The " Dearly Departed " !

When we take a weekend break from our city jobs and suburban homes it often entails a visit to a historic country town where little has changed in the past century.   There is much to see and photograph and one of the sights that attracts us are magnificent old churches, often larger and more ornate than we would expect in such a small community.

In many cases they have extensive grounds and we are mesmerized by the English custom of tombstones scattered haphazardly at odd angles and the faded etchings that record the death of citizens of a bygone era.    The early settlers that came to this land were quick to establish their faith by the construction of a church and its hallowed ground became the resting place for the generations that followed.   It was possible to follow a family line of gravestones that depicted how individual families became the cornerstone of life in little country towns.

As happened in England, in time the burial space surrounding the church became exhausted and land far away was ordained for a local cemetery, and here change became evident.   Burial sites were allocated in neat rows and family mausoleums began to appear.   The richer and more prominent the family, the larger and more ornate they became.  Glorifying the family dead became a custom of the living and the upkeep of graves became a family tradition.

Eventually, such cemeteries in cities became a problem.   As Australia aged, the distance between those buried and those that remember them widened and now some have become forgotten relics, ignored by all and a forgotten part of a distant past.   Often they occupy a prime site with glorious sea views and the last burial conducted there happened many decades ago, but we are reluctant to send in the bulldozers and turn them into communal parks.

The new burial grounds are far from city centres and the way of death has changed.  Today more than 67% of our dead are cremated and with the rapidly rising cost of a traditional funeral and a burial plot, that is likely to further increase in the years ahead.   There is no longer an expectation that people will live their lives in close proximity to their parents and grandparents.  That has become evident where sixty percent of the ashes of those cremated remain uncollected in the storage rooms of crematoriums.

Death has become an event that most people have covered by a form of insurance.   That insurance cover picks up the tab for the crematorium's services and allows for a public service and the ministration of either an ordained priest or a celebrant.   In many cases it includes a fee to have the ashes either scattered in a rose garden - or interred in a brick wall with a small name plate affixed.   That custom now applies to a third of all cremated ashes.

It is not unusual today for some people to use their will to instruct on the dispersal of their ashes.  Many with a connection to the ocean may require that they be scattered at sea while others require that they be scattered in some remote part of the country that was once part of their way of life.    There are even instances where ashes have been deposited in outer space.

To others, that connected with the departed sees ashes take pride of place in a jar on the mantelpiece, or in some cases constantly carried about with that person.   Sometimes they mystify others when they turn up in a lost property auction.   The custom varies from country  country and from religion to religion.

Treasure those visits to quaint little churches in remote places and their surrounding graveyards.  That is a way of life that is now gone - forever !