Do You Care Where You RIP?

I recently found myself in a meeting where people were having serious and sometimes heated discussions about options for burial sites. When their focus turned to who their after-death neighbors would be, I found myself blurting out, "But you are going to be DEAD! What do you care about where you are buried and who is nearby?" Then I was embarrassed because I was actually a guest at the meeting, not invited to talk about that topic at all.

It caused me to think a lot about my seeming lack of respect for the dead. Don’t get me wrong – I believe in honoring a person’s wishes about burial practices, but I actually view the body itself much as the skin of a snake that has been shed and no longer has a function.

I admire people like my aunt in Minneapolis who tends the graves of our rather large Norwegian family, year in and year out adding new colorful plantings and keeping the weeds under control. She visits those graves often to take care of them and show her respect.

I, on the other hand, have never once set foot in the ugly little building that houses the two urns of my parents’ remains. Part of it may be my disdain for the practice of cremation. (The idea of burning even a dead snakeskin sends shivers up my spine.) But I seriously doubt I would be there often even if they had plots in a cemetery. I would probably pay my way out so as not to look disgraceful.

My husband and I own burial plots in one of the two disputed cemeteries that were the subject of my meeting. I haven’t ever visited our plots to see where we will eventually repose. In fact, I haven’t given even 5 seconds to thoughts about funerals or the Jewish traditions that surround and follow death, preferring to pretend that I am immortal and concentrate on life in the here and now.

I have a deep and abiding belief that the soul lives on when the body fails. I think that is what allows my callous attitude about death and burial. Often when I meditate I visit with my deceased parents, who bear no scars of having been cremated, but rather seem more connected in death than they ever were in life.

Can anyone out there identify with my feelings on this?