The Cold, Soft Places of Death

Source: NYTimes 30 April 2010 Article, Pakistan, in Shift, Weighs Attack on Militant Lair

I was looking at the above-linked photograph on NYTimes.com today and thought about the places where we really end up when we die--insofar as our bodies, as they wind down their corporeal existence, represent "us."

As sentient beings, our perception of our reality is bounded by the nature and environment around us.  We are deeply connected to urban areas, nature, and to relationships with people and things.  But when we die, despite our notions to imagine a freedom from the facets of that existence I just described, it occurs to me that the actual places where we end up are so much more subdued than the notional reality into which we are born.  Take this picture for instance: is this where we end up when we die?  On a gurney, below ground, shattered, cold, and alone?  The answer is yes.

I find some comfort to that recognition actually.  Maybe that is because the uncertainty associated with death is probably its most frightening minion.  This is the humble reality of being deceased.  It is both sad and comforting; comforting insofar as knowing something, being able to recognize it and to possibly understand it, feels much better than not knowing it at all.

My mother occupied such a place.  Sometimes I think about the last morning when I saw her.  She was being carried down the stairs in our family home in Ohio and out to a black Chrysler minivan that was parked in the driveway, the rear windows of which were blackened out and replaced with the horizontal, squiggly lines that one might come to associate with the traditional detailing of funeral vehicles.  She was wrapped tightly in a cream-colored blanket that the morticians had brought with them.  They loaded her into the back of the minivan, closed the doors, stood in a somber stance looking in our direction for a moment, and then they drove away.  I presume she was taken to a room not unlike the one pictured here, and I presume there she lay until the time came when she was cremated (and all that process implied).  The next time I saw her was on December 1st (I believe it was), at Markille Cemetery in Hudson, OH, in an urn on a podium in the front of a small chapel.  I overlooked it when I first walked in that day.  It had started to snow as we arrived at the cemetery, and family and friends were arriving.  I remember almost freezing once I saw the urn, realizing that was all that remained of Mom.

I suppose I bring up this topic to ask: what are our expectations about what happens when we die?  Why not such a cold, soft place as the one pictured?