I sat awkwardly on my chair, looking at all the raised hands of my classmates after the teacher had asked who had ever attended a funeral, a cemetery, or a memorial. My arm laid to my side as I realized I had no real recollection of ever attending a funeral, seeing an open or closed casket, seeing a coffin being lowered into the ground then to be covered in soil, or mourning for someone who had passed away. I felt like a needle in a haystack - the one person who hadn't the experience of attending a funeral. Everyone had discomfort and compassion written all over their faces and, guiltily, a part of me wanted to be part of the consensus of emotions and facial expressions. Soon I realized that maybe I was lucky to have not yet walked into the rather gloomy cemetery, dressed in black in respects to the dead, and seen a pale, dead face in an overly expensive casket. Having watched several Lifetime movies, which usually consist of sorrow-filled plots, I have gained a somewhat artificial knowledge of the social norms and aspects around the treatment of dead people in our culture.
Unlike Spain's Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the days dedicated to those who have died, in America, are treated with dullness, lack of color and vibrancy. The gray, carved tombstones in the graveyard stand still as the silent wind hits the stones with a chilling feeling as people pay their respects to the dead maybe once or twice a year with a bouquet of flowers, often tagging along, feelings of longing. This visual has appeared numerous times in my experience of watching some television series. It seems as though on the date of someone's death, the skies are dreary. Our society has literally treated death as a subject only to be payed attention to on specific days and times. I wonder: Does our society schedule the times we mourn for those who have passed in order to control our emotional turmoil or keep happier days more numerous? Although the whole concept of scheduling the days we mourn is already quite eccentric to me, ways that our society uses to dispose of dead bodies is even weirder. This begs to question: Where did cremation originate from? Do the ashes of a dead body represent anything more than a once decomposing organism? Is burning the dead body and putting the residual ashes in a vase respectful or are these tasks performed to accommodate the placement of the ashes?
Although these are all important questions to ask, I cannot say that I have a burning urge to answer them. This is probably because I don't discuss the care of dead, much less death, with my parents. It's not that my parents would refuse to talk about how people dispose of dead bodies but, the topic has not yet been necessary to bring up. When my parents talk about someone who they knew that died, I don't find it in my heart to cry or be more curious. Even if I had known the person once when I was much younger, my memory would fail me and lead me to be nonchalant about the issue. My parents have said time and time again, "People die. It's just something that we all have to experience one day." It's easy to say this now because I have never had to cope with someone close to me, dying. My experiences with the care of the dead are especially lacking. My parent's experiences with the topic may be in size, a plethora, or they could very well be identical to that of mine. Like I said, I wouldn't know because care of the dead has never been a topic that seemed necessary to discuss in comparison to death itself in my family.
FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS
- Where does cremation originate from?
- Why are caskets so expensive?
- Why are people expected to wear black to funerals?
- What qualifications must a dead body fit in order to have a open-casket funeral/memorial?
- How does one decide how to dispose of a body?
- Do people plan out how their bodies will be disposed before the event that they die?
- What is the most popular way of disposing of the dead?
- How much land is dedicated to burying the dead?
- What religions look down on cremation? Why do these religions think cremation is disrespectful?
- Who decides how a person will be "cared-for"? ("cared-for" is a euphemism for disposed of)
- What role does the word "sorry" play in funerals?
No comments:
Post a Comment