There are probably more people alive today than have died since the beginning of time. Since there were no official counts, I just had to make that up.
But before you discard the aforementioned statement as completely inane consider the fact that in 1350 there were a mere 300 million people in the world, today that figure is about 6.92 billion. According to the US Census Bureau it is estimated that 140 million babies are born each year while 57 million people die in that same time.
The same authority presents that while global population growth will probably stabilise at this figure, i.e. 140 million per annum, it predicts the number of deaths per year will rise to rise to about 80 million per annum (who does these morbid studies? But more importantly, what does the USCB know that we don't?).
The fact that we have more people above the ground than below it is a comfort, but by extension of that fact one day all these people (save those who decide to waft around in the wind as ash) will have to find unoccupied burial ground.
This does not bode well particularly because 70% of the earth is water and possibly 33% of the land left is hard rock, coupled with the fact that already a billion or so people have died since time immemorial, this leaves (in my random guess, to the 4th decimal) about 2.3127% of land globally that has not been used to bury someone!
And hot on the heels of this realisation...
*
Scanning through the newspapers yesterday, I was flabbergasted to see a short
news item, based on a report from 'Beeld' newspaper (an Afrikaans language daily), that cautioned the people in Wolwefontein, a quaint railway village in the Karoo heartland of South Africa, that residents would have to give a month's notice before they died.
Otherwise their surviving kin would be hard pressed (quite literally, it appears) to find a suitable grave to bury them.
The month's notice was because “that is how long it takes to bore through the local cemetery's hard stone stratum” - which is hit just barely half metre in the ground.
In real estate they talk about “location, location, location,” as the three most important criteria to look out for. You'd be certain that the location scout behind this location must have cashed that finder's cheque pronto as soon as he got his hands on it, save for the fact that the land in question had been donated to the town by a farming couple five years ago because the Wolwefontein didn't have a graveyard of it own.
Obviously no one can (or did) really serve notice before they passed on, so the municipality would bury its newly deceased in pre-prepared holes. The real problem started recently when Wolwefontein had been inducted into another municipality, a result of which the grave digging in the rocky outcrop had fallen desperately behind market demand.
And in the unfortunate case of one recent Wolwefontein deceased in particular all the pre-prepared holes were occupied and thus he had to be buried in a grave reserved for a matriarch of the small community who is 101.
The poor woman believes that she will be buried beside her husband, but now this strange man lies there in her stead; the townsfolk have thought it best not to tell her though.
*
I don't know about you, but while there is no real humour in death it sure has one heck of a punchline!
[After thought: Things being the way they are, why worry about where you'll be buried when its all over? From my perspective it's never going to be MY headache, the most I can do is stay healthy and think positive; that way, postpone the headache for my kin as long as I can.]
Then there are 'bad' deaths such as in accidents, conflict, and animal attacks, to name just three. Naturally most people would like to die a 'good' death, but it must be said that those who deliberately live on the edge have the cards stacked against them.
