I had an idea. I’m pretty sure it is crazy. I’m also pretty sure that’s why I like it.
A Memorial Park.
Imagine a place, a decently sized green space. With flowers and trees, open grass spaces, maybe some picnic tables, a bit of playground equipment perhaps, and all surrounded by a wall.
Now imagine this place is a cemetery.
Not filled with tombstones with coffins buried beneath them. The only people interred here are ones who have been cremated, and their ashes mixed in with the soil. When you brought a loved one to be laid to rest here, you would bring the container of ashes, you’d be allowed to inter a small portion of it yourself at a ceremony at the location of your choosing. The rest would be interred later by the staff, spread out all over the park. Your loved one would get an engraving in a brick on the wall, or in a sidewalk or path.
And the park would be open to the public, for picnics and play.
Would you want to bury your loved ones there? Would you want to be buried there?
There are, I think, some beautiful cemeteries in the world, filled with gorgeous statues and crypts. But most cemeteries are lines of bland headstones, markers on a patch of earth beneath which a coffin, often expensive, rests holding the remains of a person. They are, by and large, generically depressing places, devoid of life, and I just don’t think that it how I would want to spend my eternity.
I want to build my Memorial Park, but I have no idea how to go about it or if it would be worth it. Is it even legal to have an area where cremation ash is interred into the soil and people are allowed to play there? Is it sanitary?
These are questions I suppose I should look into, though at least on some level is has to be okay because 6 years ago there were people interring ash beneath trees.