Excerpt
What if I had a child who died, and all my resources had been sucked into a sinkhole of hospital expenses? What if I didnt have the two or three hundred dollars it costs these days to buy an average-sized headstone? As I examine this grave, with its glow-in-the-dark rubber snakes, and its sealed package of rub-on tattoos of a cross and crown (the only "religious" symbols I see here) I can't escape the sense that something fundamental has changed in the manner in which many of us mourn our dead.
Our traditional ceremonies, especially our funerals, have failed us; Bible verses and platitudes spoken by some member of the clergy who may not have met the person we are grieving just doesnt cut it anymore. Hence, the tendency these days for memorial services with an informal feeling, rather than the somber funerals where the dead are enshrined before us in expensive caskets....
Lately I have been to several Celebrations of Life, where participation is appreciated and even expected. Get up and show your grief. Get up and tell us something about the dead that can make us cry or cheer us up. It is a memorial, and we want our memories tugged.