Bury Me Not, in a Mason Jar

                                    O bury me not in a mason jar.
                                     I love bargains too, but that goes too far.
                                     Don't turn me to ashes, like a spent cigar.
                                     O bury me not in a mason jar.

     One of the useful things I actually remember from history class is the principle of the swing of the pendulum, that trends swing from extreme to extreme before reaching middle ground.  Death is a universal constant, not a trend, but burial rituals are.  In the days when medical care was limited and death was a near neighbor, the family often built the coffin and prepared the body of their loved one.  As a teenager, my great aunt Elsie washed her mother's body after she died in childbirth with her tenth baby.  As difficult as that would be, I imagine there was also healing in knowing you were doing what you could for your loved one, even after death.  With embalming, the reality of death became muted by the cosmetic imitation of life.  Coffins were customized to be comfortable as if they were a bed for the "sleeping" departed.  Some even had windows.  Grave sites were vaulted and selected for shade or view.  Unless embalming is necessary to give time for family members to arrive, I believe there is a degree of unreality in delaying the inevitable decay of the dead.
     I also believe that there is a degree of unreality in the current trend of cremation and no funerals.  In some cases the body is made to disappear quickly as if the reality of death, and that which comes after it, will disappear too, or become just another box under the bed.  Funerals also have become passe.  There are several reasons for that: most people do not go to church, even if the deceased did, their survivors don't understand the value of a church family and, of course, cost.  The funeral directors, seldom the churches, charge extra. Years before he died, my grandfather had picked out the hymns and verses (though he was unfamiliar with them) for his funeral service, but when the time came, my uncle did not have a funeral for him either in Great Falls, where he was a beloved member of his church, or in Wolf Point, where they had lived and farmed for 58 years.    
     I am consummate bargain hunter and cremation is cheaper, so if my survivors choose to cremate me, I'm sure I will understand--and there's nothing I could do about it if I didn't--but I would prefer to be buried.  This is not because I think God needs pieces of my old body to build my new one, but because I believe burial best represents my hope of the resurrection.  I have tried to use my life to speak for God, I would like an opportunity to do that in death also.  There is no biblical command regarding disposing of the dead, but the biblical example is burial, not burning, of the body.  It would have been much easier and cheaper for Abraham to burn Sarah, after all they were visitors from out of town when she died, than to procure a tomb in a land his descendants wouldn't possess for centuries, but for the hope of the promised land, he did.
     My hope is in the promised resurrection of my body and I would like to make that statement my "final answer".  With or without a grave site, I would like a tombstone, because there also I can make a final statement of faith.  It is my belief that, without a grave stone, all knowledge of an individual can be lost within three generations.  I would like my faith to speak longer than that.  I was visiting an old graveyard in England when I met a woman who had come all the way from New Zealand to see her great grandfather's grave. The internet can provide information, but it cannot provide tangibility. With cremation there is usually no grave marker, where will future generations go to find their past?  A life can be erased, a stone cannot.  With that in mind, I wrote the following poem.

                                                      Speaking Stone

                                      When I have said my last goodbyes,
                                         at whatever place my body lies,
                                          mark my passing with a stone,
                                             so my memory will go on.

                                       When those I've loved and left behind
                                          long dead, no longer come to mind,
                                          this sturdy stone, which cannot die,
                                           may speak to some,  and testify

                                              whatever else I was in life,
                                           a daughter, sister, mother, wife,
                                     who lived and learned and loved and laughed;
                                             the stone can speak on my behalf

                                                 and say, I am a child of God
                                              and will not stay beneath this sod.
                                        And through this stone, my voice is heard.
                                                 I love to get the final word.

     I don't know what the burial trend will be at the time I die, perhaps some sort of flush tube, but I hope that the pendulum swings to something more lasting than a box of dust under the bed.  I never did dust under the bed anyway.