WHEN THINGS FALL APART, MEMORY DECREPIT, MONEY SCARCE, IN SHORT, THE CLOSURE
CLOSURE
Fairly recently, a U.S. coalmine was closed down with a few miners inside. They or their remains could not be brought out. Lay about has been wondering about burial or closure, generally described as disposal of the mortal remains of humans in a ritualistic manner. It is also not uncommon of owners to bury the dead bodies of their pets. An usual explanation offered is that it helps the deceased to gain entry into the afterworld.
Burials in graves were praticed as early as 125,000 years ago. Trenches, large burial mounds and monumental stone tombs like the pyramids were used for such purposes. In ancient Hebrew burials, caves were used for long. Other examples of this kind of burials are the sepulchral graves or rock temples of western India and Sri Lanka as also the burial sites in the Dogon cliff. The Vikings of Scandinavia followed burial in water, a somewhat different version of which is the immersion of the cremated ashes of the dead in sacred rivers like the Ganga among the Hindus in India even today. The Parsees in India expose their dead to elements and scavenging birds like vultures in special structures known as the Towers of Silence, a practice now rarely followed. Likewise, some American Indian groups dispose of their dead people by leaving the bodies to the elements. Usually, such first burials are followed by a second one, the time difference between the two is the period necessary for the decomposition of the body. Apparently, it is a demonstration of the philosophical concept that death after all is a transition from the society of the living to that of the unknown or unknowable. Anyway, the Jewish belief is not
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