At first glance, the peaceful, tree-lined expanse of Resurrection Catholic Cemetery does not reveal the dramatic shifts in the way Americans have begun to approach death in the 21st Century.
There, on the slightly rolling hills of Madison, Wis., are the aged gravestones bearing the names of families that for generations have made the Midwest their home: Anderson and Fox, O’Connor and Murphy.
But ask Thomas Hanlon, the director of cemeteries for the city’s Catholic diocese, and he will tell you to look closer, to notice the clues showing how significantly the multibillion-dollar industries that handle funerals, burials, cremations and memorials in this nation have changed in recent years.
There is the cemetery’s mausoleum, constructed to hold cremated remains now that more than a quarter of Americans are choosing this option.
There are the increasing number of plots belonging to those who are not Catholic, but who came to Resurrection Catholic Cemetery because marriage between people of different faiths has become more common.
And there is more space devoted not to longtime Madison residents but to transient Americans who have no real hometown cemetery and thus choose a final resting place based on factors such as beauty and tranquility, proximity to where children and grandchildren live or the city in which they retired after a lifetime of moving.
“People used to know exactly where they would be buried: in a family plot in their hometown,” Hanlon said. “But the characteristic that we are seeing in the generation of people dying today is that their mobility has sent them from San Francisco to New York, Texas to Wisconsin. When they begin to think of and prepare for their own deaths, they are thinking about things quite differently than people did even back in the 1960s or ’70s.”
Options vastly changing
Indeed, in 2006, the year that the oldest members of America’s Baby Boom generation turn 60, the after-death options being chosen by those who have lost a loved one or are planning for their own deaths have vastly changed.
People are creating documentaries about their lives to be shown at their services and bringing in the marching band of their alma mater to play the funeral music. Others are having their remains rocketed into space or turned into artificial reefs to be placed in the ocean. Cryonics–the oft-derided practice of freezing people after death in the hope of reawakening them with yet-to-be-invented technology–has gone from the stuff of science fiction to a moneymaking industry. Even interment places are changing, with such institutions as the University of Notre Dame considering building a cemetery where former students could be buried near campus.
“Our great-grandparents would never have been able to imagine what life in the 21st Century is like,” said Bob Biggins, president of the National Funeral Directors Association. “But, even more, they would never be able to imagine what death in the 21st Century is like.”
In the four decades since Jessica Mitford’s “The American Way of Death” became a best seller, the rituals surrounding death in this country have morphed in ways not only unimaginable but impossible for many of previous generations.
Cremation once was viewed as an option largely for those who could not afford burials and funerals, and the Catholic Church even prohibited it.
But in 1963 the Second Vatican Council reversed that stance, and the rate of cremation in the U.S. has risen ever since. The Cremation Association of North America, which monitors the number of cremations in the U.S., predicts that nearly 45 percent of the population will choose cremation by 2025, and the association’s executive director, Jack Springer, cites figures that cremation is growing at about 1 percent per year.
Springer, who is based in Chicago, says perhaps the most obvious indication of how quickly attitudes toward cremation are changing is the rates in states with large populations of retirees. For example, in 2003, 57 percent of deaths in Arizona resulted in cremation and 49 percent in Florida.
`Real change’ in attitudes
“These are not just numbers–they illustrate a real change in the way people feel about cremation because it’s an option that is almost always chosen by the deceased. You don’t just cremate Mom unless she has told you that was what she wanted,” Springer said.
Still, perhaps the greatest changes to the American approach to death are to come in the next decades.
Experts say it is virtually a given that the Boomers, the largest generation in U.S. history and a generation that changed the nation with its very existence, will leave an equally lasting mark on the process of ceasing to exist.
Where funerals in America were once ritualistic and uniform, Boomers are pushing to make them individualized.
A Michigan State alum had his funeral on campus with the marching band in charge of the music. Others have created memorial CDs, illustrating their lives, to be handed out to funeral attendees.
The day the men came to install a 42-inch plasma-screen TV on the wall of his funeral home’s visitation room was the day Biggins, who is a funeral director in Rockland, Mass., knew funerals had changed forever.
“This is the Boston area,” he said, “where funerals are deeply, deeply traditional. If you would have told me even a couple years ago that I’d be hanging that high-tech screen up in my funeral home, I would never have believed you.”
As Biggins spoke, a family was gathered for a wake in the nearby visitation room, watching a photo slideshow about their late loved one on a plasma screen not far from the casket.
And many are not content to assume their send-offs will be exactingly orchestrated by family and friends. According to a survey by the marketing research group WirthlinWorldwide, 40 percent of those surveyed say they want to prearrange their funeral, cremation or memorial.
“The overarching trend that we are seeing now–and this will be even more so as the Boomers age, I think–is that people are more and more focused on personalizing their death and the way they are remembered and honored,” said John Reigle, a consumer advocate in the funeral industry.
A booming preplanning industry has followed. Companies have sprouted up that will plan funerals as painstakingly as a wedding planner handles a couple’s nuptials.
And as those dying today lived during an age where extreme sports hit their peak, extreme final send-offs have followed.
A Texas company, Space Services Inc., rockets cremated remains into space. (It sent off such notables as LSD guru Timothy Leary.) Writer Hunter S. Thompson arranged for his ashes to be scattered via an elaborate fireworks display. An Illinois company will extract carbon from cremated remains and turn it into gemstones for the family. And Eternal Reefs turns remains into artificial sea reefs.
“I sometimes wonder if people are going overboard,” Reigle said.
Reigle is not alone in his concern.
Cremation has critics
Cremation, for all its growing popularity, has its critics. Many experts warn that the practice of distributing remains–whether they are rocketed into orbit or sprinkled in a place of emotional significance–may leave survivors feeling adrift when they have no place, like a grave, to go when they want to feel connected to their loved one.
“Not everyone has this reaction,” Hanlon of the Madison diocese said. “But I increasingly find myself talking with people who feel a void that there is no final resting place at which to go for memorial. They feel a loss of closure. I noticed it for the first time with a World War II widow whose husband was buried at Normandy. She eventually had a gravestone put up in a local cemetery, and even though she knew his body wasn’t below it, she felt it gave her a place to go to think about and remember him.”
Others say the grieving process is forever affected when cremations are done so quickly that family and friends are not given time to view the deceased. Many in the cremation industry now encourage families to hold a traditional visitation, with the body present, before cremation.
Also emerging are those who long for a return to simpler times. Home funerals–where the deceased is left at home and washed and prepared for burial or cremation by friends and relatives–are on the rise.
All these trends raise the question: With so much about what happens after a death changing, does that mean attitudes toward death have changed?
Experts speculate that a couple of realities of today’s society have changed some outlooks toward death. To begin with, because people are living longer, they have more time to think about their mortality.
“By the time you’re 85 or so, you’re pretty practical about the fact that you’re not going to live forever,” Reigle said.
Still, grief is a certainty, whether a marching band plays or a funeral has been preplanned down to the tiniest detail.
“The one thing that’s constant is this: The heartbreak of death is not generational,” said Biggins. “We can say better and more meaningful goodbyes, but we still must say goodbye.”
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kscharnberg@tribune.com
