Rest in Peace

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What does that mean?

When the body is put into the ground and covered over by dirt and a headstone placed to mark the spot of the dressed up body secured in a wooden box lined with fancy material that no one will ever again see and sealed up as if the disintegration won’t happen.

Is this resting in peace?

The body or the remainder of who was a person is placed in a box and lowered into the ground is nothing more than bone and flesh. If you ever see the mummified pharaohs you can see what really happens to us after that.

Through the years there are the ceremonies to surround the process to get rid of the dead. Some are very religious with much wailing and remembrance and some are just digging a ditch to get rid of the stinking remains, so what does it mean to “rest in peace”?

Depending on your belief of what happens when you die, the body remains during the “passing” but the other stuff that makes us what we are other than blood and guts is suppose to go up or down.

All these stories of what happens after we stop breathing make the people who thought they knew you feel better thinking that “you” have left this community to follow a new trail to an unknown and mysterious place.

So is the body to rest in peace?

The body is buried below ground with much ceremony and cost as a respect for the person who has died. Acres of land have been dedicated for the mothers and fathers and uncles and children of families through the years.

And in the ground the bodies rot.

Now and then, more than we would like to imagine, the boxes are dug up. Due to new housing or roadways or perhaps a diversion of a waterway, the respected burial grounds are disturbed. Sometimes the remains are reburied or cremated or placed in museums for public display.

So as we walk upon the graves of people we may or may not have known, say, “Excuse me”. The plot of land that they consume is suppose to be hollowed space.

It is just that holiday where the bunnies run and eggs fill the grass and people wander in spring bonnets and laugh disturbing those who rest in peace.