Remain With Us

There is something wrong about death: We do not want to die, we do not want to lose loved ones and people who we feel indebted to. No one of us will however be able to escape this final passage from life to death. But there is more to worry about: How do we handle death in the early 21st century?

Earthly remains are hastily buried in pricey cemeteries where they often remain for twenty or so years only. We have no opportunity to honor people from outside our families we would like to say to “Thanks for having been around and inspiring us”. Tombstones provide no more than a few kilobyte of data no matter how eventful a person´s life has been. Ever more people want their ashes to be scattered or buried in anonymous communal graves since they worry about the maintenance of their tomb or find individual graves just too pompous.

There is definitely a lot more wrong about the way we handle death, memorial and tributes than the inescapable but natural fact of individual death itself.