Religion News Service
PORTLAND, OREGON, August 9, 2007: If you wanted to be crass about it, you might explain River View Cemetery’s dilemma this way: People just aren’t dying to get in there anymore. They’re still dying, of course. But more and more, particularly on the West Coast, consumers are choosing cremation over burial. That slow, steady change in the market, in the works for several decades, has cemeteries scrambling for new ways to turn a profit or ensure they can pay for future maintenance. In River View’s case, the cemetery’s board of trustees wants to turn 120 acres of vacant graveyard land into houses, apartments or perhaps an annex to Lewis & Clark College. They note that at the current rate, it would take 400 years to use up all the potential grave sites at one of the city’s premier historic burial grounds
Forty years ago, fewer than 5 percent of Americans who died opted for cremation. In 1987, it was 15 percent. This year, more than 32 percent of U.S. deaths will end in cremation, and the experts at the Cremation Association of North America expect the national total to pass 50 percent within 25 years. Perhaps it’s the “Six Feet Under” factor — more people are thinking about how they want to go. It certainly helps that several religions, most notably the Roman Catholic Church, have decided in the past few decades that cremation is an acceptable alternative. Cremations are generally cheaper, starting at about $1,500 compared with the $6,000 or so you’ll shell out for a basic burial. Many people also consider them more environmentally friendly. And they provide a dead person’s loved ones more flexibility about how and when to memorialize. Cemeteries have an even tougher sell to make. Most now offer some version of a “cremation garden,” where urns can be buried or ashes legally scattered. Despite the freedom with which many people scatter their loved ones on bodies of water or in state and federal parks, there are actually strict laws about where cremations can be placed.