Cemeteries Are Dying Due To Cremations

[Are_grits_groceries]

Two historic cemeteries in Colorado Springs face a troubled future -- and not because the death rate is slowing.

The problem for Evergreen and Fairview cemeteries is that more people are choosing cremation over burial. The trend is even stronger in El Paso County, which cemetery manager Will DeBoer says has one of the highest cremation rates nationwide.

In 2007, the last year for which statistics were available, 63 percent of the 3,345 people who died in the county were cremated. And only 10 percent of the cremated remains were taken to Evergreen and Fairview cemeteries.


Another looming threat is possible competition from a proposed national cemetery in the area that would offer free burial for veterans. DeBoer said the city's cemeteries could lose a third of their business.

"We sell a product no one wants to buy," DeBoer said. "Our business is flat, and for any business to be successful -- and this is a business -- it has to make money."

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/18773621/detail.html

The irony in the headline is heavy.

[Sagan]

1. I always wondered...

What happens to cemeteries when they're full? Who takes care of them?

[Occam Bandage]

16. Combination of things.

First, much like condominium towers, a significant portion of each purchase goes into a very conservative, very safe investment fund, where a portion of the profits are withdrawn annually and used for upkeep. Secondly, many retain a parcel of the land for extra purposes, such as flower-growing, which may then be sold. Thirdly, often the owner will open a new cemetery or similar business, and if the trust fund isn't performing well, he may use the profits from the new to assist in the upkeep of the old.

[TheMightyFavog]

47. Speaking of flowers...

I remember seeing a cemetary on a documentary on PBS that holds a daffodil festival every spring.

[Blue_Tires]

41. some of the shadier ones get real creative

pack them in REAL tight or 'lose' the dead bodies after the family has gone home...i remember a corrupt small cemetery in Maryland -- had been burying people since the 1950s but the oldest headstone in the entire place was from the from the mid-80s (there was also a really big house-sized mountain of dirt back in the corner for 'landscaping' purposes):scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:

eventually enough families complained to the county and the manager was arrested for defrauding families and a lot of other things (he was like 80 at the time, so he probably avoided jail)

[pleah]

2. Couldn't possibly be because people can't

fucking afford an expensive burial.:eyes:

I plan to donate my body to science and/or cremation. Depends what is available in my area.

[customerserviceguy]

3. Good

It's a non-productive use of land.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

13. But... it's a beautiful monument to the dead!

As a taphophile, I mourn the fact that more people are getting cremated. There's nothing like wandering through a cemetery and thinking about the lives reflected on the stones. There's something extremely sad about the fact that people are no longer being memorialized in this way. It's a grand tradition being lost.

[customerserviceguy]

30. Hmm, I thought I was a tapophile

because I liked beer, but Wiktionary shows that you have the honor of that distinction.

Seriously, in a literate age, people's accomplishments will be memorialized by the obituaries in newspapers that will be searchable forever. Far more of my descendants will be able to read about my life that way than would ever visit my grave. They'll also be able to download every mention of everything I've ever done that was on the Internet, too.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

31. Yes, but...

you can't walk through an online archive and photograph the monuments!

[customerserviceguy]

32. True

but I'd bet you'd find more people willing to do a Google search than would want to go on a stroll through a graveyard with you. They creep me out.

[ComtesseDeSpair]

33. Oh, where's your sense of romance?

There's nothing like walking past the stones, and reading the names and dates, and looking at the sculptures, and thinking about the lives of the people laid to rest there. I like to decipher the tragedies by looking at the dates - seeing several children that died on the same day, for example. Epidemics and tragedies from long ago. And some gravestones actually tell you the stories of the people buried there, or leave intriguing mysteries. It's beautiful - like social archaeology. I'm sorry you don't appreciate it.

[dustbunnie]

35. I enjoy them too.

A walk through the really old ones and you can get a real sense of cultural history... just by reading the names, for instance, you get an idea of which were popular when. Even though there are plenty of books with stats relating to women dying in childbirth back in the day, a walk through some cemeteries and you can see the real tragedy of it written on the monuments. How much younger people were on average, when they passed. How a virus really could wipe out half a town. It's a shame to let these testimonies to our past disappear.

[customerserviceguy]

43. Hmm, children dying on the same day

you remind me of a co-worker I knew at a title insurance company back in the 1980's. Whenever he would come across a death certificate in the public records that we had on microfilm, he'd shoot a copy to put on his desk in a pile. He seemed to delight that others would find it morbid.

