Author: Merlin T Lee

Benjamin Franklin once said, “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” In the developed West, especially in the United States there is a large swath of people who don’t seem to understand this idiom. While the latter is one argument, the former has a significance on culture that is typically ignored. Death has become a taboo topic where people thing they are invincible and able to escape death. This mentality stems from fear, which leads to death being ignored and sanitized from the public eye to the extent that family members fear being around the deceased instead of taking an active role in the burial. This avoidance leads to people not allowing themselves the ability to mourn and experience grief. Sight is essential to the grieving process to create closure in the mind and allow the person to move on. Death is paramount to the human condition, and in the United States the culture has become sanitized of death, which does not allow people the ability to grieve and move on with their life.

The idea that death rituals in the United States have changed is not debated, through lobbying and the passage of laws the death rituals of the United States have been completely changed; however, the old ways are significantly healthier mentally. This classic death ritual, today known as a natural burial, can still be performed in some locations today but due to lobbying by the funeral industry, it is becoming few and far between. Caitlin Doughty, an alternative mortician and the premiere voice on alternative burial rituals, states, “The world used to be our burial ground. We buried bodies on farms, ranches, and in local churchyards––anywhere we wanted, really” (From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death 216). Historically, the family would prepare the deceased for viewing and then the burial took place in a private cemetery on private family property with the family or religious leader leading the burial followed by burial by the family. This direct role helped the family work through the grief that the death caused. They would hold visitations in the home and it would become a somber multi-day affair allowing the family the time they needed to grieve and the ability to have some time alone in a familiar environment to be with their loved one. In this role sight took a forefront because all of the extraneous details were removed and the family was allowed to be alone with their loved one, take care of them, and bury them once they were ready. 

Today, however, sight has taken a backseat and it prevents people from being able to grieve. Following the advent of the internet, there has been an surge of Laissez-faire direct cremations. In this system the family fills out an online form where they pay with a charge card, then the deceased is picked up from the hospital, home, or other place and transported to the crematorium where they undergo cremation, and finally the remains are shipped to the family through the postal service. The family never sees the deceased and plays no role in the ritual. While some families must do this due to financial reasons in areas where natural burials are not an option or not a known option, there are a significant number of people who choose this option because they fear death and want to act like it didn’t happen. The second is ultimately harmful for the family because they are unable to receive that closure that seeing their loved one allows. Caitlin Doughty goes so far as to make the comparison, “[this process is] the equivalent of grown adults, thinking babies come from storks” (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory 104). This process intentionally keeps the family in the dark about what is going on and happening to their loved one. Since they are just receiving a container filled with a powdery solid instead of actually seeing their loved on their mind begins wonder whether or not they are still alive and out in the world.

To further the harm of today’s death rituals, the lack of sight has caused death to become less experiential and more intellectual which makes death denial easier. A common psychological ail in the United States is death anxiety. Every year there crowds that flock to therapists over mental anguish that the underlying cause tends to be some form of death anxiety. In their study Mark Vahrmeyer and Simon Cassar set out to identify whether death denial was essential to being alive and discovered “by intellectualising the concept of death, it has the effect of introducing a shield between the experiential stance of the client and the therapist” (162). This conclusion means, in order to truly understand the problem of death denial and work through it the patient has to experience the death of a loved one which is not happening due to today’s cultural shift. By not being able to see their loved one and be able to go through the process of grief, it makes it next to impossible for them to face their fears and be helped by their therapist. It is through this sight that makes it possible for humans to experience death and grieve for their loved ones.

