Burial in modern urban surroundings is even more barbarous than I had realized. And to me there is something monstrous about spending a couple of thousand dollars on a plot of ground and a stone when the same amount would provide a living memorial to your father. Your father always believed in youth, has served youth all his life. More than anything I had heard, this last suggestion seemed to alleviate the pain the afternoon had brought. I went to the provost of Father's university, a man kindly and sympathetic, but well aware of the world he was living in.
Burial is part of an outworn social order.
In building highways, it is often necessary to cleave through some little country cemetery, leaving a few forlorn stones on one side of the road and a few on the other. Or workmen, when excavating, disturb a skull, a handful of bones, someone's dearly beloved of 70 or 100 years ago. To me that is real desecration. And yet the dead cannot hold back progress. Perhaps eventually it will no longer be possible to be buried.