I recently received an email from a concerned relative (not my own) regarding the apparent desecration and disappearance of some of their ancestors' headstones at Oak Grove Cemetery over in St. John Township.
So, I'm setting out to write a story on this and, hopefully, get to the bottom of this or close to it. If this is something you would like to offer either information or your own experience on, feel free to email me.
What this inquiry made me reflect on, though, are the visits I've made to my family members' graves over the years. Growing up my family would visit grave sites in my hometown fairly often, and I try to make the trip to visit some of my buried relatives when I am back home.
I've been present for the burial of several relatives. To me, that's just as important as the funeral itself. Experiencing the finality and confronting our own future death is something that I think is essential, and I'm glad that my family was willing to let me experience it as a child so that I knew how to handle such things as an adult.
We shouldn't fear death, but we should remember it. Quite often, the bad things we do can be attributed to our ignorance of our own death. If we paused and thought, “On this night my soul could be required of me,” maybe we'd turn away from whatever hurtful thing it is that we're about to do.
There's a trend lately of having closed caskets, or no casket at all, and focusing more on a “celebration of life” rather than the finality and truth that is revealed to us at a funeral. Should we remember our friends and relatives fondly, tell stories and laugh? Absolutely. But we should also allow some space for solemnity and the opportunity to understand death a bit more than we previously did.
At President Jimmy Carter's funeral last week, country singers Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood performed the John Lennon classic “Imagine.”
Imagining there's no heaven and no religion while standing next to a casket in the midst of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. I don't think I could come up with a better microcosm for our secular society's weird relationship with death.
“It's easy if you try,” Lennon's lyrics continue to ring. I beg to differ.
The overarching truth for me, though, is that our culture fears death but does not remember it. This is an inverted way of thinking, and I believe we see the fruits of that all over the place. Take people who want to achieve immortality through artificial intelligence or who work rapidly to prevent aging, which seems to be all the rage with certain cultural and political figures today.
When walking through a cemetery, it is impossible not to remember death. A striking tombstone that reveals a life cut short; a couple married for several decades buried side by side; and, most importantly, our own relatives who we knew and loved, and continue to love, even though they aren't physically with us.
Cemeteries, though, also force us to remember life, and life in abundance. We think about when those people were with us and the impact they had on our lives, and we reflect on how we should strive to do the same for others. Most importantly, it forces us to do something that seems like an oxymoron: remember the life that is to come.
On every Palm Sunday at my church back home, we would take palm leaves and crosses made out of palm leaves and place them at the graves of our loved ones. Growing up, it was one of my favorite traditions.
This would come a day after commemorating Lazarus Saturday.
Remembering life, death and the life that follows death. If you haven't in a while, I recommend walking through a cemetery and reflecting on these things.
“By raising Lazarus from the dead before Thy passion, Thou didst confirm the universal resurrection, O Christ God! Like the children with the branches of victory, we cry out to Thee, O Vanquisher of Death: Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord!”
- Orthodox Hymn for Lazarus Saturday