Making the choice between cremation and burial
If you’re anything like me, thinking about the death of a loved one isn’t generally top of mind on a daily basis. In fact, most of us actively ignore fears of death or deliberately push them aside as our way of coping with existential threats. What's more, many of us completely ignore the inevitable right up until the last minute. My mother’s death was a classic example of “let’s talk about it later…or maybe not at all.”
My gorgeous mother suffered from non standard dementia of the frontal lobe for many, many years. For a long time doctors tried to tell us it was “severe anxiety induced depression” but we knew it was something more insidious than that. She tried all the usual remedies, but when they inevitably failed, she slid into a forgetfulness that eventually rendered her incapable of independent living. Along the way, she remained active, often lucid and quite articulate even though her speech was mainly gibberish by the end. I think because she seemed her ‘normal’ physical self, we probably didn’t appreciate quickly enough just how fragile and small her inner world was becoming and eventually she needed full time care.
We’re a loving, close knit family who spends a lot of time together, holidaying and speaking regularly despite living in different countries and cities. And yet, at no point did we have a conversation about what would happen when mum died - even when it was clear that’s what was going to happen.
Her slow decline into dementia made it seem like it was never really the right time to talk about her death - after all she seemed so physically fit and healthy. And by the time we realised things were never going to get better, we were too late to have a rational conversation with mum about her own demise.
It took the five of us (my wonderful father, two gorgeous brothers, my loving aunt (mum’s sister) and myself) sitting beside mum in the last weeks of her life before we finally had a convo about what next - and what she might have wanted.
My mother was brought up in a large, loving and hugely devout Catholic family. I was told my grandfather was knighted by the Pope for services to the Church, which wouldn’t surprise me given he was such a beautiful, generous man. And the Church certainly played an enormous part in our lives throughout my childhood. We attended Mass every Sunday morning sitting in the same block of seats with my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. On Sunday afternoons we would regroup en masse at my grandparents’ house for afternoon teas of sandwiches and pavlova, which my grandmother literally made religiously. There were multiple brandys and gins for the adults and never ending games of hide and seek and The Wonderful World of Disney for the horde of cousins. We also attended CCD, religious education, on a Wednesday after school and all the first communions and confirmations required by the Catholic Church - it was a lot.
It wasn’t until my 14 year old brother started questioning both the Church and the whole notion of faith that my parents admitted they weren’t entirely convinced about institutionalised religion either. They took us along to church partly out of duty to their family and partly because they wanted us to be exposed to ideas and to be able to make up our own minds and not be prejudiced by their thinking. Either way, as soon as one of us challenged the idea of religion, it spread like a virus and pretty soon none of us were going to Church any more. More over, amongst my immediate family, the whole concept of the Catholic church grew more distasteful as decades of abuse became public and it became obvious to an increasingly feminist 16 year old me (greatly encouraged by my staunchly feminist mother) that the exultation of Mary the Virgin Mother came at the expense of women more generally who were relegated to minor roles within the very patriarchal church hierarchy. Yes, there’s much to unpack here about my relationship with religion, but perhaps that’s for another time.
Needless to say, my mother’s own relationship with the Church dissipated over time and she stopped being an active member well before she got sick. Why am I telling you all this? Well, when it came time to decide whether to bury or cremate her, I found myself reverting back to old Catholic traditions and suggesting she be buried in Akaroa (our childhood haven) or next to her parents in a graveyard in Otautahi Christchurch. My father and brother had other ideas - she wasn’t a practising Catholic so why on earth would we succumb to their traditions now that she was dying? They suggested cremation and spreading her ashes in places she loved. So we debated the pros and cons of each.
Burial, we decided, seemed antiquated and inflexible - we’d have to decide where to put her for eternity and all the options were either full or ugly. Cremation was a way for mum to move as we moved or to spread her across all the places she loved so she could be at peace. It seemed a no-brainer. For me, it meant finding something beautiful for her to rest in until we decided and I immediately set off on a virtual quest to find the perfect urn.
Just a few days after this conversation, mum quietly took her last stubborn breath and we were faced with the reality of her death.
Cremation was new to all of us - as was organising a funeral/memorial service. My father found a funeral director to help us with the practicalities of death certificates and crematoria and then we retreated to our corners to grieve and come to terms with the loss of our lioness of a mother. I went to the mountains and spent a week on my own contemplating life without her and thinking about what I might say at her memorial that could possibly do her justice.
I also continued my hunt for an urn - which proved fruitless. But on my journey I met a wonderful ceramicist and the germ of an idea began to grow - surely I couldn’t be the only person who thought all the urns available on the internet were horrendously ugly? Surely there were thousands of people like me who wanted something sculptural and artistic that they could put on their shelf and look at lovingly? Why couldn’t I find something beautiful that would honour and celebrate my mother and cherish her for all eternity? Perhaps I could make something…
We had agreed that mum would've hated a formal Catholic Mass so instead, a few weeks after her death, we held a fabulous celebration of her life amongst all her wonderful family and friends. And all that time she sat in an ugly green, plastic, hexagonal box that had been given to us by the funeral director. Shame.
It took more than a year for me to decide to quit my job, connect with my wonderful ceramic artist Craig, launch Vaso and design and make our very first collection of beautiful cremation urns.
My mother now has her own handmade raku urn which sits amongst some of our favourite sculpture in our home. I get to look at it every day and it makes me smile so much and think of my incredible mother every time. I’m so pleased we decided to cremate her so she can be with me constantly and continue to inspire and guide me. And when we finally decide to move down south, she can come with us and find a new home on a shelf in the sun.
Bridgit