But, to each their own. If you want to see where my remains end up, go to the Oregon Coast in about forty years, maybe less. My lady knows that I want my ashes to be put in the pony keg of Rogue's Dead Guy Ale that I expect my friends to drain at my wake, and flung off the shore.

[The2ndWheel]

4. An economy based on growth

We even need more people dying then before, and they need to be "shovel ready."

[Aristus]

5. I wonder how much of it is due to environmental consciousness.

Cremation doesn't utilize scads of resources in building a coffin, embalming the body, the plot of land, the headstone, the grounds up-keep, etc.

Plus, there's something appealing about cremation. Fire is tidy and cleansing. Maybe people prefer that to rotting in the ground year after year after year...

[Xithras]

49. Nah, it's just that our modern idea of them is rather stupid.

Up until about 150 years ago, the life cycle of a cemetary went something like this: 1) A plot of land was set aside for burials. 2) If the families of the dead wanted the area around their burial area to look pretty, they'd come out and weed it by hand themselves. 3) Once the plot was full and the relatives of the deceased had passed on themselves, the plot generally reverted back to nature.

The impact on the environment was minimal and temporary. No resource consumption, no embalming, no perfectly manicured lawns. That's a very MODERN thing, and even today is only practiced in a handful of countries.

I have no problem with the notion of burial, just with the way we do it today. Who needs a golf-course quality lawn over their GRAVE?!?!?

[Seeking Serenity]

6. Good. To quote a line from "Caddyshack" (an hilarious movie, BTW),

"Golf courses and cemeteries are the two biggest wastes of prime real estate."

[flamin lib]

12. Ah! Perhaps a return to the Reagan concept of "dual use" which

proposed combining public lands and national parks with mining and lumbering. Convert all the cemeteries to golf courses.

Hmmm how would you handle funerals? Would you ask permission to play through?

How about all those monuments? Are they natural hazards or do we treat them like a cart path?

What if your ball falls into a fresh grave? Must you play the lie or do you get a drop?

[Arugula Latte]

18. A mini-golf/cemetery combo would be great

You have to hit your ball through the revolving tombstone, through the cherub's mouth, etc., and then on the last hole you hit the ball into a grave and you don't get it back.

[dysfunctional press]

45. another last hole possibility-

if the dead hand raises your ball out of the hole, you get a free round.

[dysfunctional press]

44. a lot of cemetaries are not allowing monuments any more...

just a flat stone in the ground, so that it can be mowed MUCH easier.

they could make for some intersting "hazards"- or a benefit- the ball would probably get a better bounce off a piece of granite than sod.

[demokatgurrl]

7. Interesting. A few years ago I thought

we were running out of space and needed MORE cremations.

[pipi_k]

15. No kidding!

No disrespect to the dead here, but what the hell do we do when we run out of room for burying people and there's no room for the living?

[auntAgonist]

8. and here I thought people were dying

to get in :)

cremation is a better option all round IMO


aA
kesha

[Happyhippychick]

10. LOL!

Good one!

[old mark]

9. Back in the 1950's, the funeral homes and cemetaries spent a ton

of money in state legislatures all around the US to get laws passed to more or less legally force people to use their services even if there was no medical or public health reason to do so. They have had a locked in high profit scam going on for over half a century. so please forgive me if I allpaue the fact that people are finally getting away from the barbaric mumification practices of the recent past.


mark

[Mist]

26. "The American Way of Death," by Jessica Miftord, was published in the

late 50s or early 60s, and put people on alert as to what a rip-off the funeral industry was. Her book also led to the formation of funeral societies where you could pre-order a simple funeral or cremation, and pay up ahead of time, and the funeral society would see that your wishes were met. Her book may also have started a growing trend to choose cremation.

[old mark]

28. My wife and I are becoming members of a cremation society

here in PA - total cost is a little over $600 each.

mark

[pipi_k]

29. I read that book...

disgusting how often, and how badly, people have been taken advantage of in their hours of grief by unscrupulous funeral directors, etc.


My MIL and FIL must have read it too. Or else they were just thinking far ahead of themselves. They bought, and paid for, two funeral plots back in 1971 or thereabouts. FIL died in 1992. MIL died in 2005. I think they probably got their plots for maybe 1/5 of the price they'd have been had they not prepaid.


Anyway, I say, what the hell

just roast me on the barbie and throw me in some Tupperware.

