Why corpses shouldn't be sacred

Earlier this summer, a funeral director was sent to prison for 20 years for his grossly negligent way with corpses. Not only did Robert Bush fail to cremate and bury people, but he gave grieving relatives the ashes of strangers. Some of us might find his sentence a touch draconian. What sent this man to jail was really superstition — the belief that dead bodies are somehow sacred, and must thus be treated with special respect. Ironically, it’s a respect they might not have been granted when they were alive. Some people are revered only when they’re six feet under. It may be that our reverence for the dead masks a certain fear of them. Tombstones are usually inscribed with a few pious reflections on the deceased, but they’re as weighty as they are in order to keep them down. Otherwise the d