"Funerals Mandatory"

You can go here to read Aaron Renn's most recent Substack, "Funerals Mandatory." In it Renn writes about his thoughts following the recent funeral of a college friend who had died of cancer.

Until about age 35, people cannot emotionally connect with the idea that they will continue changing into the future. They know they have changed - oh, how we know we’ve grown and changed - but don’t really understand in more than a nominal intellectual sense the story arc of life. 

Today, I understand that I’m going to start having new thinking and new experiences as I pass through different stages of life. This seeing people at funerals thing wasn’t one that I had anticipated in advance, but it doesn’t surprise me. I know expect that I’ll be running into these new experiences and shifts regularly.

As someone nearly 30 years older than Renn, I am surprised at how few funerals I have attended of friends and my generation of family. That will change as (if) I continue to age, of course. As Renn comments to his readers:

I’ve always been one of the most peripherally attached members of all of my friend groups. But I’ve made a commitment to try my best to attend any funerals for people I’ve been connected to over the years. In a book he wrote long ago, Rudy Giuliani had a chapter called “Weddings Optional, Funerals Mandatory.” I’ve come to appreciate that in ways I didn’t when I was younger.

For my thoughts about funerals and burial practices, you can go here, here, and here.

We're Still Dying But So Are Cemeteries

You can read a good piece about the slow financial death of American cemeteries in The Spectator here. (The Spectator lies behind a paywall but you can sign up for access to three article a month without charge.)

US Funerals Online, a “death care industry” resource, reported in March that “this year the cremation rate is predicted to reach close to 60 percent, with a forecast that the national cremation rate will now reach 80 percent by 2035.” In a piece published last year, the Washington Post reported on estimates from the Cremation Association of North America that “20 to 40 percent of cremated remains are interred in a cemetery — placed in the ground or a columbarium, a storage area for urns — while 60 to 80 percent are buried in another location, scattered… or kept at home, on the mantel or stashed in a closet.”

In other words, the financialization and commercialization of life and death in America means that even the graves of our ancestors--who knew there was more to life than money and commerce--will be lost to the ravages of time and entropy. The greater loss is ours, who suppress the certainty of death until is is too late. We live in the here and now only because our ancestors participated in the river of life there and then. May we participate in the rites of respect that have maintained this river for millennia.

For earlier thoughts on this topic you can read my Communion of the Saints, Good Friday and Respect for the Dead, and More on Respect for Death and the Dead.

For more on the additional plight facing old cemeteries for Blacks read this piece in the New York Times.