What a long, strange weekend.
Yesterday was the military funeral for my neighbor that died in February. His ashes were interred at a state veteran's cemetery of a neighboring (red) state, as all the veteran cemeteries in ours are on the far more liberal side of the state, which he hated.
I've heard people say this should bring some closure — people said it all weekend — but I don't feel it. I had 'closure' many months ago, and while it was nice to meet some of his family, this weekend only served to remind me how hollow so much of this feels.
The veteran's cemetery abuts a subdivision in the suburbs. It's meant to inspire, I don't know, reverence? But who comes to a place like this and feels anything but horror at the ticky-tacky of it all? Is this what patriotism is now? Is all we give our veterans is a few acres beside Shady Acres?
Once, I had an idea of cemeteries as hallowed ground, as spaces that were meant to persist into the future, to demonstrate to future generations the respect and reverence we felt for those buried there, veterans or not. Yet the more I see, the more I realize the cemeteries themselves are just suburbs of the dead, just cul-de-sacs of headstones. I rarely see people visiting cemeteries, no families picnicking (as was once customary and common). Built on the edges of towns or cities on land ceded as a tax write-off and accessible only by car, they're bereft of any natural landscaping, with lawns sprayed and mowed and where anything un-manicured is presumably deemed disrespectful to dead.
It's bullshit.
Nearly every principle, every belief, every assumption that undergirds that space is fake. Patriotism, afterlife, "respect for the dead"... it's all bullshit. Our culture doesn't respect the dead, we want them out of the way. We don't create lasting monuments to their lives, we put them at the edge of town so we won't be bothered. These are not monuments to the dead, but shrines to convenience and ignorance.