Would You Want Your Final Resting Place to Be a Smart One?

About Me
Sharing The Burden: Ideas For Funeral Arrangements

Hello, everybody. My name is Lois, and I am in my seventies. It might be hard to believe, but I attended my first funeral when I was sixty-five years old. Since then, I have suffered the loss of quite a few family members and close friends. In fact, I have now organised over a dozen funerals. As someone who had been so blessed, it really came as a shock when I first experienced the trauma of making funeral arrangements whilst still finding time to grieve. It really taught me the importance of having an empathetic and creative funeral director that can help share the burden and honour your loved one appropriately. Hopefully, this blog will help those who, like me, had no idea about the enormity of the task a funeral organiser faces. I trust that the ideas within will prove comforting and inspiring during this difficult time. Thank you.

Would You Want Your Final Resting Place to Be a Smart One?

26 October 2018
 Categories: , Blog

Not so long ago, people had regular mobile phones instead of smartphones. Smart locks are also now becoming more commonplace. It seems that most aspects of daily life can be made smart. But what about when it comes to your final resting place? Whether a person decides to be cremated or buried, smart technology can still play a role. When the time comes to decide your final resting place, would you want it to be a smart one?

A Guiding Light

Tokyo residents who opt to be cremated and then have their remains stored at a central centre never have to worry about their loved ones not being able to find them. This is a type of charnel house which requires an electronic swipe card for entry. Each swipe card has been issued to visit the final resting place of a certain individual, and when the card is swiped, LED lights around the urn in question light up, guiding mourners to the precise spot.

Scan and Mourn

Would you want a QR code on your gravestone? They don't require the gravestones to be modified. They can simply be constructed in a durable material before being attached to an existing gravestone. The code is scanned with a smartphone, which can then display an online memorial for the deceased along with information about their life. This might seem like a practical way for your descendants to learn about you and pay their respects, but it should be considered that this might become outdated. Think about how quickly phones have evolved. It might be the case that this technology might soon be obsolete. But if this occurs, the QR code can, of course, be removed from your gravestone.

The Audiovisual Grave

And then there are the truly smart gravestones. Pioneered in Slovenia, these gravestones are designed to look like their traditional counterparts but have a digital screen which is activated by motion sensors when someone visits the grave. The gravestone can then display photos and even videos of the deceased.

If you would like your headstone or that of your loved one to display something personal but don't much want to have a smart, video, QR code, or lit-up final resting place, you can simply request that a small photograph is included on the gravestone. This is an elegant reminder of the person whose final resting place it is. Because it is a final resting place, it doesn't need updates to its technology.