Cremation Doesn’t Mean Creaming One’s Heirs

Letter to Philippians: Some say the “days of the graveyard are numbered as cremation is on the rise”. Yet don’t we “still need physical memorials to those we have lost”? If so, isn’t the traditional “estate plan” gifting our heirs more relevant if not important than ever?

The WSJ piece by Faith Bottum reminded how “the rituals of grief are enduring” and not just another day in the year aka Nov. 2, in which Catholics especially pray for All Departed Souls & Saints. But Ms. Bottum also reminded me of my own childhood & legal career, which was at times heavy on taxation & estate planning. As for my childhood, I still fondly remember the family’s holiday visits to Chicagoland’s Resurrection Cemetery to pay our respects to our beloved ancestors; those visits with the “adults” seemed to be as comforting to those gathered around the grave sites as it hopefully was for the buried souls. And before retiring, I had assumed a key part of this remembrance ritual was the departed’s having left something, anything tangible behind to complement the “ties that bind us” aka our fond memories of one another. In this way, I figured, we still somehow existed in communion. And not just in prayer.

As Ms. Bottum suggests, however, we all now live in a fast-paced & technology driven world that encourages new ideologies & “live for today” beliefs that have minimized the comforting memorials of the graveyard kind. But that doesn’t make the woke way preferable let alone right. Still right as rain, I’d suggest, is the gifting kind of memorial found in wills & trusts. I’d argue it’s still human as well as holy to remember one’s loved ones by leaving behind some kind of gift to help occasionally jog their memories of the timeless shared love & good times.

Davd Soul