Is Panthea or Pergamus still sitting by the coffin of Verus? Or Chabrias or Diotimus by Hadrian’s? Ridiculous! And if they were still sitting there, would the dead be aware? And if they were aware, would they be pleased? And if they were pleased, would that make their mourners immortal? Was it not their fate also first to grow old – old women and old men like any others – and then to die? And with them dead, what would those they mourned do then? It is all stench and corruption in a bag of bones.
When we mourn, are we comforting the dead? No, it is only ourselves we comfort by remembering them. In life, half the people who attend the funeral wouldn't care much about the person. But when the person dies, they present themselves. Perhaps it is a way for people to comfort their own mortality with rememberance. But why is there a need to comfort death, which is all natural and not an evil? And why not enjoy the presence and love the person when they're alive rather than mourn only when they're dead. Not to be cynical, of course, the rituals are important in themselves.
All in all, remember death is not an evil and learn to leave life as easily as you came in. Also, let go of the people in your life when time comes as they were never yours to begin with. Enjoy their presence while they're with you and leave them when nature takes them back for reallocation of her resources.
