All the Living and the Dead

by Hayley Campbell

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns, and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. —James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

You need to be able to separate the shock of seeing death from the shock of grief,

In England and Australia, coffins at funerals are usually closed – unlike in America where mourners can pass by the open lid and peer in at the dead, as they did with Abraham Lincoln.

Since the time it was built, the cremation rate in the UK has risen from around 35 per cent to 78 per cent of all funerals (America is lagging behind at 55 per cent).

It’s a Jewish tradition to place a small stone by the grave every time you visit. A rabbi told me it’s because, unlike flowers, stones do not fade.