I don’t want to be buried when I die. I have a bunch of reasons why, but there are 3 major ones.
1. It is a waste of time and money to go through the embalming process, my body will be a chemical-filled mess when it’s put in the ground and won’t break down naturally.
2. Even if I believed in the religious stuff surrounding the importance of being buried, my body will probably be dug up eventually, either for “progress” (graveyard in perfect spot for commercial development) or “science” (archeologists digging up bones). Doesn’t this eventuality sort of make being buried for some religious reason silly?
3. It just seems weird to bury people, I’m a bit freaked out by it. My father was cremated, as was my grandfather. I’m going to continue that tradition when I die.
Feel free to disagree, I don’t mean to offend. I realize that there is a lot of closure for families when they see an embalmed body at a wake, or that traditional coffin going into ground thing.
But this entry is about reason #2.
When I moved to this area about 5 years ago we lived in an apartment near Montgomeryville. Route 309 in Montgomeryville has a mall, hundreds of big stores, shops and restaurants. In the two years I lived in that apartment they expanded substantially, cutting down trees, building more buildings, I’d say the area grew at least 20% in two years. It’s even more developed today; the gym I go to regularly is one of the newer buildings that they cut down trees to build.
In the middle of all this commercialism was a quaint little, white church. It was across the street from Montgomery mall, nestled between Route 309 and a Burger King and had a little graveyard out back. I always felt sort of bad for that little church, and made an offhand comment more than once that I “don’t want to be buried because I know I’d end up next to a burger king and my poor body would reek of hamburgers for eternity.”
A few months back I drove by this little church, and saw big Caterpillar trucks in that graveyard. What on earth are they doing? They aren’t digging up the graves are they? They wouldn’t…
A few weeks later I noticed that all the gravestones were gone. By this point I was pretty sure they hadn’t taken them away to be washed, they had moved the graves. Gross.
A couple weeks after that there was a sign on the property saying something like “Join Burger King! Move your business here!”
A couple weeks ago I was leaving the gym and saw this:
Guess what used to be where that pile of rubble is? The church!
And this is the former graveyard:
(The pictures are somewhat deceiving, I took them early in the morning and tried to not get cars in the picture, 309 is a very busy route in this area, two lanes going each way where this picture was taken.)
This made me really sad for some reason.
Maybe I’m remembering the cute little white church in my hometown that looked similar to the one that used to be here.
Or maybe it just kills me to see any sacred places torn up and developed.
Or maybe it just depresses me to be living in a society that believes in burial but feels it’s ok to just dig up those bodies and relocate them when enough money becomes involved.