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Until recently in Portugal, you were not allowed to take your loved ones' ashes home. They had to stay in a vault at the Cemetery. That's what happened to my dad's ashes. So there was no space saving going on here as a result of cremation.
Now that it's finally allowed, I suppose cremation saves space. I would like to be cremated myself. From a young age, the thought of my loved ones or myself slowly decomposing and being eaten by "things" in the ground gave me the creeps. It still does. I think nowadays cremation makes a lot more sense.
I think though, that cemeteries that have existed for a long time, as a result of the more traditional practice of burial, should not be built over. Yes I know they are "valuable real-estate" and all that, but I just think it's wrong. I'm not religious and it's nothing to do with sanctity of the place to me. I just findi t disrespectful. Yes they're dead bodies, shells of people who were once living and loved by others. Call me old-fashioned or corny but cemeteries are really pleasant and peaceful places and it's actually nice that there is somewhere in the middle of our busy and driven lives that we can go to and contemplate things or just stand near to where our loved ones are buried.
Even though my father was cremated I found it reassuring that he was in the cemetery and I could go there to be alone with my thoughts and close to him, in a sense. Because if you are cremated and your ashes are spread somewhere, you don't really have a "place" to go to.
I've never been a very spiritual person but I feel that I would not like to be living in a place that is built over a former burial ground. How about you?
All my arguments may be irrational, but there they are.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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