I find it very funny (and ironic) that educated, modern-day folk will scoff at the Ancient Egyptians, ancient Chinese, the Chinchorro of Chile and so on for their practices of mummification and burial. We watch programs on Discovery and TLC documenting the "strange" beliefs in an afterlife and their "strange" burial practices.People will mock the Ancient Egyptian's beliefs that a person would have to have buried with extravagant personal belongings for the "afterlife". Yet despite this dismissal of the "strangeness" of these practices, we assign our own bit of weirdness to our modern-day Western-culture burial procedures. We have this serious "clinical" way that we put to "rest" our "recently departed beloved".
I wonder what a group of ancient Egyptians would think watching a group of mourning family members. Dressed in black, holding back emotions for the "sense" of dignity, somberly listening to the outdated prayers of some clergy.
I just want to see two men pissing into an open grave talking about this morning's bisquits & gravy. Not as a sign of disrespect, but just because there was nowhere else to go.
We assign too much seriousness and pseudo-dignity where it need not be assigned. Grieve how you want to grieve, laugh when you want to laugh, don't take everything too seriously and keep everything in perspective. Remember, only a hundred years ago, people thought that a woman's ankle was a provocative & sexual body part.
