The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch PATRON ONLY REVIEW / Ad-Free

For a fascinating and sometimes even funny book on; the different ways corpses are used in order to benefit humanity, read Mary Roach's Stiff. It's fantastic.

Reference internalizing one's death: I am a veteran and back in the 80s, we would have what was called a periodic records review. This was done quarterly. Part of the process was updating one's last Will and testament. 4 times a year, I would have to state in case of death... At the time, being a typical GI, the only thing I owned was a kick ass sound system; Bose 901 speakers, Nakamichi tape deck, McIntosh preamp, etc. One kind of got used to the idea of one's possible demise. Oddly during Afghanistan/Iraq, I don't remember having to do this. Try skydiving for a possible near-death experience. Every time you pull that ripcord, you save your life.

If society applied 1% of the effort they use pretending to understand what happens after death (so about every religion) it would feel more regular to us as a species. Thanks for the ruminations Cliff, always enjoy you trying to put words to the challenging concepts we must grapple with in life.

If you're interested in taking a contemporary art detour, the British artist Damien Hirst tries to tackle some of the topics you mentioned in this (wonderful) review. His most famous work is actually titled "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living".