As we grow older the one thing we must learn to accept is we all die. After coming to this realization we set up an ornate burial ritual; to say our final good-byes to the person we loved and will eventually join. People come to the ceremony to mourn the loss. As the ceremony progresses the mourners find themselves thinking of may things. Some people may be thinking of good times they had with the person in the casket, while others may be thinking how unfair the death really was. Despite what everyone is thinking the one thing prevalent in all their minds is they are all in that room waiting to be the one in the casket. While in this morbid waiting room things such as: physically visible emotion, age, and the relationship between living and recently dead can all give clues to what the mourner is thinking.
No one is ever consistent in what they are thinking. In the situation of a funeral there are four main thoughts (among others) that cross the minds of those in attendance. First they think, 'Why did this happen?'; Then they think, ';How quickly will it be my turn?'; Soon they start to remember the good times. Then their minds will wonder to things they have to do later. What they think and where they start is often determined by the relationship they had with the deceased.
The question of why is most often the first, if not the only question to the minds of close friends and relatives. These friends and family members can be males or females of any age. Their heavy sobbing and heaving while they avoid looking at the casket can make them noticeable.
When will it be my turn; is often the first question to the minds of some friends of the family. The thoughts of this matter can very with the age of the deceased. When the deceased is young, the mourner will find the question mixed with feelings of unfairness. The people who spend most of their time pondering this thought can be males or females of any age (usually 15 and up). These people can be noticed when they shake their heads and try to fight back tear; which come more readily when they look at the casket.
If the funeral is for an older person, people will find the previously mentioned question accompanied with thoughts of that person was close to my age.
She opens up her essay by saying “How surprised [Yorick] would be to see how his counterpart of today is whisked off to a funeral parlor and is in short order sprayed, sliced, pierced, pickled, trussed, trimmed, creamed, waxed, painted, rouged, and neatly dressed transformed from a common corpse into a Beautiful Memory Picture.”(Mitford) Funerals are meant to protect people from seeing what kind of toll death has on their loved one; to remove the scars of being human. Kubler-Ross touches on this when she says “The more we are making advancements in science, the more we seem to fear and deny the reality of death. How is this possible? We use euphemisms, we make the dead look as if they were asleep” (Kubler-Ross) which connects to her opinion that death is feared and people take responsibility when a loved one dies, even if they had no impact on their death. The eradication of the sense of death is the key reason why the deceased are embalmed. Clifton Bryant discusses that the reason why people want to have their dead embalmed is because of “death anxiety”, that it is the collective phrase for all the different and complex fears of death. He later states that death anxiety is why we tend to have “death denial” and why we tend to avoid it wholly. “Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death's impact on our daily lives.”(Bryant) This reflects well on the point Mitford makes, when she says “[The funeral director] put on a well-oiled performance in which the concept of death played no part whatsoever” (Mitford) Kubler-Ross feels that death being ever increasingly more taboo the more
What are the thoughts that go through the minds of those who near death? These are the questions at the heart of A Clean, Well-Lighted Place written by Ernest Hemmingway and Katherine Porter's The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall.
A horrific aspect of life that many people have a difficult time dealing with is death. The thought of death scares people because as humans we do not have a way to comprehend something that we cannot test, see or even have a grasp of. When a person loses a loved one they get scared by this reality of that they do not know where they are going and when they make it there how will it be for them. In William Faulkner's book, As I Lay Dying, we go through the process at which a family loses a “loved” one and we follow the family all the way until the deceased, Addie Burden, is buried in Jefferson. In As I Lay Dying you see the steps of grieving are different for many people and some of the people will come out destroyed and others without a scratch. The character Cash goes through a process of grief, odd to most in his way of grief we do not see pain because of the pressure he puts on himself to finish the journey for the family. Cash’s brother, Jewel, seems to snap from the pain of losing his mother and he let the pain ingulf his life. Finally, the last
Death is sometimes considered unthinkable. People do not wish to think of loved ones dying. When someone close to us dies we are over come with sadness. We wish we had more time with them. Their death shows us the importance of that person’s role in our lives. We begin to think of how we will live our lives without them. We think of all the moments we shared with them, they live again in our memories. Perhaps death is considered unthinkable because we fe...
Death has feelings as much as any human, imagining, getting bored, distracted, and especially wondering (350, 243, 1, 375 respectively). Odd, one could say for an eternal metaphysical being. But then again, not that queer once having considered how Death spends his time. He is there at the dying of every light, that moment that the soul departs its physical shell, and sees the beauty or horror of that moment. Where to a human witnessing a death first hand (even on a much more detached level than our narrator) can easily be a life changing event, Death is forced to witness these passings for nearly every moment of his eternal life. Emotional overload or philosophical catalyst? Death gains his unique perspective on life through his many experiences with the slowly closing eyelids and muttered last words. Yet in this...
begins to wonder exactly what happens when one is cremated. This mood of awe is
The conventional belief is that anyone facing imminent death uses his or her final moment to think about those who mean the most in his or her life. While this is nearly impossible confirm, it seems that the overwhelming finality of death would render any subsequent...
#4 I know that after someone dies family members, friends, and loved ones will often
Humanity has long experienced grief after death; however, only recently has the realm of anticipatory or preparatory grieving been explored to any degree. Our article below covers several aspects that may help those going through such a life event recognize the most common underlying symptoms and understand the process. Hopefully, it will help not only the families affected but the very loved one that soon will not be a part of the family unit.
In the face of the universal fact of death, attitudes to the corpse are various and changeable. These attitudes are formed through the practices of treatment of the dead and are embodied in various ways (Parker Pearson 1999, p. 45).
Leming, M., & Dickinson, G. (2011). Understanding dying, death, & bereavement. (7th ed., pp. 471-4). Belmont, California: Wadsworth.
People cope with the loss of a loved one in many ways. For some, the experience may lead to personal growth, even though it is a difficult and trying time. There is no right way of coping with death. The way a person grieves depends on the personality of that person and the relationship with the person who has died. How a person copes with grief is affected by the person's cultural and religious background, coping skills, mental history, support systems, and the person's social and financial status.
Most people dismiss anything having to do with death out of fear. The uncertainty some associate with death has caused Funeral Service to be a particularly taboo subject in society. One may assume funeral directors are the sketchy personalities enthralled with death, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Over the years, Funeral Service has progressed and become a larger industry. Funeral Service has changed in its history over time, affecting the education required, and the job they do today.
A funeral is an important event that should be planned with careful consideration, as each person only gets one to celebrate his or her life. People often die expectantly and suddenly leaving any funeral and burial arrangements in the hands of friends or relatives. These friends or family of the deceased may or may not have a good understanding of what the deceased would have preferred in his or her post death arrangements. A person planning his or her own funeral can prevent this guessing game and insure the arrangements are to their specifications.
While the end of life experience is universal, the behaviors associated with expressing grief are very much culturally bound. Death and grief being normal life events, all cultures have developed ways to cope with death in a respectful manner, and interfering with these practices can disrupt people’s ability to cope during the grieving