Death is the least civilized rite of passage.
I don't think I'd want my pet in formaldehyde, but I guess in America they would.
Even if I wanted, I cannot do anything. When they die, we always send for their co-religionists. Muslims take the Muslim's body to bury it, Hindus come and take away the dead to be cremated and Christians come and bury their dead.
When a man dies, and his kin are glad of it, they say, "He is better off."
I want a big 25-foot pink statue that holds my grave. Or I also might like the way the Indians did it. They hang you up on the top of a tree and the birds eat you. No, really I would probably choose cremating.
It amazes me that the most Christian funerals are the most barbaric funeral rites of passage that are celebrated anywhere in the world.
For thousands of years, we did have death surrounding us, and we did have people die in the home. You would take care of your own end. You would do ritual processes, and you would be involved in it, and that's been taken away in the Western world.
Funerals are a pagan rite. There's not any doubt about it.
The death industry markets caskets and embalming under the rubric of helping bodies look 'natural,' but our current death customs are as natural as training majestic creatures like bears and elephants to dance in cute little outfits, or erecting replicas of the Eiffel Tower and Venetian canals in the middle of the harsh American desert.
The universal practice of closing the eyes of the dead may be thought to have originated in the desire that he might be prevented from seeing his way.
Medicine for the dead is too late
The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.
