempted to agree with you, I mean we’re going to run out of graveyard space if we keep it up. We need something like crypts for all the graves from several hundreds of years ago to move into, and then we need to keep on moving people from graveyards into crypts ad infinitum - this way we could still provide graveyard space to people who are remembered by living relatives. I’d say the cut-off could be 3 or 4 generations.
Of more importance to peoples’ descendants long term is having good documentation of who their ancestors were, when they were born, married, and died (see websites like: https://www.freebmd2.org.uk/ , if you need this information yourself. this one is UK and i don’t know about any american one, sorry.)
As long as you have that information for your records, a grave for your great great great something is not important.
“Fuck lawns” energy, but for graveyards. (no not like that, stoppit!)
Or postmortem services in general. If you want to give something to someone, do it when they’re still around to appreciate it. Once they’re dead, they won’t give a fuck about the fancy funeral or coffin or w/e you bought for em.
Just throwing a link to Caitlin Doughty’s channel here for anyone interested in green burials and such!
As someone who makes out with goth girls: no, we need cemeteries. They’re just really edgy parks
All post death stuff is for those still living, to
phelp them cope*edit: I’m a careless typer
Functionally yes, but those partaking generally see it as a gesture for the deceased, not therapy in disguise.
I’m all for therapy, it’s just the way we go about it in this context is stupid and wasteful.
Everyone gets together for an event that’s seen as important, comforting things are said, then everyone goes and eats together and tells each other stories about the person they lost. Seems like a great way to go about it to me.
Eh, there’s a line to be sure. if folks want to have a potluck in remembrance of a loved one, I have have zero issue with that. I guess it’s more the industry surrounding it that offends me - the expensive venue, specialty vehicles, the resources dumped into making a fancy box to keep the corpse in, and then just bury, and ofc the insanely wasteful use of land to give basically housing to corpses. It all feels very exploitive, like you ‘owe’ your dead mom the nice polished marble tombstone. …and I’m here to tell you, your dead mom doesn’t give the tiniest shred of fuck what her tombstone’s made out of. Or that she has a tombstone at all.
Well, in particular, my Mum was cremated as per her wishes, and that’s what my Dad plans too, but I don’t begrudge the coffin or the cars - none of us were in a fit state to drive and we weren’t about to shove her in the incinerator in a body bag out from someone’s boot. I don’t know what else you wanted us to do instead. She has a little stone in the kerb lining the path to the crematorium, because we didn’t want there to be nothing physical left after we scattered her ashes. The funeral directors were very good at their job, very useful to have around, and a great help on a difficult day. All your contempt for having a ceremony and making an event out of it, by contrast, not so helpful. If you ever meet anyone on real life who’s grieving, please don’t talk to them like you vent online.
I work in healthcare, I meet people grieving pretty regularly. My opinions stay at the door - I’ll even go as far as praying with patients, and I don’t have a shred of religion in me… to the contrary, I fucking despise religion; but if that’s what brings them comfort, then fuck it, I’ll play along.
Your case is basically the same gig - if having a mom urn brings you comfort, then you do you. Difference is that you already know my opinion, so we’re bashing heads right out the gate, but I’ll remind you of the thread topic to proclaim an unpopular opinion that we know doesn’t mean shit.
Dude, you don’t need to justify your decisions to me, and you certainly don’t need to change your behavior based on an internet stranger’s ‘hot take’. Where you see comfort in ceremony, I see an industry that relies on predation of people during an extremely vulnerable time. Engaging with that industry makes me feel taken advantage of; but there’s a lot of social pressure to conform which makes it feel even more uncomfortable. Our opinions don’t need to be reconciled.
I am tempted to agree with you, I mean we’re going to run out of graveyard space if we keep it up. We need something like crypts for all the graves from several hundreds of years ago to move into, and then we need to keep on moving people from graveyards into crypts ad infinitum - this way we could still provide graveyard space to people who are remembered by living relatives. I’d say the cut-off could be 3 or 4 generations.
Of more importance to peoples’ descendants long term is having good documentation of who their ancestors were, when they were born, married, and died (see websites like: https://www.freebmd2.org.uk/ , if you need this information yourself. this one is UK and i don’t know about any american one, sorry.)
As long as you have that information for your records, a grave for your great great great something is not important.