"She looks so alive" is polite denial. She would never wear that pant-suit or that shade of lipstick. Her epitaph is a Hallmark card. Who isn't an anachronism when nestled in perfumed flowers and an obsequious jewel box? If we contemplate our own deaths after a funeral, it's usually to imagine a more appropriate ceremony, marked by none of the camp-serious trinkets and hooplah. Skip the funeral and head straight to the bar! But for some reason, we can't skip the funeral. Supposedly, it's the ritual that gives us closure; or at least it's the the masochistic precondition for libationary reminiscence. Every "funferal" needs a funeral.The conventional, contemporary funeral is an addiction. We empty our pockets for a product which fulfills a need that it created. In the thirteenth century the clergy began to conceal the dead body, empowering themselves with the mystery of its invisibility. The tradition of denying physical death continues in the American Funeral Home, which uses this invisibility to command top dollar for unnecessary services. It uses religious symbolism, ubiquitous symmetry, and somber materiality to conjure up the sacred, which gives it the relatively unquestioned prerogative to control death rituals and their price. The most significant price is our alienation from death (and memory's constitution), leaving us pathologically nostalgic.
Ambivalence »
