OTHING WAS EASY IN THE WAY Natalie Kirmss died. By the time she felt sick, the cancer had already

OTHING WAS EASY IN THE WAY Natalie Kirmss died. By the time she felt sick, the cancer had already spread through her body. Within a year, it claimed her life.
She's buried in Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas. A flat gravestone bears her signature. A bench bears her name. Her photograph is mounted on a monument that reads: "twenty-two, forever twenty-two."
"This was the last thing we could do for her," said her mother, Joyce Kirmss. "We didn't want just a little gravestone."
As the holiday season approaches, and folks visit cemeteries to remember loved ones, some will encounter computer technology that has literally changed the face of monuments and gravestones.
Photographs, family genealogies, notes from loved ones, and symbols of the deceased's hobbies and profession are being laser-etched, hand-chiseled, mounted or sandblasted into the stone.
Granite slabs used to bear only the deceased's name, birthday and date of death. Now, they look more like scrapbooks. Computers allow families to create intricate designs limited only by the size of their imaginations, headstones and bank accounts.
Customized headstones
Drive through Texas cemeteries and you'll find customized headstones with images of prized steer, beloved dogs, knitting needles, kites, a Chevy pickup, parachutes, sunglasses, dominoes, tool belts, bowling balls, motorcycles and more.
In some cemeteries across the country, mourners can enter a library and watch prerecorded videos of the deceased.
There's even technology for glow-in-the-dark tombstones and for "talking tombstones" -- you press a button, and the recorded voice of the grave's occupant rings forth.
"People want to make a statement," said Perry Giles of Waxahachie, Texas, president of the Monument Builders of the Southwest. "We do a lot of outdoor scenes, pictures of people fishing or deer hunting."
He's also done Dallas Cowboys football helmets for diehard fans.
More secular
"Historically, dying was connected to spirituality and a belief in an afterlife," said David Moller, a scholar of death and dying at Indiana University. "The way we grieve today is a lot more secular."
Where Bible verses were once the rule, personal messages are becoming increasingly common. "He was a young cowboy and he rode those ol' bulls," reads a monument in Fort Worth.
"There're no longer any rules," said John Horan, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association. "We're seeing monuments that reflect more of a person's family and interests and less about an individual's religious convictions."
Families can order the new gravestones directly off the Internet.
"In the old days, we were limited to monument builders' ability," said Joseph McCabe of www.everlifememorials.com in Corpus Christi. "Now you design the memorial by computer, which spits it out on a stencil, and then it's sandblasted into the granite."
Shrines to self?
Families say the personalized gravestones help them cope with their grief. But critics say the customizing can trivialize death, diminish the spiritual significance of cemeteries and reflect the desire of materialistic baby boomers to build shrines to the self.
"The funeral industry markets this with the claim that everyone does this, and if you don't go along you won't be showing respect to the dead," said Bruce Chilton, an Episcopal priest and religion teacher at Bard College in New York.
"This presents a huge pastoral challenge," he said. "There's a fine line between permitting a person as much memory as possible and helping them commend the departed to God instead of trying to hang on."
But Giles, the Waxahachie monument specialist, insists that if anything the new monuments make cemeteries more sacred.
"You're not just walking through a graveyard of names anymore," he said. "You get a lot more connection to the deceased."
Denying death
But Lucy Bregman, who teaches religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, said personalized markers may be another way of denying death.
"If you focus on celebrating life and you have the tombstone filled with stuff about their life, is that facing death or denying that death happens?" she asked.
The personal touch is taking on growing cultural significance, said the Rev. John E. Alsup, who teaches at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
"This is the way families say this life mattered," he said.
But the secular displays can never be as meaningful as spiritual ones, Moller said.
"No matter how many [things] we bring to a graveside or secular rituals we participate in and reinvent, they will never provide the same sense of comfort and solace that spiritual beliefs and rituals can," he said.
Traditionalism
Despite the new technology, graves in North Texas are still predominantly traditional.
Phillip Jackson said his parents and brother were buried the traditional way at Hillcrest Memorial Park. But he also purchased glass niches in the mausoleum library to display pictures and possessions that represented their lives.
His brother's display includes an autographed baseball, a baseball trophy, a Yankees button and a picture of him with Mickey Mantle. His parents' niche features a black-and-white photo of the couple, a red Christmas ornament and political buttons collected over the years.
"This is a celebration of their lives," Jackson said. "I'm trying to tell the story of who they were in a little enclosed area."
Dallas Morning News