Thanksgiving is a gateway to all the other winter festivals we celebrate for ethnic or religious reasons. The party atmosphere is about to ramp up. Lights on houses and holiday music in stores are about to explode. In many cases, the evidence of the major winter feasts are around us now, but after Thanksgiving, things become more and more holiday fixated. I like lights on houses and the music, but in the middle of grief these things can irritate in so many ways. We can’t make the world change for us, but we can change things in our home and how we look at the world. If your grief is great, get help. If you know someone who has lost someone this year, ask them what they need. Offer them a seat at your table if they are alone. Most of all be gentle and kind. Most people will let you know what they need if you ask. Many are grateful you have noticed and are taking time to help. We are entering into a time of year where people feel alienated more than other times of the year. Take the time to look around and see what you can do for those who may be feeling a bit lost this year.
As a nation, we will gather tomorrow at tables throughout this land to remember things for which to be thankful. As someone who has lived in outside the US, I know that those living abroad will set time aside for a gathering and a dinner and also give thanks. We gather as family: biological or acquired. When we gather, thoughts will turn to those who used to gather with us year after year. We will recall those who used to make the stuffing or carve the bird. Sometimes the loss feels so great. Sometimes it is hard for us to handle. Sometimes we might wish that all these feasts would just go away. Maybe this year we might take time, slow down, and reflect on those whom we miss. This year maybe we can find creative ways to include them at the table and be thankful for their presence in our lives.
Thanksgiving is a gateway to all the other winter festivals we celebrate for ethnic or religious reasons. The party atmosphere is about to ramp up. Lights on houses and holiday music in stores are about to explode. In many cases, the evidence of the major winter feasts are around us now, but after Thanksgiving, things become more and more holiday fixated. I like lights on houses and the music, but in the middle of grief these things can irritate in so many ways. We can’t make the world change for us, but we can change things in our home and how we look at the world. If your grief is great, get help. If you know someone who has lost someone this year, ask them what they need. Offer them a seat at your table if they are alone. Most of all be gentle and kind. Most people will let you know what they need if you ask. Many are grateful you have noticed and are taking time to help. We are entering into a time of year where people feel alienated more than other times of the year. Take the time to look around and see what you can do for those who may be feeling a bit lost this year.
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In this country, ten states now require families to hire funeral directors at the time of a loved one’s death. In most states a family has the right to take possession of their loved ones body and care for it in a loving manner. They fill out forms and transport their loved one to their final resting place. In a growing number of states, families have lost the right to choose how to handle and who will handle their loved ones bodies. We must add Alabama to the list.
Alabama takes things a step farther. Not only are families required to hire a for-profit private entity at the time of a loved ones death, but families must include a funeral director for memorial services as well as funerals and burials. What new madness is this? The funeral industry further insinuates themselves into private citizens most intimate and significant rites - memorializing a loved one as they see fit. How dare they think they can force people to hire them just for a simple gathering of the bereaved! How will they enforce such a law? The industry must be afraid of the changing views on death and funerals. They must know that more and more people are opting for cremation and fewer and fewer people want embalming. The industry who built itself on the idea that we could preserve the bodies of those we love like the pharaohs of Egypt must not know what to do with themselves while people look into alternatives to the “traditional” funerals. There is nothing much traditional to the US funeral industry. Traditionally we took care of our dead. Traditionally we kept them at home until the funeral and burial. Times changed and fewer people had room in their own home for a family wake and the funeral home was born. Advocates in favour of preserving family rights are only interested in keeping basic human rights, not in shutting down the death care industry. In a society that allows home births, I cannot seem to understand the logic of forcing people to hire a licensed funeral director when there is far less danger in a home funeral than home births. Home births are quite safe. The person cared for in a home funeral can no longer be hurt. I am aware that in states where citizens have lost this simple and basic right, families can still care for the dead as they wish, as long as they hire a funeral director at some point, but this is absurd. Families in these states must hire a funeral director at a cost of almost a thousand dollars (as per my research) or more just to comply with the law. That is such an arduous burden for families to carry. I find that so hard to believe that we have allowed this to happen in our nation. Our nation built on competition and an open market place now in ten states willfully funnels customers into the funeral industry. It’s not like any of us get out of this life alive. These are guaranteed-mandated customers. Revolting! (Pun intended.) Last August I went to Graceland Cemetery in Chicago for the first time. It was a beautiful and inspiring trip back in time, and one that I talked about for weeks afterwards. Some people I’ve told about my experience at Graceland were surprised that I, as the co-founder of the Midwest Green Burial Society, would be so excited about a “conventional” cemetery.
