“I think the best function of funerals is served if it brings relatives and friends into the best possible functional contact with the harsh fact of death and with each other in this time of high emotionality. I believe that funerals were probably more effective when people died at home with the family present, and when the family and friends made the coffin and did the burial themselves. Society no longer permits this, but there are ways to bring about a reasonable level of contact with the dead body and the survivors.”

Murray Bowen, in Walsh & McGoldrick’s Living Beyond Loss: Death in the Family

[Reblogged from Nathen’s Miraculous Escape]