scary!
I believe death is one of those things we donât talk enough about, but should. This excludes making fun of people who died, though. In my opinion it would do us all good if we lived constantly knowing we will die, and acted like it.
When you understand that all of us are going to leave this world, plastic surgery or who won the superbowl seems fickle, and it makes you want to feed the worldâs hungry and rescue little babies. Constant knowing of impending death would seem to cause oneâs world to get darker, but Iâve found that to be completely untrue. Itâs the opposite.
Even scarierâŚ
http://www.popco.org/irc/popclocks/
Interesting that war isnât in the top 20âŚ
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/press/pr12.php
Wow, pneumonia is ahead of AIDS, malaria, TB, and diarrhea. Itâs amazing what makes the news and what doesnât.
An excellent, excellent book on this very topic. Although it is written from a Buddhist perspective, a lot of the insights would apply to any form spirituality.
When I die, I will no doubt be buried in the graveyard on top of Lone Cherry Hill. The same graveyard where my grandparents, great grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and neighbors are buried. Where all funerals wind up.
So many old country cemeteries have been plowed under by a government with no respect for the dead. Theyâd rather have a highway that sends more people to their graves, than a graveyard that kills nobody.
As a child, I used to go for walks with my grandparents up in the graveyard. I enjoyed looking at the strange old tombstones and reading the dates from so long ago. Some of the old stones were very plain. Just little blocks or even just a piece of sand rock. Others were large and in the shape of trees or in the shape of a lectern with a Bible atop it. All were interesting.
So many names. Often names Iâd hear in stories of the old days from my relatives. There were times I knew names of relatives from their graves before Iâd ever heard of them otherwise.
Iâve got a picture taken on top of that hill, at the old Lone Cherry schoolhouse, probably about 1910 or 1912, with my great grandmother as a little child, among her schoolmates. Also in the photo are my great great grandmother and my great great great grandmother.
In 1999, we went up that hill and laid my great grandmother to rest, among family.
Nice thought Walden.
I would wish to be cremated and have my ashes scattered around here
My happiest days involved cycling up to here with my Son, looking around the place, and wondering about Time.
I have told him already, if there is a problem with my ashesâŚtell them to get a F*&%ing vacum cleaner and suck me up 
Slan,
D.
Did you all know that when Ingrid Newkirk (the crazy lady who founded PeTA) dies she has it written into her will that her skin be made into wallets and belts and sold, and that her muscles be fried on a grill to make âNewkirk nuggets?â It freaked me out when I read that. I am all for animal rights and fair treatment (as Iâm sure everybody knows, hehe) but thatâs just a bit much, I think. Sheâs out of her mind, in my opinion.
Gives a whole new meaning to Hoovering
I was under the impression that Hoover might mean something different over there 
Slan,
D.
I find it interesting that car wrecks listed as #10
What percentage of the worldâs population owns a car?
It is also one of the only man made causes of death listed.
In India one often sees dead bodiesâcorpses being carried off
to the river to burn or burning by the river. Itâs liberating, in fact.
You know you will die, itâs practical and real, and you tend
to take yourself less seriously. Also use your time wisely;
spend less time day dreaming.
I think one of the reasons for all the violence and murder
in our movies is the denial of death in our culture.
I wrote this in Benares.
Burning Ghat
Air black with seared flesh stench
And shimmering heat.
From a blazing pyre sticks a smoking foot.
Dogs quarrel over bones and bits of meat
While round the sizzling torso ragged attendants go,
Turning it with poles.
No camera! shouts a holyman standing on the wall.
I show him my empty hands.
A corpse on a litter is carried to a pyre,
Round head lolling under the white shroud.
And they hustled him into the elevator on a litter,
Pressing the oxygen mask to his face.
Sometimes God needs more angels in heaven, she said.
Last night God took your father.
Later they said he had gone to Europe.
Here Death is at last!
I go to the pyre
And take the corpseâs head between my hands,
Grasping through the shroud its deadness.
No! the holyman cries
And I step back again.
A small boy,
His shaved head shining in the smoky light,
Walks by me holding a wand of flaming straw
To light the funeral pyre.
I donât.
Neither does Ralph Nader.
Starvation isnât on the list? That does surprise me.
Actually it doesnât mean anything over here. Izz just picked that up from you folks. We say âvacuumingâ or ârun the sweeperâ.
Unless heâs talkinâ about the Hoover Manoover 
Yeah, seeing dead people being carried to their cremation is not really a thing you can miss when staying in Varanasi. The whole public spectacle is in stark contrast to the Western way of handling death, where the whole thing is seemingly hushed up and swept under the carpet.
I donât know that itâs hushed up. At least here, deaths are announced in the newspaper, along with the time and place of public viewings of the body⌠when the whole community is invited to come and view the corpse. And the time and date of the funeral service is also published. Funeral processions usually have police escorts, and traffic is stopped through town (assuming youâre in town), while the coffin is taken from the church to the cemetery.
So in 2005 there were 62 million deaths?
In 2005 there were 20+ births per 1000 people worldwide.
In 2005 there were 8.8 deaths per 1000 people worldiwde.
I donât think itâs scary at all. In fact the birth rate is staggering in comparison. And people wonder why all available wilderness is being destroyed.
I donât know about Oklahoma, of course, but funerals in India were unlike anything I have seen in Western Europe.