Have you ever been at a funeral and taken a big mental step back and asked yourself just what is it that is going on here? We conduct services, memorials, and tributes when one of our number passes away, back into the same space that they occupied just a very short time ago before they were born. Of course it is fitting to conduct tributes, to celebrate together the life of the person now not in our presence, especially where the person concerned has made significant contributions to the welfare of the rest of the humans on the planet. Carl Sagan is my favorite example here.

But it is all very confusing isn't it? Some people seem to contribute so much to benefit society but receive little if any recognition. Then others die leaving a trail of suffering and destruction - there is not one of us who doesn’t know the names of some of humanity's monsters. Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it? Hmmm, maybe, but that doesn’t seem to apply given that wars are a part of the very nature of human existence across all time. In spite of our larger brain and all our evolution, no one ever seems to learn from previous war experiences, and you don’t have to look far to find several events that will affirm that statement.

Fact is, no one has ever come back from the dead. Being oriented by the requirement for evidence and the scientific method, I discount all unsubstantiated religious stories, near death experiences and stories of paranormal activities. Fact is that no one knows what happens after death of the physical body. After all the studies and examining all the verifiable experiences that are available, the answer is that there is no answer about the validity of the claims of the existence of an afterlife.

Since we cannot possibly imagine the current state of our loved one who is no longer in the realm of the living, how should we best honor them? How should we enshrine their memory so that they are not totally lost? What do we retain of all that we have learned and the wonderful experiences with that person, now so painfully removed? It is an aching void that we simply don’t know how to deal with. In most cases we learn to live with through the grief, to carry on, and miraculously over time, the pain becomes more and more dull. We carry on, do the best we can, never quite the same, but we know that we have to start to live for those dear ones still living, not continue to wallow in grief for the one who has died.

The dead don’t care and surely don’t complain. We have had very solemn funerals turning the passing of one of the human family into a circus of emotional outpouring. The funeral of Lady Diana Spencer, the people's princess, is a perfect example. Not that I disrespect the memory of that lady, she achieved a lot, put up with a lot, and ended up playing hard in poorly chosen company and paid the price when the stuff hit the fan, or when the Benz hit the wall in her case. It was all too sad and all too early, granted. But the world won’t stop, the sky doesn’t fall, and the heavens don’t intervene. As is beautifully written in the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, moves on,
nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

We mere mortals, evolved primates that we are, are so arrogant as to believe that we individuals matter in the overall scheme of things, of the ways of the universe. It is impossible to comprehend the scale of time that is at play in the cosmos where we live in a tiny and insignificant outlying galaxy. So how could a millisecond of universe time that constitutes one human lifetime be of any consequence whatsoever when juxtaposed against that unimaginable vastness? The earth has been around for billions of years. Billions! How many is that? In a word, it is a lot. More than we can ever manage to comprehend, so why would we consider the tiny movements of a few humans on this very small planet for a few decades be worth erecting monuments to. The answer is, they are not. Sorry if you are disappointed and hoped to have some fantasy of importance reinforced for your own personal ego stroking. But we as individuals really don’t have any right to any place in any world that is worthy of being memorialized, and even if so, memorialized for what?

Gloomy or liberating?

Here is the basis for this rationale, as apparently gloomy and negative as it sounds.

A tour around the world today would not be complete without visiting some of the huge graveyards of those who have paid the supreme sacrifice to preserve our freedom. Well, that is what the travel brochure says anyway. So, we go and take a look at all these memorials. You will find lots of them and most are for the conflicts that most of us can remember and most of us are still touched by in some way. There is for nearly everyone on the planet someone in the last few generations who perished as a direct result of warfare and so the survivors, that are the current generations, still vividly recall the conflict and the losses. With recent technology we have been able to perpetuate the memory of the wars through photographs and some writings that have been preserved. Hollywood helps us remember with amazing films like Saving Private Ryan that bring it all into our homes in ways that we can almost feel the suffering. So how can we forget? The fact is that we will, it will just take a little longer due to technology, but within only a century or so, those conflicts and wars will all just be historical numbers.

While on your tour of memorials and cemeteries, take a look around and see if you can find any memorials to the brave soldiers who died in conflicts that took place more than 200 years ago. Maybe you can find a few, the American Civil War perhaps, only 150 years ago. A little further back, the Napoleonic Wars, 200 years ago. No one is grieving for those who died, and no one is about to spend good money putting up fancy new memorials for them in order to preserve their memory. Why would we do that when we have loved ones that we can still remember who died in the more recent struggles for flag and country. We have an emotional need to remember them first, right? Of course! Go back to any conflict only 300 or more years ago and there are no monuments at all, no remembrance services, and certainly no tears shed for the loss of those folks no matter how bravely they fought, how terribly they suffered, and how horribly they died. It is just too long ago, and there is no direct links anymore, no painful memories, no emotional ties to those passed away. So, basically those heros are now irrellevant.