[thereismore]

11. We cut down mahagony trees to make caskets that go straight into the ground. Insane. nt

[pipi_k]

14. They blame cremations for the demise of cemeteries?

I'm wondering if the Funeral Industry might be behind a bit of this.

They're the ones who end up getting screwed a bit if people choose cremation over traditional burial. They can't sell expensive coffins or in-ground vaults and a whole lot of other stuff.

Plus, who says cemeteries are going to suffer from cremations anyway? My ex MIL was cremated and buried in the same plot with her second husband and my infant daughter.

My dad was cremated and is buried in a Veteran's cemetery. Well, part of him...my stepmother and I both have a portion of his ashes.

Mr Pip and I have both said we wish to be cremated before being buried (in the same Veterans cemetery as my dad).

So not everyone wants to be scattered at sea or used as fertilizer in a garden...

[TlalocW]

17. The funeral business is full of cold-heart scammers

I can't be upset that they're suffering.

As for me, I'm choosing cremation, and then I don't want any fancy urn or box or whatnot because my will shall stipulate that my ashes are to be thrown in the face of my worst enemy while my representative handling this yells, "Victory is mine!"

TlalocW

[madokie]

19. burn my stinking ass and put my ashes in a hole in the ground with a tree planted with them

let me grow up to be a great fucking big tree. That is my instructions. I'm non religious so I don't buy into the after life as it is taught in the bible but I do feel that I've been here before and I'll be here again. I can remember back to shortly after being born, before my eyes would focus, how ever long that is, anyway and I rememeber some of my earliest thoughts were that I've been here before, I remember that just as sure as I'm setting here typing now. Long before I knew how to talk or what word actually meant, except maybe for the two that are associated with good and bad, love and hate, you know.

[Arugula Latte]

20. Mixed feelings about this.

I think the whole embalming/non-biodegradable coffin thing is absolutely ridiculous, and I personally want to either be cremated or have a "green" burial (after donating my bod to science), but I have to say I do appreciate old cemeteries. The newer ones aren't as intriguing, but one day they will be old and more intriguing and historic.

[bikebloke]

21. Ideally...

I'll take a burial only if they wrap me in shroud then plant a tree on top. My body would then nurture the tree. The cycle of life would roll on.

[flamin lib]

22. My mother was a pentacostal Methodist. Yeah, I know it's an

oxymoron but Mom was a complicated woman.

Anyway, my wife says she'll have me cremated and Mom says it'll sentence me to hell. Says if wife does that to me she'll scratch her way out of the grave and haunt wife.

Wife says, okay, we'll bury you face down. Scratch all ya' wanna'.

[Mist]

23. Good. Cremation is sensible. I see no reason to take up space when I'm dead. nt

[WillieW]

24. Having a loved ones ashes forever is better than that the grave is turned over after

20 years due to lack of space - like it is done in Europe. I want to be cremated.

[gauguin57]

25. Nothing says you can't have your ash urn buried in a cemetery.

A friend of mine was cremated, and his ashes placed in a beautiful, jade-colored urn, which was then buried in a cemetery beneath a small headstone.

[Thothmes]

48. When my time comes, my ashes will be dumped of the stern

of a U.S.Navy warship half way between Pearl Harbor and Guam

[FloridaJudy]

27. There's a "green" cemetery near here

That strikes me as being even more inexpensive and environmentally friendly than cremation. Their coffins look really, really cool too.

http://www.glendalenaturepreserve.org/
http://www.chufa.com/caskets/

Of course I've always wanted a "sky burial" (that's one in which you're fed to vultures), but I suspect that's illegal in the US.

[Hubert Flottz]

34. "national cemetery in the area that would offer free burial for veterans"

They need one of those in every state!

[AtomicKitten]

36. Cemeteries and golf courses are a waste of space. n/t

[JackDragna]

38. You stole that from George Carlin. :)

Seriously, full agreement here, although I must admit I do like strolling through old cemeteries.

[AtomicKitten]

39. I did ;) and he's so right. SF stopped new burials over a century ago. n/t

[Xithras]

50. No they didn't. SF just moved them to Colma.

The only city in the USA where the dead outnumber the living. San Francisco simply declared that they didn't want any more burials in the city limits...so the city bought a bunch of land south of the city in the then-empty hills and started burying the dead there.

