Entry 17 - Death Article, "The Story of Death Is the Story of Women" Quote
I found this article to be a quick overview of what we have learned so far in the course, with some additional historical details that were unbeknownst to me until I read about it here!
I loved this excerpt, because it was reemphasizing the negative affect that correlates with funeral home traditions, where we are losing contact with death, which will only make us more vulnerable to its arrival. If we study other traditions, and make it more of a normative experience, I find we may be able to shift the cultural perspective to something more enriching than encroaching.
Today, most of us die in busy hospitals or nursing homes, often in the company of strangers. Funeral homes quickly remove our dead and perform those final physical acts of care in preparing the body. We then go through the motions of performing sterile rituals—devoid of meaning—forced to sum up the significance of a human life during the brief couple of hours the funeral home or church has been rented to us. And in people’s final moments, they are again abandoned to strangers, who will either bury them deep in the earth or, like the mythic Charon, ferry them into the flames.
I loved this excerpt, because it was reemphasizing the negative affect that correlates with funeral home traditions, where we are losing contact with death, which will only make us more vulnerable to its arrival. If we study other traditions, and make it more of a normative experience, I find we may be able to shift the cultural perspective to something more enriching than encroaching.
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