Hw 48 - Family Perspectives On The Care Of The Dead - Comment this.

For this assignment, I interviewed my aunt and my uncle. The questions that were asked to them were very basic, such as "What comes to mind when you think about the care of the dead?", "How do you think the world around you treats the dead?", "Do you agree with their tactics? Disagree? Why/Why not?". My aunt's answers were the "mainstream" answers you would expect from most people. The reason for this assumption is because, when I asked her about her initial thoughts on the care of the dead, she responded, "I think about funerals, burials, and cremation". My uncle on the other hand, responded with much more knowledge on the isolation of the dead. His initial thoughts on the care of the dead were based around the opinion that, no one wants to be reminded of dead people. The isolation of cemeteries, and the uncomfortableness associated with talking about the dead is a result of his opinion.

When digging deeper in to my aunts perspectives on the care of the dead, I realized her common, expected answer is due to ignorance. There is no way to learn about the care of the dead in an average school, or television program. Deeper independent research usually has to be done in order to learn more about the subject. My aunt is a prime example of someone who has not been informed on the subject, she has witnessed a burial, funeral and the result of a cremation, however; she wasn't exposed to the subject enough to analyze it.  The social and medial isolation of the care of the dead leads to ignorant claims and opinions about it.

In the case of my uncle, from personal experience I know that he independently researches topics after watching a national geographic program on television. During the interview he mentioned that he watched an episode of National Geographic's "Taboo" in which they looked at tribal rituals on burying the dead. My uncle than thought back to that episode of taboo and came up with the connection between tribes from third-world countries, and society around him, that if other people around the world can openly exhibit rituals for the dead, why can't we? His exposure to learning about the care of the dead led him to his perspective. Overall, I believe that in the case of my aunt and uncle, it is the amount of knowledge on the topic of care of the dead, that leads to varied perspectives.

Some questions these interviews led me to wonder:

- Does religious beliefs play a role in the way people handle the dead?

- Does isolating the dead from society decrease the amount people think about it?

- What if, there were cemeteries on every few blocks within the city that were as common a sight as a McDonalds?