Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Life connected to Death

One more quote from Thomas Lynch, in The Undertaking, page 29.

...as I watch my generation labour to give their teenagers and young adults some 'family values' between courses of pizza and maybe Gladstone had it right. I think my father did. They understood that the meaning of life is connected, inextricably, to the meaning of death; that mourning is a romance in reverse, and if you love, you grieve and there are no exceptions - only those who do it well and those who don't. And if death is regarded as an embarrassment or an inconvenience, if the dead are regarded as a nuisance from whom we seek a hurried riddance, then life and the living are in for like treatment: McFunerals, McFamilies, McMarriage, McValues.

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