The many ways to say good-bye.

It used to be so predictable. A quick trip to purchase a Mass card at the parish rectory or a nearby retreat center armed the mourner with an appropriate expression of sympathy. Some funeral homes had tables near the casket to hold these enveloped Mass cards. Other funeral homes had wire racks to display these cards fully opened so all could see their religious art and carefully calligraphied writing. Sign the register, pick up a holy card, drop off the Mass card, and comfort the family members.

But practices have changed. Funereal customs can be very different now. Princess Diana's and Mother Teresa's very public deaths called attention to the changing customs. The fresh flowers people brought to the princess's home at Kensington Palace created an expansive floral carpet that stretched for blocks. More recently when guards Jacob J. Chestnut and John M. Gibson were killed in Washington, D.C., people brought flowers to the Capitol building steps. Urban sidewalk killings and rural highway fatalities become sites of floral tributes for the deceased.

Books filled with blank pages give people opportunity to express their thoughts about the lives and deaths of notable people. When Mother Teresa died, embassies and consulates became venues for people who wanted to write some words of remembrance in condolence books. When Sir Georg Solti, the long-time director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, died, people went to Chicago's Orchestra Hall to pen their thoughts in remembrance books.

Another seismic shift in funereal customs is the increasing popularity of cremation. Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Nevada, and Montana lead the nation in cremations. The State Journal Register in Springfield, Illinois recently reported that 21 percent of Americans who died in 1997 were cremated and this figure likely will double by 2010.

Today, about every fourth person who is cremated is Catholic. Not too long ago this practice was taboo for Catholics. Not so now. Today the church allows a Catholic funeral performed with the cremated remains present in the church. Many Catholic cemeteries have provisions for cremains, either in ground burial or in an above-ground vault called a columbarium.

Funereal customs, so predictable in a previous age, are myriad today. Yet they still bespeak of the care and concern most of humanity holds for the deceased.

Requiescant in pace--may they rest in peace.

Peter Gilmour ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago. His most recent book is Growing in Courage (St. Mary's Press, 1998), which he co-edited with Bishop Robert F. Morneau and Carl Koch.