HW#50 - First Third of Care-of-the-Dead Book Post

Precis
I am working as a paid trainee at Neil Bardal's Funeral home. I got a tour of the cremation center. I learned the different parts and the process of being turned from a human into a complete ash. I met all my co-workers and the roles that they play at the funeral home.

Quotes
*Humans are the only creatures who know they're going to die, and even worse, they know they know it, and it's not something they can "unknow".

*This whole place is built like a theatre; a public space up front with its living room set, and a backstage where all the magic happens.

*Every former soul that comes in through the garage door is assigned a number; it's written in Sharpie on their cardboard box and the corpse's wristband , not unlike the wristbands they issue at raves and folks festivals.

*Neil Bardal says we need the ritual to know the person who's died. We need to see the body, we want the proof; we're empirical, modern, enlightened souls who benefit from looking at death when it comes, standing up to sing and pray in its presence.

*the dead are uncooperative, but they respond to gravity and brute force, a kind of mortuary tough-love.

Analytical Paragraph

After reading the first 1/3 of the book. I first thought it wasnt going to be interesting but it actually was. The main idea of it was how the whole process with creamtion and funerals is all an job and you can't really have emotions attached with your job. The whole time of the beginning of the book, the author ws in disabelief a little bit adjusting to everything while it was just a daily routine to the people around him. The whole death concept is a process the do's and don'ts. There is a price to everything we do. I feel like from the Curtains you get a better insight on people's actions and emotions on how they feel about deceased people. Neil the owner was saying that it was evolved and that the whole process of death is not what it used to be.