Don't trash the ash
There – just over there. See them? That conspiratorial huddle, furtive, watchful. Burglars? Satanists? What are they up to?
Chances are they’re only bereaved people waiting for the coast to clear before they can scatter some cremated remains.
It’s difficult to do that in public, openly. It might distress people. It’s not yet a socially okay thing to do.
Chances are they’re only bereaved people waiting for the coast to clear before they can scatter some cremated remains.
It’s difficult to do that in public, openly. It might distress people. It’s not yet a socially okay thing to do.
But the impulse to scatter ashes in a place beloved of the personification of those ashes is strong and it is growing. And the chances are that the dead person’s favourite place was, at any given time, a favourite place of lots of other people, too.
The scattering of ashes is a ceremony often marked by awkwardness and secrecy. A pity.
It is also often done shamefacedly, in the wrong place. The adverse effect of ashes on the ecology of uplands is well attested, yet people go on doing it. Staff at Jane Austen’s cottage in Hampshire regularly encounter piles of ashes around the writer’s home and garden. This puts ash scattering right up there with dog fouling. It’s a poor way to commemorate someone, turning them into a bio-hazard. It's not the sort of thing you're going to feel good about.
There’s probably a very straightforward rule of thumb for choosing an appropriate location: if you can’t do it safely, openly and vocally, don’t.
The Observer ran a piece on this on Sunday. Read it here.
The scattering of ashes is a ceremony often marked by awkwardness and secrecy. A pity.
It is also often done shamefacedly, in the wrong place. The adverse effect of ashes on the ecology of uplands is well attested, yet people go on doing it. Staff at Jane Austen’s cottage in Hampshire regularly encounter piles of ashes around the writer’s home and garden. This puts ash scattering right up there with dog fouling. It’s a poor way to commemorate someone, turning them into a bio-hazard. It's not the sort of thing you're going to feel good about.
There’s probably a very straightforward rule of thumb for choosing an appropriate location: if you can’t do it safely, openly and vocally, don’t.
The Observer ran a piece on this on Sunday. Read it here.
Labels: ashes
posted by Charles Cowling at
13:24
3 Comments:
Yes, it's not yet socially okay - but it's heading in that direction, and with that I hope will come some kind of consensus about where and how it is OK to scatter (not Jane Austen's cottage, obviously - ewww!).
Cremated remains are not a bio-hazard...what is left is inert...however, they do make a bit of a mess if strewn in the wrong place and no rose bush or growing thing is going to thank you for tipping them on its roots.
I am a great one for subversive scattering - the more imaginative the better...as long as it is appropriate to the deceased and not harmful to anyone...The act can be one of the only meaningful ritual acts that the bereaved remember out of the whole death adventure.
In my opinion, scattering of cremated human remains is a trend that will prove itself in the long term to be psychologically naive and even damaging. Though the idea may appeal to people who are looking for a way of avoiding our corrupted and meaningless funeral industry - and it has the attractive connotation of "returning to nature" - it also has negative long term consequences for the survivors which far out weigh these benefits:
Subconsciously it is a denial of the value of the human life that is finished - rather than honoring it with a memorial of some sort, even modest, it throws everything anonymously back to nature, as if we were only animals that life, die and decompose. (We are of course also animals, but not only).
Secondly, it makes a continuing psychological connection between the family and the deceased impossible. Rather than providing a place where family can come to remember, to reconnect with the person who meant so much to them for so long, scattering is to throw these memories to the wind. To remember, humans need concrete things to identify with. Scattering is the ultimate act of eliminating all concrete traces which may remind us of someone. It is to give into materialistic "proofs" that our existence absolutely ends with our death, and to deny the hope that it might go on.
It is also a nihilistic act of denying the strength of our human bonds and the hope that the relationships may continue in some subtle and inexplicable way after death. This is only possible, only conceivable because we can no longer believe in a continuation of life in some or other after-life.
If scattering becomes a widespread phenomena, it will only be for a few generations, and then society will miss having those symbols of deeper connection and hope that perpetual cemeteries represent.
If you want to return to nature, consider green burial with a beautiful natural boulder marking your grave for your family to visit and remember you sometimes.
Thomas Friese
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