RR Reno’s essay http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=978 this morning reminded me of something I’ve been wondering about: suddenly, I’m seeing lots of vehicles with memorial decals in the windows. So I googled them, and found an interesting article:New memorials: t-shirts, websites, auto decals | csmonitor.com. If this is how we are dealing with death now, what does that say about our culture? The article quotes people saying this is a way to connect with others who share and understand their loss. Which implies that we are no longer connected to the lives of the people who are geographically closest to us; we cannot assume that our neighbors know what we have suffered. Yet, we need to share our grief, to know that we are not alone in our loss. Graveyards hardly exist, are seldom visible, seldom accessible. The tradition of whole communities tending to their graves on Memorial Day is little more than a memory itself. Jody Bottum examined the political and cultural isssues surrounding death in http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5917&var_recherche=Death+in+Politics and again in http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=976 . What does it say about our culture, about our future, that the new rituals of grief are built on the assumption that we are surrounded by strangers?
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