Homework 46- Initial Thoughts on the Care of the Dead

    I’ve had had many experiences with death, from family to friends to pets. The first funeral that I remember attending was my grandfather’s. One thing I remember that still stands out to me is that the funeral home where my family held the wake had a playroom for kids. Now I’m sure people have mixed emotions about that because we’re taught to think that death is such a serious thing that during a time where a person has died everything has to be serious. Personally I think that younger kids usually don’t understand this social norm, as well as don’t fully grasp the concept of death. So a playroom for kids at a funeral home seems to be a good idea, it keeps the kids occupied while allowing the ones who follow the traditional mourning process to be serious about the loss they had.

    Going back to why kids don’t fully understand the idea of death is because of the way that people talk about it. People rarely ever just say somebody died. The phrase I hear most often is that somebody “passed away”. I also hear that someone “moved on” a lot. It isn’t that these phrases don’t mean that somebody died; I think it’s just that we’ve been taught that death is taboo so we try to develop different ways of talking about it to lighten the topic.
 
    My family handles the process of caring for the dead from what I know as a traditional ceremony. An open casket wake at funeral home, a memorial mass at a church, and then a burial. After the burial we go out to dinner, basically to celebrate to life of the person, after mourning the death of them.

  

    The way I’ve been taught to think and act around death is like it’s a contagious disease. That you should speak as little as possible about it.  What I don’t under stand about this is it happens to literally every single person, so why keep it silenced?  If we aren’t talking about it, do we really care?

Questions:

1. How does religion influence the care of the dead? (Different ceremonies, ect.)

2. Why is the way we care for the dead different the past cultures? (Like the Egyptians with mumifcation)

3. How is the way the dead are cared for varied among different regions of the world? Now and historically?

4. Where do the social norms we use come from?

5. Why is cannibalism so stigmatized?