Wall of bones under Ghent Cathedral

Angela

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Thank goodness it doesn't seem to be the remains of some massacre. Apparently it was done to make room for more bodies. Still, couldn't they just have dug a deep pit?

See:
https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-n...aveyard-thigh-shin-skulls-catacombs-van-eyck/

I imagine it was a disturbing thing to see.

On one of my first trips to Rome I went to see the Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini church on the Via Veneto.

The crypt contains the skeletons and especially skulls of over 3500 monks.

Don't know what possessed me to go in there; I got back out as quickly as possible. :petrified: Didn't want to know where and how they let the bodies decay and then positioned the bones. I mean, I get the whole memento mori thing, but YIKES!

The overcrowding of cemeteries is a real thing, though, at least in Italy. Most people's remains are in slabs above ground. So long as your loved ones pay a fee, the bones can remain. After that they remove them to leave room for others. Given how long and how intensely populated Italy has always been, and the dearth of good farmland, I understand the necessity, but I still don't like to think of them being removed and thrown into a pit.

Maybe cremation is the solution.
 
Yes, death is a creepy thing. I remember reading a report some years ago that, surprisingly, disturbed me. It was that as of some date perhaps 30 years ago, there were more dead people in the ground in the US (that is, people who've died since the first colonization) than were alive above the ground.

I'm old enough to begin thinking about the issue of death, though I still can't imagine the world continuing to exist without 'me' in it.
 
I didn't know human bones were fit as a construction material.
I thought they were perishable and so not stable.

Maybe an idea, instead of burial or cremation, a 3rd option : 'my granddad is part of that bridge'?
 
Yes, death is a creepy thing. I remember reading a report some years ago that, surprisingly, disturbed me. It was that as of some date perhaps 30 years ago, there were more dead people in the ground in the US (that is, people who've died since the first colonization) than were alive above the ground.

I'm old enough to begin thinking about the issue of death, though I still can't imagine the world continuing to exist without 'me' in it.

I can very well imagine the world going on without me; that's what makes me so sad about it. :)

If I truly believed, as I used to do, that I would be reunited with my parents, my grandparents, friends, and that my husband and children would join me, I wouldn't be afraid or sad about it at all.

@Bicicleur
I increasingly like the idea of cremation. No nasty decay and bugs. I might put it in my will, because my husband hates the idea and might balk. I do want them buried, in my mother and father's plot. I don't want them sprinkled in the air, not even over the Magra across from the house where I was born, much as it might be poetic. :)

This is getting too gruesome. :)
 

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