As a Catholic I agree, absolutely, with the
Church’s teaching that the ashes of our dear departed must be interred in an
appropriate place like a cemetery or a church, but I’m pretty much tolerant of
other people’s beliefs when it came to such, whether or not they’re
Catholics. Having lived in other lands and
met or known people of divergent cultures and beliefs I’ve come to empathize
with those who don’t share my thinking. It's a live and let live world, after all.
I’ve been to a non-Catholic home in Metromanila
that has a collection of urns containing ancestors’ ashes in the living room,
which the homeowners display with as much pride as Filipino parents have who
fill their walls with diplomas of their children. I’ve been to a truly special garden restaurant
in Quezon Province where a unique four-poster shed stands, with some flowers
and a lighted candle in the middle. Not
seeing the candle’s reason for being in such a place, I asked our guide. He said the shed was actually a shrine, and
he pointed at an earthen jar on top of a post, next to the ceiling, saying it
contained the ashes of the owner’s mother, a Catholic. Apparently the restaurant owner was so close
to his mother in life that he wants to maintain that closeness even in death.
Abroad, I met a middle aged lady who didn’t know
what to do with her mother’s ashes in her house. Long before “eco-cemeteries” existed, they scattered
her father’s ashes in a public park, around a flowering hedge. The park was the family’s favorite summer
picnic destination when they were kids—and her mother’s wish was for her ashes
to be joined with her father’s when her turn came. When her turn came, the family went back to
the park to honor her wish. But she
returned home still carrying her mother’s ashes. As they were to learn then, a fire years ago
had razed to the ground a considerable area of the park, making it now
impossible to locate the exact spot of her father’s “burial”.
Some of the weirdest things people do to be
together forever with their loved ones reflect a somewhast self-centered
sentimentality that makes detachment difficult.
The parents of an apparently well-loved high school student in the US
who died in a car accident reportedly gave little scoops of the boy’s ashes to
his closest friends. Some put theirs in
lockets to wear around the neck; some glued the ashes to the picture of the
deceased and hung it up their study wall; and a few had the ashes ground
superfine, mixed it with tattoo ink, and had themselves tattooed with it. Still, a few snorted the pulverized remains
mixed with illegal drugs for a different kind of high--the ultimate high for
some, plain morbid for others.
An immigrant family I know have for years kept
the ashes of their parents in cardboard boxes in their basement, waiting for
the time they’ll retire in the Philippines after decades of toil for dollars in
the Land of the Free: “We wouldn’t want to leave our parents here alone; we
want to be all together in the place of our birth.” They are Catholics, and want to remain a
closely knit family until they hear the blare of the resurrection trumpets.
A lady friend in her late 30s—she’s Catholic by
birth, New Age-ish by inclination—keeps her mother’s inurned ashes on her night
table, in open defiance of her siblings who wanted to bury them in their
father’s grave which was their mother’s wish.
Whatever people do with the cremains of their dearly departed often
seems to be a matter of purely personal considerations, and show an utter lack
(especially among Catholics) of knowledge or concern for the Church’s stand on
the matter. I have observed that among
many Protestants, it’s just a matter of choice since they say the bible has no
specific teaching on cremation. But we
Catholics do, so why do we behave as though we owned our loved ones’ ashes?
I myself would tolerate others’ practices, even
among Catholics I know, but recently I realized I would put my foot firmly down
(that the Church’s rule on this be followed) if it came to my own family. I never thought I’d be “tested” on this until
it was time to bury our daughter-in-law.
Since her demise at age 50 was inevitable due to terminal lung cancer,
the families from both sides had agreed to follow her wishes: wear white, three
nights wake, burial in their family plot in her birth place Bataan, etc.
As preparations were under way, everything was smooth
sailing, until our family was informed that the ashes, after the three-night
wake in Bataan, would be transported to Manila to wait until the 40th
day to be buried. This was not among her
wishes, nor our family’s desire, so where did the idea come from? (And where would the urn be kept in
Manila? Certainly not in our home). We
never did find out who really introduced the changes since it was her siblings
in Bataan who were overseeing everything, and I was careful not to offend her
sibling who had left the Church to become a fervent member of a Christian
sect. But I did my homework. I burned the midnight oil reading up Vatican
documents not only on the Church’s stand on cremation but more specifically on
the treatment of the cremated remains. Our daughter in law was a devoted
Catholic, and so should be buried accordingly.
I wanted to be sure that my feet were planted on solid ground.
During the last night of the wake, there was
still nothing final on the proposed 40-day wait in Manila, as no one had raised
the issue. Fortunately, a young priest
came to bless the body—I took the opportunity to ask him about his opinion on
the contentious plan, and sought his affirmation of my readings. Not only was he grateful “for reminding me of
the Church teaching”—he also gave an animated talk to the congregation which
included what we Catholics should and should not do with our beloved’s ashes.
“The remains of the dead do not belong to the family. They belong to God. After the Mass and cremation, straight to the
cemetery, the final resting place, no distributing of ashes, no scattering in
the sea or in the mountains, no wearing the ashes around your neck, no 9-day or
40-day wait.” I believe that kind of
talk should be given at each and every Catholic burial, and I hope that one day
our Lady Vice President would be around to listen. And that’s the truth.
(Cartoon courtesy of Mad Magazine)
