Across the road from my office building in Bangsar, there’s a plot of land that -- when viewed from my 24th floor window -- looks like window panes arranged neatly on the ground. Not unlike an art piece. Something that wouldn’t look out of place in a contemporary art museum. Except that the window panes are not actually window panes. When viewed from the ground, they look like graves, which is what they are.
Every day, when I look out my window at those window panes, I wonder how long it would take before the bodies are exhumed and the land developed. I’m not saying that I wish for that to happen, but sure as day follows night, sure as eggs is eggs, sure as every M. Night Shyamalan movie will have a twist ending -- any piece of land in or near Bangsar will eventually be turned into real-estate.
But that got me thinking about the burial problem. The fact that land is finite, but the number of human beings dying just keeps growing exponentially. Eventually, we’ll run out of plots of land to bury our dead. We already have, in some places.
“50 years per plot,” I tell A. “I think that’s long enough.”
The idea is that that’s about the average time for all the people who personally know the dead to be dead themselves. And it’s more than enough time for the body (non embalmed) to completely decompose.
“I think part of the utility of graves is so people who know the dead can come pay their respects. But then they people cease to exist themselves, the potential value the space would have for another family outweighs whatever use the site still has.”
“I’m not so sure about that thought” A says. “I love walking through the old cemeteries in Paris and Copenhagen, looking at all the people who’ve been buried sometimes hundreds of years ago. I think we’d all lose something if all those bodies are exhumed and the graves reused.”
I don’t know. She’s right. There’s definitely something about old things. Old films, old photos, old buildings... and old graves. I think time imbues things with importance. Even if those things don’t have much of it in their time. Why does a pot or vase from a thousand years ago cost hundreds of thousands of dollars?
The question is, should be leave the graves of Édith Piaf and Søren Kierkegaard intact because we feel a certain something when we go visit them, but exhume Kierkegaard’s neighbour from down the street? Or should we just not exhume everyone and henceforth, just cremate everyone? What about the next Édith Piaf? Would we lose something by cremating her instead of giving her a grave for people to come visit? Would we then create a hierarchy of who is worthy of having a burial?
You’re probably thinking, Death is expensive, and only getting more so, so there’s already a hierarchy is place about who can and cannot have a burial.
“The extremely wealthy will be able to dictate this narrative and say, 'Well, I can afford to be buried downtown, I can afford to have a house downtown.'"
The question is, is death something we want to relinquish to the invisible hands of the free-market?
