Bodies in the News

I may give the impression of being obssessed by death - far from it. Life is to be celebrated as the most precious thing we have.I do, however, have an interest in how we humans deal with death which has, regetfully, featured more prominently than ever in "the news" during recent months, not least because of the heartbreaking catastrophe that has befallen Haiti.Scenes of hundreds of corpses unavoidably left lying in the streets are very distessing,particularly as we cannot but empathise with the bereaved, desperate to find the remains of missing family membersto give them burial.

Too frequently we witness the coffins of young men brought back from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan in miltary parades to honour their individual courage and selflessness,in the manner originally adopted by the government of the United States of flying home their soldier victims of the Vietnam War. Such sights witnessed with increasing regularity at home on tv screens played no small part in the growing demands of the American populace to end their involvement in Vietnam, by the early 1970s. I have no wish, whatever, to demean the oft quoted heroism of the British troops, but feel that therein lies an element of trying to cover up official embarrasment at the increasing numbers of such incidents and suspect the government must wish that such public spectacles had never started.The exponential increase in communications now brings our involvement into our living rooms and onto our mobile phone, television and computer sceens in a manner not previously encountered by the majority of people.We did not experience such close encounters with the scale of military deaths during the two world wars of the 20th century: one needs to visit the war graves of northern Europe to get an idea of the vast numbers of the fallen, while the the bodies of those killed in the far eastern Korean War were not repatriated.With a few notable exceptions, the British victims of the Falklands War did not get such prominent or prolonged exposure, if only because of the relatively short duration of the engagement.

The recent television broadcast "The Big Questions" (BBC1, Sunday 17th January 2010) happened to deal with attitudes towards the treatment of human bodies and the matter of organ donations, prior to and post death. Predictably,discussions ranged from the totally sacred nature of the human body during and after life, according to inherited religious convictions, to the unimportance of the physical shell now left bereft of personality or spirit, which may or may not continue in some form of continued existence.

One thing that is universally shared, however, is the need to perform,or participate in, some rite of passage to mark the passing of a close relative,companion, friend or aquaintance or even a revered distant public figure - Stalin,Churchill,Princess Diana and Rudolph Valentino spring easily to mind. One often specifies,(where no mandatary religious practices are to be followed)sometimes in great detail, the kind of funeral one wants, which mourners go to great lengths to carry out, even regardless of any lack of belief in a continuing after life for the deceased's spirit. We take comfort for a while in the memory of his/her eccentricities,favourite pleasures and even irrascibilities,as a way of coming to terms with one's loss. A public loss is shared by a mass demonstration of grief.

On a personal level it helps the bereaved to attend to the details of the rites prescibed. Where this cannot be done, as in the terrible circumstances of the Tahaitian earthquake the grieving of the survivors is magnified. In cases of massacres and piling of corpses into common graves, the effects on the remaining family members continue without closure.It is noted in my previous blog that following such attrocities in Zimbabwe President Mugabe admitted to being terrified by the ghosts of the thousands of his people massacred by his own armies and thrown into pits and mineshafts, while relatives of the dead were equally haunted by their spirits unable to find rest without due rituals being performed on their behalf. Whether or not this is really due to "ghosts" is a matter of individual belief, but even if, as is most likely,it is the result of the uneasy conscience of the breaved or criminal perpetrator of foul acts, the effect is the same. Such happenings abound in literature!