Re: Mourning customs

Lucy Kemnitzer schrieb:

In a society with universal cremation and no cemetaries or
columbariums (those house-like or chapel-like buildings where cremated
people are kept -- there's a lovely old one in San Francisco I've been
to), how do you mark the memory of the dead? If people are completely
mobile -- in the case of the story at hand, largely because of a
decades-long regional war and the drastic reorganization which results
from the uneasy peace -- do they still want a place to put a memorial
for their dead? Do they still think of a particular place somewhere
as home, and have some sort of marker there?

I think that people would still be especially attached to some places,
unless they're so mobile that they never get to the same place twice;
having an inscribed stone set in such a special place could still be
frequent practice.

If you assumed that in your society people never attributed much
importance to a lasting memory of their dead, there might not be much
in the way of memorial culture - people would remember, and then
they'd forget and that'd be it. But if your society had a strong
memorial culture before the war and reconstruction, the desire to
remember your dead 'the proper way' wouldn't vanish in short order
just because it's a lot more difficult now. In the long run, such
customs could however vanish if they're not among the central aspects
of your culture.

Or do they have some
sort of memorial object they take with them, or a virtual memorial
thing (like websites)?

People could also put a 'memorial' on their own body, in the form of
pieces of clothing, tattoos, scars or piercings. A tattoo would be a
memorial object that's very difficult to lose or have stolen.

--
Een koe is een merkwaardig beest; wat er ook in haar geest moge zijn,
haar laatste woord is altijd boe.
.

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