Vision for memorial lives on
THREE YEARS after Bob Campbell died, his wife, Barbara, is ready to deposit his ashes for eternity.
Bob chose the style and site – a columbarium at his church, St. Luke’s Episcopal on Wallace Avenue. When Bob came up with those ideas, though, he didn’t know he was planning for himself.
“Just after we started he was diagnosed with lung cancer and given three to six months,” Barbara says. “He didn’t last that long.”
Bob proposed a columbarium – a safety deposit box for ashes – in 2001 after Barbara told him about a fellow parishioner who had kept her husband’s ashes for 11 years waiting for the right eternal storage opportunity.
The ashes of Bob’s aunt and uncle in the eastern United States resided in a columbarium at their church.
The only columbaria in Coeur d’Alene are in cemeteries – not everyone’s choice as a final resting site. More people are choosing cremation than in the past, partly because cemeteries are running out of space and partly because religious ideas about the body have relaxed.
“No one was cremated while I was growing up,” says the Rev. Patrick Bell at St. Luke’s. “People believed in resurrection and you needed a body for that to happen. In Christian tradition, the body is sacred. Then they began to understand that bodies decay anyway.”
That understanding led to more cremation in the last 40 years. It not only saves space, it’s less expensive than casket burials.
Parishioners at St. Luke’s liked Bob’s proposal. Several churches in Spokane offer on-site columbaria to their congregations. St. Luke’s decided to be the first one in Coeur d’Alene.
People suggested building a columbarium in the front of the 113-year-old church’s sanctuary or in a storage closet. A suggestion to install it on one of the church’s outside walls in a courtyard area won the most support.
An overgrown tulip tree had taken over the courtyard and stood in the way of the project. The tree was too big for the small area, so parishioners removed it, saved the wood and one of Father Pat’s friends carved key-size crosses from it. The columbarium plus remodeling the courtyard was going to cost about $50,000, so parishioners sold the crosses to raise money for the project.
Seed money – $6,000 – came from Bob. After he died in July 2001, Barbara opened the Columbarium Memorial Fund in his honor and directed all gifts to it.
The church contributed some of its budget to the project and presales of the niches for ashes helped. The columbarium the church committee chose has space for the ashes of 100 people. Each box is about 5 inches square, a foot deep and holds two sets of ashes. Gray marble covers each box and will carry the names of the people inside like grave markers. The columbarium sits on a black granite foundation
Each “resident” costs $600. Some of that money is for maintenance and some goes to a fund that’s growing for a second and third set of boxes.
“We also wanted to ensure that if someone can’t afford one, we can help,” says Dave Otto, chairman of the church’s columbarium committee.
The finished area is subtle. Ashes will rest outside St. Luke’s between its sanctuary and meeting room wings. A semicircle of gray pavers covers the ground and suggests that the rest of the circle is inside the church. Three benches offer meditation time. A bordering garden with boxwood, rhododendron and a Japanese maple provide living color without distracting. Vases of lavender lighten the columbarium’s solemn marble.
“We wanted a warm, cozy look,” Barbara says. “Color in winter, a quiet place to meditate.”
St. Luke’s will dedicate its new columbarium Sunday with services for its first six inurnments. Bob is headed to D-3, a box in the second row. Barbara is pleased to see his idea take life and to know he’ll stay close to his church family throughout eternity.
“We’ll develop our own service,” she says. “And you don’t leave flowers. You come and sit. We want to keep it neat and tidy.”
Which was Bob’s eternal goal.