Judy Prince wrote:
> Consider:  Wot true offenses are flagged with different-from-"ours"
> funerals? Far as I can see with Andrew's example, it is the rigid
> "fakeness", the unfresh expressions that, reasonably, offend
> funeral-attenders.  It's pretty much wot offends many of us about treacly
> poetry----yet it's wot orients and uplifts many of the funeral and poem
> observers.
>   

Ritual is comforting to many at times like that.  The Book of Common 
Prayer has litanies for funerals of adults and--shiver--childen.  No 
pets though.  Their loss.  I am sure Archbishop Akinola will equate 
memorials for pets with condoning homosexual priests.

> Are there any bottom-line, funeral customs insult/barbarities?  One which
> I'd volunteer was the ritual of incinerating the widow after her husband's
> death.  (BTW, I have heard the frightening defense that she'd have a
> fate-worse-than if she'd stayed unburnt)
>   

Isn't the widow-immolation part of Suttee?  An Indian custom if it's 
anything anymore.

Having escaped from Judaism over ten years ago I still find the funeral 
customers far more intelligent and humane than Christian custom.  
Judaism mandates burial within 24 hours or sooner, preferably the same 
day.  The body is shrouded or put into a sealed casket. Nobody sees it 
in death. I participated (in presence, not with a shovel) in burying my 
mother-in-law, who died at 5:30 AM in Albany, NY, and was in the ground 
in Lodi, New Jersey at 4 PM the same day.  The last time I saw her was 
the evening before when we sat in the hospital saying goodbye. The 
theory (or mine) is you get the body on its way back to the earth ASAP, 
do your grieving for a week (cover the mirrors, get drunk, and sit on a 
box), and life goes on.  Hello!  I have gone to gentile funerals and 
been grossed out by the body display, the days of chanting Rosaries at 
the casket, the wax doll makeup on an 84 year old man.
> Years ago, in Taipei, Taiwan, I attended the funeral of a native Chinese
> friend.  His teenage children wore white sackcloth garments and kneeled
> thrice before each of the attendees who went forward to pay their respects.
>  Thinking of my own teenage son, I wanted to weep at the emotional torture
> the son and daugher seemed to be undergoing.  Yet now I can see that the
> ritual may've done wot Proper Rituals do:  bring us out into our community
> when our every urge is to bury ourselves in suffering.
>   

During shiva, you leave your door open.  You don't invite people in your 
home, you just leave the door open.  Everyone knows the same rules.  
Guests cook for you, run your errands, and leave you as alone or in 
company as you wish to be.  You are under no obligation to be bound by 
the sham of "niceness," this is the only time the gifts flow at you with 
no requirement for recompense.  For the misanthropic it is not death, it 
is a holiday and joy to stare away from someone and say nothing.

Having departed the faith of my birth for others (unto strange gods), I 
have no use for any of this.  My living will given to my children 
demands cremation, scattered ashes, and any memorial service that the 
survivors may find fitting.  What was Victor Hugo's will?--I wish to be 
drawn to the cemetery in a hearse of the poor.  I reject the prayers of 
all churches.  I believe in God.  For all the good it did Hugo, who 
probably got Masses up the wazoo anyway.

KW

-- 
Ken Wolman	http://bestiaire.typepad.com	http://www.petsit.com/content317832.html
-------------------
"Stare.  It is the way to educate your eye, and more.  
Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.  Die knowing something.  
You are not here long." -- Walker Evans