They also moved most of the bodies from the existing cemeteries to Colma.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

53. Colma is a bizarre little place, and worth a visit if you're in the area.

I'd lived in the bay area for years and was aware of the story behind Colma (hell, I drove past it every day) but never thought to stop. My sister eventually came out for a visit, and I guess her ex-goth tendencies were in effect, and she asked to see it. We spent the better part of half a day wandering around the cemeteries. Many of the monuments were really over the top and just downright... strange. Not an experience I will forget soon.

[Xithras]

56. Visit? I was thrown out!

I forget what inspired the idea, but when I was a teen we used to take trips to the peninsula to skateboard every other weekend. Somehow we ended up on Hillside Boulevard in Colma behind Holy Cross, and decided to have lunch on someones grave. It didn't take long for one of my friends to notice that the entire cemetery has a slight grade to it, and the next thing I knew we were all flying down that little road between all of the mausoleums. It was a cool ride, but there was a cop waiting at the bottom for us. He gave us a long lecture about being disrespectful to the dead and unkind to the grieving, and ended with, "..and now, you boys have 20 minutes to get out of Colma or you're going to jail."

Since our van was way back on the OTHER side of the cemetery, UPHILL, that didn't give us much time to goof off.

Still, it was a fun ride, and I'll always be able to tell everyone that I was kicked out of Colma for being a pain in the ass :)

[AtomicKitten]

57. I know; I had my bird cremated in Colma. My point was they moved it out of SF.

Colma also has amazing pet cemeteries.

[queenjane]

37. I have TWO burial plots waiting for me!

One in a church cemetery in the North Carolina county where I currently live. My grandfather was given a family plot when he joined the church. He, my grandmother, my aunt, and my father are buried there. There's room for at least 4 more people.

My mother just bought 2 plots in the cemetery of the church she attended while growing up in South Carolina, one for her and one for me. Her reasoning is that the church would always take care of the cemetery, and she wanted to be buried near kin. (Her family's own cemetery is already full.)

I grew up next to a funeral home. I watched them embalm the bodies, spruce up the departed for viewings, etc. No way do I want that done, plus it costs a fortune, and funeral home directors prey on the bereaved, making them feel guilty for not buying "the best". I'm going to be cremated, myself. (At least, I've given my directives. My family is so anti-cremation that I've no idea what will really happen. I have no control over that.)

HOWEVER, as a genealogist, I want a headstone on my plot. I want people wandering through to see my name, when I was born, how long I lived. It is a symbol that I existed. Yeah, yeah--I know it's a waste of land, of resources, maybe no one will care, etc. All I know is how I felt when I found the tiny rusty marker of my great-grandmother, in a very rural, neglected family plot in VA, one of the few tangible records of a woman who died in 1942. I have one photo of her. I look just like her. I felt very peaceful and happy that I found her burial place.

So, yeah, we can be practical. But there's a peacefulness to visiting our dead relatives and friends. I find cemeteries so soothing and the older ones so interesting. I've spent many happy days transcribing cemeteries to put on genealogy websites. Yes, I acknowledge I'm weird.

And I can tell you, judging from my own large and extended family, I don't see rural southerners converting over to cremation en masse.

[rove karl rove]

42. great post

didn't exactly cheer me up much, though.

[tammywammy]

51. My grandparents bought their plots, headstones, services, etc back in 1985

It made it so easy when my grandmother passed in 2001. Everything was so nice. The family only had to pick out flowers and find an appropriate grandmother type night gown, pink. (She wanted to be buried in a night gown, had said that as long as I can remember).

Heck, the cemetery had moved storage sheds and lost the headstone. They replaced it no problem, but my grandfather just said "I have the receipt." LOL!

[Raine]

55. That's the way I feel

too. I like to wander thru old cemetaries too, I know some people find it weird but I like the connecting to the past.

[NeedleCast]

40. Good. If ever there was a total waste of land...

cemeteries are it.

[Dappleganger]

46. Those people are sheisters

We put my mother's cremains in a VA columbarium that cost Dad $300. When he passes away we'll put him in the same space. It is very simple yet elegant, doesn't waste hardly any space and there's an engraved stone for the family to visit.

If we want we can also move their remains to another VA cemetary as well.

[Peace_Sells]

52. Beyond the Cemetary

Cemeteries are the biggest waste of land I can think of. I'm being cremated.

[WillyT]

54. You Know Why They Build Fences Around Cemeteries ???

People are dying to get in.

:hide: