Abstract

Funerals are occasions for grief, if the dead person was close. But they are also reminders of our own mortal condition and invitations to contemplate it. Especially when the dead person was not close, a funeral service and an ensuing trip to the graveyard are often meditative times, providing powerful signals about our own future, stimulating fear or bringing hidden fear to the surface. They create, all too often, a volatile emotional condition in which we may be susceptible to some of fear’s less savory neighbors, other painful emotions (anger, envy, disgust) that may pollute our relationship with others. But the reminder of a shared fate might also have more benign consequences (as Rousseau thought), encouraging a kind of egalitarian compassion, an awareness of a common human condition that transcends class and wealth and even religion, bringing people together.