A funeral is something we perform for the dead, certainly. But perhaps it is also something we do with them. We accompany them.

Latin for “remember you must die,” memento mori is not a threat, not a warning shouted from the shadows, but a quiet companion that walks beside us, placing a gentle hand on the shoulder and asking us to really notice the fragile, fleeting fact of being alive. It is a philosophical and artistic tradition that does something rather radical in a culture like ours: it insists that mortality awareness does not have to arrive wrapped in panic. Memento Mori, "To This Favour" 1879 W

What happens to us physically and mentally when death becomes real