But here’s the thing – I love cemeteries. I always have. When we were in 4th grade our class was supposed to take a field trip to the local cemetery to learn about our town ancestors. It got rained out and I was upset for weeks. A few years ago, I went on a “cemetery walk” in Crystal Lake, IL. Costumed interpreters stood by select graves and told the stories of the lives of the deceased in the first person. It was fascinating to hear the “living” histories, and to have an AMA with someone who had been dead for over 100 years. I would recommend the experience to everyone. I went to Graceland with Lynnette. Lynnette lives in Denver, but should really live in Chicago. Every time she comes to visit, magical Chicago things happen. I get free tickets to a skybox at Wrigley next to John Cusak and Eddie Vedder. We get gifted tulip bulbs from the Millennium Park gardeners. We line hop a popular club in the “Viagra Triangle” by hanging out with an Italian “silver fox” and his “associate” (aka body guard) who get full table service. Seriously…magical. Lynnette is also an architecture buff. Weather-permitting, she’ll have us take a Wendella boat or kayak tour up and down the Chicago river just to hear more about the construction of the Marina Towers and other iconic structures. Five years ago she insisted I read Devil in the White City before her semi-annual visit. I’m glad I did, because afterwards her myriad references to Daniel Burnham actually made sense. It was Burnham and his contemporaries that brought us to Graceland. The cemetery grounds are peopled with famous Chicagoans, many of who are considered the City’s post-Great Chicago Fire founders. Preeminent among them is Daniel Burnham, the architect behind the 1893 World’s Fair and its “White City.” He also wrote the 1909 Plan for Chicago, which included the philosophy that every citizen should be within walking distance to a park. I like the way the man thought. Following Lynnette’s lead, we wandered from grave to grave, reading the biographies of each of the inhabitants. Lynnette was the closest to “fan-girl” gushing I had ever seen her, especially at the tombs of dead architects such as Louis Sullivan. But when we got to “Burnham’s Island,” it was my turn to wax poetic. Nestled back from the main road, down a dirt path and across a wooden footbridge, was a forested plot of land surrounded by Lake Willowmere. Natural glacial granite boulders mark the remains of Daniel Burnham and his family, a stark contrast to the Italian marble columns and vaults preferred by others in the cemetery. I learned Burnham had died while travelling in Germany. He was cremated abroad, and his cremains brought back to be interred on his island near the water. Reflecting in the stillness, sunlight speckled by the trees, my admiration of this great man grew exponentially. His relatively humble gravesite, on its wooded plot, embodied – to me – the open land conservation principles Burnham espoused, even as he designed and built some of the tallest skyscrapers the world had known at the time. At one point during our stroll that day Lynnette remarked, “Can you imagine if just a handful of the people who are buried here had never lived? How different would our city – our world – be today? To think that when you look at the Chicago skyline, most of what is there were just ideas – back of the napkin ideas – for these men.” It is a humbling, and again, inspiring thought. The most famous quote attributed to Burnham is “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir man’s blood.” Wanting to provide green burial options for my fellow Midwesterners is no little plan, but I hope that the idea to create natural cemeteries is a magical one. By Juliann Wilson Salinas Cemeteries tell a story about a community. Cemeteries tell stories of loss and remembrance. A family plot will have one grand stone with the name of the family and maybe a bit of information and be surrounded smaller stones surrounding it for individual names and dates. These families wanted to gather in death next to each other. Here they will spend the rest of time. Here they stand, telling us that once a family desired to spend the rest of time together gathered under these stones. Some have monuments to great men and women of the community. They also let us know that they were a family of some means if they had a large stone carved. Some communities place a central monument honoring local soldiers who have died in war. Often you will see names etched in stone and perhaps dates or the war in which they died. Here an American community might gather on Memorial Day to recall the sacrifice of her fallen children. Some cemeteries have a section devoted to children who did not live long on the earth. Some cemeteries might have a section devoted to those who no one knows or with no resources for their final resting place. Cemeteries tell the story of a community.
What stories are told in green or natural cemeteries? Gravestones are not as grand or opulent. In some green cemeteries, stone markers are not allowed (although are permitted by the Green Burial Council as long as they do not impede the veiwshed). Green cemeteries tell a beautiful story. The very land becomes a monument of love and devotion to future generations. People who choose green burial give their bodies to mark the land as separate, as sacred. The very earth is preserved through their burial. The message they give to us is that this land is forever separate. Green cemeteries tell us that the land is forever claimed by those whose bodies lie there as guardians. Those who choose a green burial say to us, “ This land is for future generations to enjoy. Come visit this land and remember that we have given our bodies so that this land will forever be held unspoiled because we have chosen this for our grave. Come and enjoy. Find peace and remember beauty.” |
Caroline Vuyadinov
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