Honoring our dead

[Half-n-Half]

I've recently become curious as to why we honor our dead. I understand there are different levels to this that include everything from war memorials to personal family shrines or urns. I also understand there are many religious/spiritual traditions that are involved in this, but as a secular person these don't mean much to me. To me "honoring" the dead is a pretty ambiguous term that conjures up a sense of duty or the feeling that it is just "right" to do it.

But beyond that I struggle a bit to understand exactly why. For example, why is it that we place flowers on graves? Would Uncle Johnny in heaven/hell look down/up on those flowers and smile knowing we still care? But what if you don't believe in an afterlife? Why then? Is it some overbearing emotion that is evoked within us to personify someone who is dead as still being alive in some sense and still cares?

Or why, for example, do we construct war memorials? Is it so we never forget past horrors committed so we can avoid them in the future? If that is the case, why would books, records and education on the matter not suffice? Or does it serve better as a gathering place for veterans to relive those painful memories?

Please understand I'm not advocating the removal of memorials or grave sites, I'm just curious about this, pun intended, morbid obsession we seem to have in society with honoring/respecting the dead.

 

[Tsuyoiko]

I think there's some value in war memorials or monuments to those who died in tragic circumstances, just as a more graphic reminder than history books. There was a large mining disaster in the village I grew up in in 1918; we had a monument on the village green that listed the names and ages of all those who died. We could find the names of our ancestors there, and see how many 14-year-old boys died while working in the coal mine. Couple that with the names listed on the cenotaph up the road, and villagers can see how their great grandmother lost three or four sons in the same year. That's a much more effective message of what life was like for people back then than impersonal facts in a history book.

As for personal graves, I think people put flowers there because they want to feel like they still have some connection to the dead person and that they can still do something for them. I also think people want to make a public display of their grief, as some kind of proof that they cared for the deceased. I know my mum still puts flowers on my grandparents' grave because she's worried what people would think if she didn't. I think people honour their dead because it makes them feel better, not because they really think it's of any benefit to the dead person.

I never visit any of my family's graves because I don't see the point of standing over their rotting bodies. They're gone, and the only afterlife they have is in our memories of them and in what they've left behind; the characteristics my living family members have inherited are a much better reminder than a lump of stone with a name carved on it. I suppose I do honour them in my own way, by having their photos around and talking about them sometimes.

 

[bakaKanadajin]

Everyone is loved by someone, so everyone is remembered in some way.

It's done because it's the best we can do for that person, it's actually all we can do once they've died. Many people die suddenly, and even for those who don't, still, there are things left unsaid and undone and unfinished. Regret weighs heavily on a person; flowers are the biggest testament to this fact, I believe.

So I think it's for us as much as it is for the dead. It's to celebrate a life lived and to apologize for the perceived failings of those left behind.

People do many other things unrelated to this topic, acts which they know will go unseen.
I think even for the non-religious, people like to believe that somewhere, someone is keeping tab.