Curious: picnics in the graveyard

[Lorizael]

You can look at https://alcor.org/AboutAlcor/patientcaretrustfund.html for an example, but the idea is... living members pay a member fee to help support storage of frozen members; upon death, the life insurance policy pays out to the company, which puts a big chunk of it into a trust fund; interest from the fund goes toward maintenance costs.

[Unorthodox]

Uh huh.  Smells like Ponzi scheme. 

I'll take the freeze dried mummy thanks. 

[Lorizael]

Sure does. But I'll be dead and won't have any descendants, so what do I care if my money is mishandled?

[Rusty Edge]

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/picnic-in-cemeteries-america?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

I remember taking picnics with grandma in the graveyard, and not just around memorial day.  Just because. 

Picnics, tombstone rubbings, reading under the tree...They were 'normal' activities to me as much as any park.  I didn't realize it's just how she was raised and was just something normal to her as well.   

As such, I've never really understood wider societies 'rules' and etiquette.  Kind of a sad thing to lose, really. 

Anyone else ever practice this?

I don't think it's weird. I think a graveyard is a memorial park, and picnics are park stuff. If you'd like to spend time with departed friends and family, or meditate, or pour brandy on someone's grave as a toast, it's all cool as long as you don't mess anything up.

Me and my mother's side of the family tend to see a corpse as a chrysalis husk, and the grave as not particularly significant.

[Buster's Uncle]

^This.^

Sure does. But I'll be dead and won't have any descendants, so what do I care if my money is mishandled?

Because they'll stop paying the power bill?

And Uno will end up using your body in a show?

[Lorizael]

Because they'll stop paying the power bill?

But I'm already dead. I can't get deader.

[Buster's Uncle]

Uno could probably make you deader...

[Unorthodox]

[Lorizael]

But then, I have a whole slew of things I'd like done with my remains, and none of them involve a solemn gathering just before dumping them in a hole.  But that's exactly what will happen.  I just have really weird relations with death.

Can't say I get this. To me, death is... the point at which a living thing stops doing living-ish stuff and we don't think we have any ability to make it start doing living-ish stuff again. It sucks. But it's just this dumb thing that happens because we live in a sloppy, hectic universe.

I've never understood revering death or anthropomorphizing it or believing it's what gives life value or anything like that.

[Unorthodox]

But then, I have a whole slew of things I'd like done with my remains, and none of them involve a solemn gathering just before dumping them in a hole.  But that's exactly what will happen.  I just have really weird relations with death.

Can't say I get this. To me, death is... the point at which a living thing stops doing living-ish stuff and we don't think we have any ability to make it start doing living-ish stuff again. It sucks. But it's just this dumb thing that happens because we live in a sloppy, hectic universe.

I've never understood revering death or anthropomorphizing it or believing it's what gives life value or anything like that.

Well, my list is very much not about livingish things or reverence.  It starts with letting a cannibal eat me and ends with the skeleton in some haunted house.  I just find the recycling approach a better idea than the glorified landfill. 

[Lorizael]

Right. What I'm saying is I don't understand why that's important to you (or why death rituals generally are important for anyone other than those who are grieving). If it's not what your relatives would want, and you will never get anything out of it (because you're dead), why does it matter? After all, you'll be eaten no matter where you end up.

[Buster's Uncle]

 

I don't think I've been sig-quoted in slightly over four years...

[Unorthodox]

Right. What I'm saying is I don't understand why that's important to you (or why death rituals generally are important for anyone other than those who are grieving). If it's not what your relatives would want, and you will never get anything out of it (because you're dead), why does it matter? After all, you'll be eaten no matter where you end up.

I noted that what would happen is I'll be summarily dumped in a hole.  And, no, you don't get eaten in todays coffin/cemetery dealios.  Embalmed, stuffed inside a hermetically sealed box, shoved into a concrete tomb that's below where the critters can get to you.  Too wet to mummify, you just kind of slowly turn to a fossil. 

Like I said, I have a tiered list of what I would want done.   Modern coffin/cemetery combo just happens to be at the bottom.  But, it don't matter since the living will decide.  It don't matter, I just ruminate on the topic in general. 

[Lorizael]

And, no, you don't get eaten in todays coffin/cemetery dealios.  Embalmed, stuffed inside a hermetically sealed box, shoved into a concrete tomb that's below where the critters can get to you.  Too wet to mummify, you just kind of slowly turn to a fossil.

Oh? So you're saying if we dig up a corpse buried a century ago, it will look substantially different from a corpse buried now and dug up a century hence? If so, interesting, and I wonder how long that holds out. Are they still distinct after two centuries, or ten, etc.?

[Unorthodox]

Kinda depends on area and amount of moisture in the air, bacteria present in the area, etc.  As a general rule It takes 50+ years to go skeletal in the air tight, concrete tomb versions common here in the mountain west.  Considerably less in, say, New Orleans.  So, In New Orleans, probably not much difference.  Here in Utah, I'd expect to still find flesh and an incredible stench at 100 years. 

I'm not ENTIRELY sure when the hermetically sealed coffins become the norm.  I'd guess after WWII, though.  I know locally at least, it was common to have the local cabinet maker do a coffin to order as late as 1955 (grandpa), so certainly little more than a wood box.  But the concrete tombs that go around the casket were already standard then. 



But then Emma Crawford was buried around 1900, reburied around 1920 and certainly did NOT have a concrete tomb around her coffin either time.  Would be curious if she does in her final (third) resting place.