This denial of death due to the lack of sight leads to yet another set of ails. Following the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the United States Government withheld information from the Japanese people about what really happened to their deceased, even going so far as to deny that the event happened. To further rub salt into the wound, following an atomic blast the deceased are typically vaporized. Barbara Marcón went so far as to say, “Victims could find neither acceptance nor support in society at large, because at this time the community of suffering was not strong enough, the cultural trauma had not yet emerged” (789). What she meant was that by hiding evidence and removing the crucial elements from jumpstarting the grieving process, the Japanese people were unable to grieve the loss of their loved ones and feel the grief they needed to move on. In addition this forced denial of death also contributes to the cultural ails in the United States today where people truly believe they are invincible and they will not die. By not being able to experience the death of someone else and being able to feel that grief something that should be an emotional experience is nothing more than a hypothetical logical experience, which are two completely different experiences. This changed experience leads to the death cultural ails in the United States.

Sight has the power to completely change a person’s mind and has the ability to jump start the grieving process. In their study entitled “The Effects of Print News Photographs of the Casualties of War,” Michael Pfau et al determined that war photography about the Iraq War had the power to trigger such strong responses that it lead the participants to become more strongly against the conflict (160). To the extent, “News stories of war casualties packaged as photograph plus caption elicited more negative affect—puzzlement, anger, and sadness—than those conveyed via text alone” (Pfau 160). These feelings elicited are good indicators that the individual is going through the grieving process. If simply the sight of photographs of deceased strangers has the ability to change an individual’s opinion on war and  jumpstart the grieving process for a complete stranger just think about how important this sight would be toward grieving loved ones.

Firsthand sight is also essential and allows for a more full experience of grief. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, Mayor Giuliani and his administration stopped any and all people from getting near the site and forbid the disbursement of unapproved photographs. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett stated, “To have been so close to the disaster and yet so insulated from it means that we too knew it from photographs rather than from direct experience of the ruin” (12). While photographs of the loss is better than nothing it is not the same as the actual experience of loss. While photographs have the power to jumpstart the grieving process, this kind of sight still keeps the experience a logical one instead of an emotional one by removing the person from the actual event. It is essential to experience the loss firsthand and see the loved one who was lost or else it can be easy to fall back into death denial. And this death denial doesn’t allow the person the ability to move on and come to terms with the death of their loved one.

The experiential nature of death is truly what makes grief happen and sight is the main factor. In their study Ciara McCabe et al took the same moisturizer and placed different labels in it about the richness of the cream (98). What they ended up finding was “word labels (‘Rich moisturizing cream’ vs ‘Basic cream’) could modulate subjective ratings of the pleasantness and richness of touch, and influenced the representation of tactile inputs in the orbitofrontal cortex,” (McCabe et al 105). This study shows that sight is able to influence the end belief of a situation. If it can change the thoughts on a moisturizing cream it can completely change the experience of grief from the loss of a loved one. By taking part in the death ritual of a loved one and seeing them, the brain is able to have the closure it needs to be able to work through the grief of that loss.

Following the loss of a loved one, social media is a complicated outlet to work through the grief due to sight. Social media can be a good place to work through loss and memorialize a loved one. Vani Kakar and Nanki Oberoi believe, “the major reason why people are increasingly using social media and internet blogs to voice their grief” is because “they are able to experience catharsis by simply expressing their grief on a virtual portal, without having to face the perceived lack of empathy of a fellow human” (373). Facebook, especially, includes a number of features to memorialize a loved one. Not only can a user create a personal memorial, but the memories feature can remind them about the good times they had with the deceased. In addition following a death the deceased’s Facebook page can become a public memorial to remember them. Since interpersonal communication has become more and more digital and lead to the loss of typical face to face communication, this feature set allows a wider group to be able to support those who lost a loved one and help them work through the loss. In addition it can allow those who have gone through a similar situation the ability to provide support to those who they don’t know. And, while this conclusion is valid, the overall argument is a bit more complicated. 

