Prudence Memorial Park, PO Box 228, Prudence Island RI 02872
Successive & Perpetual Burial Options
Promoting Sustainability
By providing the option of selecting successive (or serial) burial, Prudence Memorial Park also offers a greener, more sustainable approach to more contemporary notions of burial practice which, prior to the establishment of modern cemeteries, occurred in churchyards or on family land and was environmentally friendly.
The general expectation, at least in recent history, is that once a burial site is occupied the deceased has precedence over any other use of the land perpetually. It brings comfort to many of us to know where our loved one is or where we ourselves will be buried. In addition, future family members, historians, and general visitors may appreciate visiting perpetual gravesites which speak of history and transience.
For others, however, the notion that we would need to leave a permanent footprint on the earth through perpetual occupancy of a burial site, well past the caring of any individuals we have personally known and loved, is understood to be a wasteful and unsustainable practice. For these individuals, Prudence Memorial Park is offering a greener, more sustainable option in the form of successive (or serial) burial. Purchasers of successive burial rights would agree to allow the site to be reused after 60 years. This allows plenty of time for nature to have taken her course and for little, if anything, of the decedent to remain. As with all other dispositions, burial records will be kept for family and historians. Any remains found during the careful re-excavation of the burial site will be handled in the manner chosen by the decedent and/or their loved ones in the original contract designating the site as “successive”.
Successive burial costs less because it offers further benefits; providing additional space for natural burials in the community without the need to secure more land and producing additional future income to ensure continued maintenance of the burial ground and its flora and fauna. For all these reasons, we hope that you will make successive burial your choice for final disposition and support sustainability of Prudence Memorial Park into the future.
Natural burial practices provide us with an exceptional opportunity to express, experience, and model earth-friendly values. It recognizes our position as simply one small, fragile part of the vast expression of life. It accepts our nature-given form. It embraces the built-in opportunities to actively participate in various cycles that for billions of years have promoted, sustained, and even encouraged life to thrive – in number and variety. It allows us to see ourselves as the rose that grows and fades, as the decay, and as the compost from which the next rose will rise. It transmutes loss and grief to become our final gift to life itself.
Excerpt from The Meadow: Guiding Principles, posted on Sept 12, 2014