My friends who grew up in cities found it grossly morbid, to bury a body rather than burn it. I don’t know why. They would shudder, speaking of worms and decay, appalled in some existential way. Perhaps it was the slowness of decomposition they found so horrifying. We don’t want to think of our bodies gradually breaking down, our tissue leaking softly into earth. We want death done with, vanished like smoke into air.