The internet can also be a horrible place to grieve. Kakar and Oberoi also state “the grieving often describe the grief journey to be a a long, seemingly endless one, which often leaves them devastated and frightened and at the same time lonely” (373). So, while the internet and social media can be a great way to memorialize the deceased and work through the loss, it can become a place to deny the death happened. The same feature set that makes the internet a great place to grieve can make it a place to deny death as a reality. Features like Facebook Memories can lead the mind into thinking that the deceased is still alive and still posting to social media and not aging. If photographs appear as memories in the context of a realtime news feed, the subconscious mind will think that the image is a realtime image. To build upon the Pfau article, if images of deceased strangers can jumpstart the grieving process and lead individuals to change their opinion on war, it can lead the mind into believing that a loved one is still alive. This conflicting sight can then lead to death denial and rounds back to all the ails caused by the modern death rituals making social media a complicated place to grieve through sight.

As well, it is possible to have too much sight and to take a death ritual to the extent that it becomes death denial. In the Torajan death practice described by Amanda Bennett in her article for National Geographic, “the departed—and their corpses—remain a part of the family.” In this practice deceased relatives can remain in the familial home for long periods of time before being placed in a familial tomb, where they are then occasionally taken out again for “ma’nene’” or second funerals (Bennett). In the mean time they are left in the house known as “to makula’” or sick person and treated like normal, even being given food (Bennett). One woman was even interviewed as saying, “I’m not sad, because she’s still with us,” while talking about her deceased mother. In this situation the sight in the death ritual becomes a way of denying that the death happened and acting like everyone lives forever. In this capacity the experience becomes one to act like the death didn’t happen and use sight as a means to deny that the death ever happened. 

Finally, the roll of sight in the grieving process doesn’t just end at burial, it can be an essential way of working through the grief. For some people photographs and home movies can be a great way to work through the loss, for others a memorial can be a great way, but for many artists, creating their works can be the way they work through it. One of such exhibits was Jennifer Palmer’s show Mapping Loss which was in the Barr Gallery at Indiana University Southeast. Her work typically focuses on creating maps of emotions or other higher order thinking. For this exhibit in particular she created maps that expressed her feelings of grief following the loss of her mother. The necessity of sight never leaves the grieving process, but it can take completely different forms following the burial to help each individual work through their loss.

In the developed West, the topic of death has become a major taboo, leading to major death denial and the though that death is escapable and eternal youth is attainable. This mentality stems from sanitizing death from the culture and sweeping death under the rug. This mentality leads to people being unable to grieve and feel the loss they are experiencing. Overall sight is essential to the grieving process create closure in the mind and allow the person to move on. Death is inescapable and is paramount to the human condition, everyone will experience it at some point. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, “…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Works Cited

Bennett, Amanda. “When Death Doesn’t Mean Goodbye.” National Geographic, National Geographic Partners, 11 Mar. 2016, www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/04/death-dying-grief-funeral-ceremony-corpse/.

Doughty, Caitlin. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death. Norton, 2017.

– – –. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory. Norton, 2014.

Kakar, Vani and Nanki Oberoi. “Mourning with Social Media: Rewiring Grief.” Indian Journal of Positive Psychology, vol. 7, no. 3, Sept. 2016, pp. 371-375.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. “Kodak Moments, Flashbulb Memories: Reflections on 9/11.” TDR (1988-), vol. 47, no. 1, 2003, pp. 11–48.

Marcoń, Barbara. “Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Eye of the Camera.” Third Text, vol. 25, no. 6, Nov. 2011, pp. 787-797.

McCabe, Ciara, et al. “Cognitive Influences on the Affective Representation of Touch and the Sight of Touch in the Human Brain.” Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience, vol. 3, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 97-108.

Palmer, Jennifer Laura. Mapping Loss. 23 Aug.–22 Sept. 2017, The Barr Gallery–Indiana University Southeast, New Albany.

Pfau, Michael, et al. “The Effects of Print News Photographs of the Casualties of War.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 1, Spring 2006, pp. 150-168.

Vahrmeyer, Mark and Simon Cassar. “The Paradox of Finitude in the Context of Infinitude: Is Death Denial an Essential Aspect of Being in the World?.” Existential Analysis: Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis, vol. 28, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 151-165.