There was a book a few years ago called The Denial of Death by Ernst Becker that won numerous awards. The basic idea is that civilization is a construct that makes it possible to avoid the fact that we are all going to die. His contention is that attempting to replace a religious explanation of reality with a scientific one is doomed to failure since science cannot supply an absolute meaning to life. For Christians, of course, death is not something to deny or avoid but part of human existence. Death is merely the transition to a fuller life. We remember the faithful departed because as they are we will one day be. The living and the dead are in the continuum of God’s love.
