Funeral

A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial, entombment or cremation with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour. Customs vary between cultures and religious groups. Funerals have both normative and legal components. Common secular motivations for funerals include mourning the deceased, celebrating their life, and offering support and sympathy to the bereaved; additionally, funerals may have religious aspects that are intended to help the soul of the deceased reach the afterlife, resurrection or reincarnation. the purpose of funerals is not just for the dead but for the living as well as funerals help the brain process loss by creating a structured moment of acknowledgement, allowing emotional expression in a socially permitted space and without it grieve can become suppressed and psychologically fragmented. funerals also serve a social purpose by: gathering extended family, reaffirming bonds, redistributing roles & publicly signal support. it permits the expression of cultural beliefs, preserves continuity and in some cases serve a political & symbolic function by: reinforcing national unity, creating symbolic continuity & transfering authority peacefully. in war or crisis it can also serve a more practical purpose as in the case of mass graves in which they serve a more logistical purpose rather than symbolic by managing bodies quickly for health, safety, concealment or crisis response. mass graves can also express symbolic violence in the case of genocide by the erasure of identity, the dehumanization of victims & removal of evidence. by this we can conclude that funerals restores dignity while mass graves can intentionally destroy it.