For 13 years, Rosemarie Blaine has kept the ashes of her husband, Gary Michael, in a cedar chest in her home. After he passed away in 2003 at the age of 45, she couldn’t bear the thought of letting him go.
“I’ve always needed him near me,” she said.
When the Holy Angels, Woodbury, parishioner heard about tomorrow’s funeral and committal service, for the cremated remains of loved ones, Blaine knew it was time to lay her husband to rest.
“He’s always been my strength and made sure that I’ve been taken care of,” she said. “Now I need to let him go, and give him peace.”
The cremated remains group funeral and committal service begins on Saturday, Oct. 29, at 10 a.m., with a funeral Mass at Saint Maximilian Kolbe Parish in Marmora, followed by the service and burial at Resurrection Cemetery in Clermont.
In a letter to South Jersey’s Catholics to raise awareness about tomorrow’s services, the Camden Diocesan Office of Catholic Cemeteries cited a study from the Cremation Association of North America (CANA) that reported that 38 percent of cremated remains were kept at home in 2006.
“Either the families take (cremated remains) home because they don’t want to let go of their loved one, or are unsure of their options,” mentioned Marianne Linka, director of Cemeteries, adding that, as well, some generations have inherited ashes of loved ones from other family members and don’t know what to do with them.
Cremation is allowed in the Catholic Church but remains should be reverently buried or entombed in a place reserved for the burial of the dead.
The burials this weekend, done at no cost to the families, “are being done as our response to the Jubilee of Mercy,” and its call to “bury the dead.”
“The body is a temple of the Holy Spirit,” Linka says, and with a proper burial or entombment, “we are treating it with respect.”
Also present tomorrow will be Dolores Angelucci, with the remains of her uncle, Raymond Tomkus.
Angelucci was the only living relative of Tomkus’ after his death in 1992, and she took possession of his ashes.
Mentioning that her uncle was in the Navy during World War II, and was part of the Army during the Korean conflict, she said that “he deserves to be on consecrated ground.”
“It is the right thing to do,” she said.
To learn more about tomorrow’s funeral and committal service, visit www.southjerseycatholiccemeteries.org.
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