Abstract conversations
In my home state, there is a morning ritual in every house. Open the obituary page and see who has passed on the previous day. This page is specific for each region of the state and updated each day. During my younger days, this covered only half a page. Now it goes over into almost two pages. I am not sure if this is an indication of increasing morality rates since this state has the highest life expectancy or that more people are using these services. A friend reminded me - this whole state is an old age home. I was talking to a 98 year old uncle who is physically and mentally very stable. His only regret is that he can’t read this page due to decreasing eye sight. This brought a realisation. In such connected communities reminders of death and mortality are always there if you open up news papers. I was reminded of a book written by L S Dugdale published during covid season on “the lost art of dying”. She talks about how our culture has overly medicalized death and how dying is o