Why a Memorial Garden?

       From earliest times, churches and churchyards have served as places of interment. In keeping with this tradition, the Murray Unitarian Universalist Church of Attleboro has established a memorial garden to inter cremains of loved ones and to provide a place of peace and beauty for all to enjoy.

What better site for a final resting place than near a church that has held meaning during life? To many followers of a liberal religious philosophy interment of a loved one's ashes in a memorial garden rather than conventional burial in a casket is indeed an act of worship. It is a return of atoms used on loan; a final atonement with the good earth whence we came. This Church offers the Memorial Garden as a service to the congregation.

 How Our Garden Grew

The west courtyard is the site of the Memorial Garden. At its entrance rests the original bell with its quaint misspelling, moved from the old church in 1957. The two benches and birdbaths were given in 1988 and 1989 by members of the Church School Classes. The Memorial Garden is meant to express our awareness and gratitude that we are woven into a web of relationships that encompass the quick and the dead and the generations yet to be.

Financial contributions to the Garden are welcome. Ideas for specific gifts will be reviewed by the Memorial Garden Committee.

Interment Arrangements

A short service will be conducted at  the time of interment by the minister of Murray Unitarian Universalist Church. Cremains shall be scattered in the garden or buried in biodegradeable containers with no durable boxes, urns, or site markers. There will be a sign identifying the Memorial Garden at the entrance to the west courtyard with memorial plaques displayed on the inside wall of the Church corridor whose windows face the Garden. A permanent record of the names of all persons whose ashes are interred will be entered in a memorial book as well as on a memorial stone in the garden area.

A contribution of $350 will be required for internment of the Church's contributing members and friends and their families. The payment and inclusion of others will be determined by the Memorial Garden Committee. The contributions will be used for memorial plaques and for landscaping and care of the Garden.

How to Participate

Further information on terms and conditions can be obtained from the Memorial Garden information packet available through the Church Office.