ecthelion33's journal

I witnessed a funeral this weekend, that of my great-uncle Charles Woodrow Kucera. I always knew him by the name 'Uncle Woody'. However, the last occasion of our meeting is beyond my mind's capacity or hindsight to recollect, since I was very little at the time. What this meant, much to my chagrin, was that finding any naturally occurring personal sorrow within myself was next to impossible. He was merely a face, behind which resided no memory of the man himself. I felt rather guilty.

However, this detachment did afford several advantages, for it left my mind free to ponder other questions. As irreverent as it may sound (and I certainly hope it doesn't), I consider this weekend, this death and funeral, to have been of an immense personal benefit to myself. Because what I received there as I stared at Uncle Woody's sunken, uninhabited person was a new perspective of human death.

I have been to viewings before. Several times, in fact--it is no new experience for me. But in all such cases I was unable to make the observations I did here, my mind then inebriated with grief. What I witnessed in the funeral home was absence. A previously unrealized notion that the human body in and of itself is not what makes us live in the image of God. That without a soul enthroned in the fibers and sinews, we are incomplete.

What intrigues me is that I have never observed this in other creatures. Among dead animals that I have seen, there is no undeniable sense that some sapient anima his left the flesh behind for the time being, but for the decay of the body. But even now at the funeral home, before decay had noticeably set in, Uncle Woody was still an inanimate object, without a distinctly human mind imbedded. Despite his serene, calm appearance, there was clearly something missing, that I can only find in humans who have died.

I wonder, have any of you ever observed this?