Our country's concept of cemeteries - or perhaps more appropriately, final respecting places - is due for a revision. In a time when Americans were much less mobile, cemeteries based on geography - the town you lived in, perhaps the church of the town you lived in - made a lot more sense than they do today. Families are stretched out across the country. People move from location to location, and soon "Grandma" or "Dad" doesn't have any likely visitors that live within 500 miles of their final resting place. And because the local living relatives are gone, the relatives that moved away before have much, much less reason to visit the area - and the final resting place of their loved one.
Yes, there are some technological ideas - virtual cemeteries, webcam cemeteries, etc., that may make sense. But it seems to me we need to rethink the whole point of the cemetery, the burial plot, the place to honor those who went before us. One model that is used quite successfully for one segment of society but not really tried amongst others is the Veterans Cemetery. It is seen as an honor to be buried there.
And it's also a way of categorizing our dead. He or she wasn't just a citizen, but a veteran of a war. There seems to me to be an opportunity for many, many other groups to create "National Cemeteries" and provide a resting place of honor for folks so inclined to be remembered as such. What about teachers? Doctors? NBA Basketball players? Democrats? Republicans? The list can be as large as the imagination and the interest of enough people to be buried and/or remembered at a certain type of cemetery.
Having a National Cemetery of sorts can also elevate the stature of a group as well, and provides a point of reference on history of that group's activities as well. I wonder if we'll start seeing some unions and other groups try to put together such a concept, perhaps as a benefit and as a way to promote the goals of the organization, in the future.
