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Why
Do People Die? and other questions about death by Noreen Kimball |
 "Why
do people die?"All living things have a beginning and an end; in between is a "lifetime." In our lifetimes, we often get sick or hurt and our bodies get well again, so we go on living. But at some point in every life, a body gets so sick that it cannot get well, or it gets so badly hurt that it cannot heal. For most people this happens when they are old. For some it happens when they are young. Some lifetimes are long, some are short. Unitarian Universalists believe that how people live during their lifetimes is much more important than how long a lifetime they have. "When somebody dies, what happens to their body?" When the life in a body has stopped, the body is not needed any more. The family of the person who died arranges for the body to be taken to a funeral parlor. The people at the funeral parlor either put the body in a casket to be buried, or they turn the body into ashes, with a process called cremation.
No, but many do. Sometimes people don't want their body to be buried in a cemetery and they ask to have their body cremated (see previous question). People from the funeral parlor put the ashes in a small box or urn and the family can bring the ashes to a place the person who died loved a lot. They can bring them far out in the ocean by boat or place them in a special place like a mountain or a lake they loved. "When my friend's grandmother died, her family had a memorial service. What's a memorial service?" When someone dies, the family and all the friends of the person who died can feel very sad. Unitarian Universalists are usually sure it will help them feel better if they get together to talk about their friend or relative. They tell stories about the person and share things they remember about him or her. Sometimes they pray and listen to music, or sing songs, too. When people get together to do all these things after someone dies, we call it a memorial service.  "Is
it okay to laugh in a memorial service?"That depends on why you're laughing, but you can probably figure out when it's okay to laugh and when it isn't. It's not okay to be making fun or noise when people are talking, or singing, or praying-that's not respectful and it's not using good manners. But, at memorial services, when people are telling stories about the person who died, they sometimes remember things that were very funny; then laughing is natural and it's just the right thing to do. "What's the difference between a memorial service and a funeral?" At a funeral service, the body of the person who died is in a casket in the church during the service. Afterward the family and friends go to the cemetery to bury the casket. For a memorial service there is no casket at the service. It can happen right after a person dies, or it can happen several weeks later. Every culture has its own way of handling a death in the family. Many UUs prefer to have memorial services rather than funeral services, but both are fine-it depends on what feels right to the family. "Is there any other way to say dead?" We have a lot of words in the English language that mean dead, but because 'dead' is a really accurate word, one that doesn't mean anything else, that's the word that most Unitarian Universalists use. Some people believe that dead people live on in a different place like Heaven or Hell, so they say "passed away" or "passed on" instead of dead. 'Deceased', 'expired', 'perished', 'gone', and 'departed' can mean 'dead.' Also, when we speak of 'the late Mr. So-and-So' we really mean 'the dead Mr. So-and-So.' It's all pretty fancy language but it means something very simple and real. It means dead-not alive any more. |
