So, I started posting this as a response to the Will Smith post and Juliane's response about the fragmentation of the body of both an organ donor and recipient, but my response got too long :)
I found Juliane's comment about the fragmentation of the body an interesting viewpoint that got me thinking . . .
We place such a sanctity on the "body" that even after death, the body is still treated with care and consideration. It is dressed in its best clothes and placed in a beautiful box. People gaze at it and cry and say goodbye to the person who had lived in the body. We expect funeral directors to treat the body with dignity. We expect pall bearers to carefully carry the body from place to place. We bury it in the ground and we place a marker on top so that for all of eternity, the body can be located.
Why is the body as a whole sacred? What happens to a limb or organ that is removed? Is it simply discarded in a biologically safe way? It must be, right? Otherwise, we would be attending funerals for body parts? How many of those kinds of funerals have you seen? I can recall one, on the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, when the little boy's arm is buried.
My father-in-law passed away this month and I went to his funeral. He had been embalmed with his wedding band on and the funeral home was having a terrible time getting the ring off of his finger. My ex-husband was livid because they were in danger of damaging his finger in their attempts. I use this to illustrate that a limb, when attached to the whole, is just as sacred as any other portion of the body. So, why don't we have funerals/burials/rituals when just a limb is gone?
Is the body sacred so long as it contains the "life" of the person? Is my hand not as much me as my face? My heart? My brain? Because I can still exist without my hand, my hand is less valuable than my brain, right? But according to one of our writers in the last section (I don't have my book, sorry!), it is the sum of all the parts that make the whole have value. All cannot function without the service of the one.
I just thought this was interesting to ponder.
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I used to imagine a funeral for a body part. My dad is missing a toe from a lawnmower incident that happened when I was an infant. Whenever anybody asks about it, he laughs and says, "There I was, brand new father and already one toe in the grave!" When I was little, I imagined the funeral of my dad's toe every time I heard it.
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