by yoursl | Jun 20, 2018 | Death and Dying, Taboo Topics |
I stopped blogging for more than a year due to being mired in grief over the loss of two close family members. The mental and emotional fog of my grief finally lifted several days before one of my best friends lost his battle with cancer. His death was not sudden, which allowed those of us who love him to adjust to the idea he would not be in our lives much longer. Knowing his death was imminent did not lessen my heartbreak or keep the grief fog at bay. Thankfully, I had the opportunity to tell my friend how important he is to me and what his being in my life for the last two decades has truly meant to me. During my grief-fueled writing hiatus, I read several books about death, the American funeral industry, cremation, burials and its alternatives, and cadavers. While this sounds odd and perhaps crazy to some people, I was on the hunt for information about how other cultures deal with death, mourning, grief, and their actual physical dead. My exposure to Midwestern open-casket funerals had left me feeling hollow and uncertain about my own emotions regarding death. I wanted to find some semblance of logic in the processes of dying and of dealing with the physical dead since death itself is unpredictable and wildly emotional. No two people deal with the emotional fallout of grief in the same way yet an entire community may deal with their dead in the same physical manner. This juxtaposition peeked my curiosity and set me on my reading journey. The view from the crematorium One of...
