The Industrialization of Death: How We Lost the Sacred
On Monday, my father’s ashes will be placed into a mausoleum, and I find myself sitting with a spectrum of emotions. On one hand, there is comfort in knowing he will rest alongside his parents and brother—his family, whom he revered and remained deeply connected to throughout his life. I honor my grandfather’s foresight in securing these plots, ensuring that his lineage would remain together in their final resting place.
And yet, on the other hand, I find myself questioning the burial practices we have so readily normalized in modern America. What does it mean to be “laid to rest” in a cold marble tomb? What does it say about our relationship to the dead—and to the sacred itself?
Last year, I returned home for what I considered an ancestral pilgrimage, a journey to walk the lands of my lineage and pay my respects. One of my stops was the very mausoleum where my father will soon be interred. As my sister and I approached, a chill clung to the air. The building loomed like a stone prison, exuding a lifeless sterility. Inside, the dim corridors stretched into darkness—so many overhead lights had burned out that we couldn’t even navigate the halls. The air carried a stale scent, and for a moment, we felt like characters in a poorly scripted horror film.
When we finally reached our ancestors' resting place, it was swallowed in shadows. The light behind the stained glass—meant to illuminate their presence—had long since died out. A broken gate stood ajar, offering no protection from the outside world. My father’s crypt was open, awaiting his ashes, and when I peered in, I saw nothing but a cemented void lined with cobwebs. My sister and I left feeling sick, questioning whether this was truly the right way to honor his wishes.
Had my grandfather been alive today, he would be appalled. The mausoleum, once a place of status and reverence, had been left to neglect. The promise of dignity, of perpetual care, had crumbled—like so many institutions built on the illusion of permanence.
We had attempted on many occasions to visit our ancestors at this mausoleum in the past, only to find the doors locked. Apparently, the window for communion with the dead is restricted to Monday through Friday, 1–3 p.m.—right in the middle of the workday. What happened to reverence? To grief and remembrance taking precedence over productivity? The truth is, no one visits anymore. Perhaps a relative will stop by on a birthday, if the departed are lucky. This is a perfect example of how we have lost touch with the sacred.
In my travels, I have witnessed how other cultures honor their dead—not with cold tombs and restrictive hours, but with love, devotion, and living memory. In Mexico, families make pilgrimages for Día de los Muertos, turning cemeteries into vibrant sanctuaries of remembrance. In Bali, I was welcomed into a family’s home, where they had an entire room dedicated to their ancestors. To them, the dead were not gone—they were present, part of the family, available for conversation and prayer at any time.
Among the Dagara people of West Africa, death is not an ending but a transformation. The deceased do not depart; they shift into a different form of belonging. They become more effective to the community in spirit than they were in flesh. Death is not a loss but an initiation into a greater cycle of service.
But in the West? If you say you commune with your ancestors, you are met with skepticism at best, and concern at worst. Other cultures look at us with pity—they see what we have lost. We have been severed from the sacred, indoctrinated into a system that numbs us from the body, from our grief, from our very existence beyond labor and production.
Is it any wonder we do not revere our dead when we do not even revere our elders? In indigenous cultures, elders are the keepers of wisdom, revered for their guidance. But in the West, they are seen as burdens, tucked away in nursing homes—out of sight, out of mind. And in death, we treat them no differently.
This culture is terrified of death because it has no relationship to it. Without a connection to the unseen, death appears as a void, rather than a passage. But in so many traditions, aging is a return to the sacred. Among the Dagara, elders are seen as living shrines, growing ever closer to the divine.
For centuries, we have buried our dead. Even the ancient Egyptians placed sacred objects in tombs to accompany souls to the afterlife. When my sister asked what my father should be buried with, we compiled a fitting collection—his tennis racket, golf club, records, a deck of business cards, a photo of our family, and, of course, a martini glass for good measure. But the thought lingers: what does it even mean to be buried forever? Forever is only until the last living descendant stops maintaining the plot, until the land is sold, the tomb dismantled, the space repurposed for the highest bidder.
If it were up to me, cemeteries would cease to exist. The idea that some people deserve grand marble estates while others are left in unmarked plots is yet another extension of a system that commodifies everything—even death.
When my mother passed, I scattered her ashes into the Pacific Ocean at Baker Beach. At the time, I worried about not having a specific place to visit her. But now, she is everywhere. She is the ocean. When I walk along the shore, I walk with her. I whisper her name into the wind, and the waves answer.
After losing both my parents last year, I pulled the ripcord on my life. I surrendered to the grief, let it reshape me. A dear friend offered me sanctuary in Jenner, a gift from the divine itself. Each day, I walked the coastline, letting the grief move through me, digesting the enormity of being "orphaned."
But as I walked, I realized I wasn’t orphaned at all. I was surrounded by my ancestors, woven into an unbreakable lineage. I had never been alone—I was just one drop in a sea of ancestors that made up the ocean.
I think about my mother’s ashes dissolving into the sea, feeding the currents, transforming into something new. I think about my father, soon to be walled into concrete. I am reminded of a vision that I once had during a mushroom ceremony, where I watched my cat decompose before my very eyes—not in horror, but in awe. Flesh turned to earth, earth to grass, grass to the animals that roamed it, to the trees, to the skyscrapers, to all that we build and break down again.
We are not meant to be entombed. We are meant to return. We are not meant to be locked away—we are meant to be reborn.
