How We Deal with 'Grave' Issues: Ritual through Cemeteries & Gravestones

 *  Samaria D. Roberts-Perez (Texas A&M Univ)

Abstract:

This paper examines how culturally, treatment of the body post-mortem may provide insight with how humans perceive the concept of death. I briefly examine the history of cemeteries, how corpses have been treated (from a textual perspective), historical differences with the issues of death and finally, I conduct an analysis of gravestones at a local cemetery to shed light on how human beings ritualistically symbolize, and memorialize themselves and others. This historical information can be applied to end-of-life matters to indicate a serious societal lack of communication about death as a natural process and the use of euphemisms. Additionally, we can understand how humans bring meaning to their own lives and others by the memorials left afterwards.