As Eric Bogle wrote in the lyrics of his hauntingly beautiful song No Man’s Land,

Did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind?
          And in some loyal heart is your memory enshrined?
          And though you died back in 1916,
          To that loyal heart you’re forever nineteen
          Or are you a stranger without even a name,
          Forever enshrined behind a glass pane,
          In an old photograph, torn and tattered and stained,
          And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

This says it all, because as soon as that wife or sweetheart also dies, they also will become just a memory like Willie McBride in the song. Once there are no people who remember, he becomes just a name on the gravestone and a statistic of the war. And this one is only a little over 100 years ago. It doesn’t take long to be forgotten and that is perfectly fine because it is the way that nature and the world works. Dreams of immortality are just arrogance in a different disguise.

So, with that scenario now fully in mind, fast forward another four or five generations. Those world wars of the twentieth century will be about as significant as the Napoleonic Wars are to people today. Those generations will have their own war dead to grieve over, and they just won’t have any spare tears for those who were with Willie McBride or Private Ryan. It is just a matter of fact and taking a cold hard look at the reality of our world and our place in it at this time.

When I was about 20 years old, I was like most young men of that age with good health and living in a brave new world, I was 10 foot tall and bulletproof. Upon the death of my grandfather, aged 81, I attended his funeral in the town of Inverell in New South Wales. It was not a big affair; he was not a particularly religious man although his daughter, my mother, certainly was a strong believer and adherent to the Anglican Church teachings. He was to be buried in the town cemetery following a simple church ceremony, and funeral procession of cars let by the hearse out to the burial site just outside town. Given his age and other circumstances, his passing was no surprise to anyone, and as it was regarded just as his time to go, it was pretty much a funeral by the numbers, church service, procession, lower the coffin while a man in robes mutters words about dust to dust, then back to the house for the tea and cakes while we carefully talk in appropriate terms of what a wonderful man he was. Invariably at these occasions someone says “You know, that was a beautiful service. I am sure that George would be pleased with what was done for him today.”

While at the cemetery I wandered around a little bit reading the inscriptions on the tombstones just out of casual interest and just to pass the time until the family would be ready to go. One inscription really did have an impact on me and I remember it to this day and it sobers me to think of it from time to time.

The tombstone inscription reads:
Remember me as you pass by,
          As you are now, so once was I,
          As I am now, you soon shall be,
          So, prepare yourself to follow me.

And who cared about this person? By the appearance of the grave that the person was now long gone and long forgotten. Perhaps a photograph and name and basic details entered on some enthusiastic person’s genealogical records, something that has become so fashionable to do these days. But other than a trophy to show off to others with similar interest, this person’s life has absolutely no relevance at all to those living today. It is most likely that those who grieved over this person’s grave side as he was “laid to rest” have similarly followed him just as he predicted on his gravestone inscription.

I believe that we place the wrong kind of importance on funerals. It is very clear that the occasions are necessary and serve a purpose. People’s opinion of what that purpose is though, has been clouded over by delusions of supernatural things taking place. When you take an objective look at funerals, you can clearly see what the purpose of a funeral is. The ceremony gives comfort to the living who knew and loved the deceased person. We feel a responsibility to “do the right thing” and "pay our respects" for revered persons when they die. Grief needs to be dealt with somehow and funerals help us understand that the person is no longer accessible to us so it provides closure. We show that we are dealing with all the natural human emotional responses, and we tearfully say our goodbyes. We must do and be seen to do the right and respectful thing not only for the deceased, but for ourselves so that our conscience can be cleared. We call it closure by doing all we can do and now since there is nothing else for it, we can move on with our lives.

But, make no mistake, beneath this wonderful pantomime, it was the moving on that we wanted to do in the first place. And that is why funerals are for the living.

But it is not the funeral, the service, the words spoken, the process of cremation or burial, a wall plaque or tombstone, or any other such detail that will matter to anyone at all once the current generation has also passed away. Once there is no one to remember the person that was, that person does not exist, just as he did not exist before he was born.

“Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
          Before we too into the Dust descend;
          Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie
          Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!

― Omar Khayyam