Physical bits

We leave behind physical bits of ourselves throughout our lives -- no need to go into details here, but when you think about it, all of it put together probably weighs more than the body does at death. Yet it is that body that we focus on: we either embalm it and/or entomb it in little funereal cities within cities, or we spend a lot of caloric energy to turn it into ashes. Why not lay it underneath a tree, to feed it quickly to life, or recycle it in some other fashion? Fifty or one hundred kilos is a lot of organic matter.

We don't like to think of death. We think it is obscene.

I suppose it is, to some extent, but like so much else, it is also its context.