Oh, Bury Me Not

Though I was never one for cemeteries and am not in the
habit of visiting the graves of family or friends, I will consent to tour the
graves of those long gone, whose tombstones are abraded and lichen-covered. There
is a forlorn, lonesome quality to these graves so neglected through time. If
the deceased in these places were promised perpetual care, clearly the care has
fallen somewhat short of perpetuity.

Once on a wintry November day we toured Concord cemetery and
paused—only briefly, for it was uncomfortably cold—before the stones marking the
graves of Alcott, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. It was a tourist’s experience, merely
taking note of the historically departed. There was no grief to confront, nor any
sense of sadness.

Deep in late November’s grip the grounds looked like an
unkempt stage for a dark production of
Our
Town
, something intentionally designed to evoke the desolations of death. I
remember trees dead in winter bearing gnarled and twisted limbs as we walked through
the cemetery.

But that is my impression also of cemeteries for the more
recently departed, even when snuggled up in the glowing warmth of spring. I do
not like cemeteries.

This comes to mind because recently I visited the graves of
my parents for the first time since their deaths. The cemetery was empty of anyone
living, except for me and a noisy flock of grazing Canada geese.

It was not deliberate, my graveside visit. I had business
nearby and afterward, on the spur, decided to see if their markers were
inscribed properly as my parents had wanted. The living do have obligations to
the dead, yet beyond that specific duty I see little reason ever to return to
their graves, either to pay homage or to assuage grief.

Among the deceased I knew, I know where hardly any of them are buried. I don’t know where my best high school friend lies, except somewhere
in southern Missouri, and I’m the one who conducted his funeral. He asked me to
do it for him some little while before he died and, best friend though he was
through the years, it surely was the meanest thing he ever did to me. I have
but vague recollections of where my grandparents are buried.

That will not be the case with my gravesite. There are a
series of daydreams I indulge about my own death; one entails the vision of
periodic visitors standing about my grave. I know them all: my children, my
widow, all regularly gathering to speak of me in tones of loving remembrance,
reverently hushed, but mostly wishing I was still around to haul the trash to
the street on Thursdays. Or something. And because I am a forgiving sort, the assembly
includes even the parishioner I once regarded, fondly, as the Wicked Witch of
the West.

We bury the remains
of our past, our loves and friends, our family, and the regrets. But it
seems, at least to me, that we honor them best largely in ways other than
graveside visitations. I have lived long enough now to know the weight of the
dead who press on my mind. I think of them, say prayers for them sometimes, but
I do not seek their graves, as neither mourner nor tourist. And I don’t know
why anyone would do so with mine, but fantasies by definition are sometimes
fantastical.

So I have decided I don’t care to be buried. Of course I
won’t be around to care about it one way or the other, but if I do get any say,
cremation is fine. It’s just as well, I think, to place my “cremains” in a
tasteful urn centered atop the mantle, nestled among all the other knickknacks that
never get dusted. That’s as good as being buried in an $8,000 plot no one will
ever visit. A small tag on the urn with my name would do nicely, and perhaps a
sentiment: “The Trash Goes Out Thursdays.”

As she lay dying, St. Augustine’s mother said it for me:
“You may lay my body anywhere; never mind about that. All I ask is that you
remember me at the altar of the Lord.” 

Russell E. Saltzman is a dean in the North American Lutheran Church, assistant pastor of St. Matthew’s Church in Riverside, Missouri, and an online homilist for the University of Mary Christian Leadership Center. His latest book, Speaking of the Dead, is being published this year by ALPB Books. His previous articles can be found here. 

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