Spent this morning burying a co-worker. He died of esophogeal cancer at age 48, leaving behind a wife and two teenage sons.

While it's sad that he's gone, it was one of those situations where he had lingered on in increasing pain, so most people were simply glad that his suffering was over. But my heart really went out to his wife and kids, as well as his parents.

It was also a bit of an anthropological study. He was a conservative Catholic, so the ceremony was full-on high ritual, though without the Latin. I, an agnostic, sat next to another co-worker who was born in China and raised in a Confucian/Buddhist tradition.

I found the service interesting, if a bit long. Interestingly, the most muttering afterward occurred among Catholics from more liberal churches, who found the heavy ritual medieval and oppressive.

I'm glad my co-worker is at peace, and hope that there really is a heaven like the one that he believed in.

A somber day.

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Man up.

Sorry for the loss of your co-worker. 48 is so young. That was the age of my sister when she died of cancer. What a horrible disease!! And even worse.....why we cannot cure it. Or prevent it.

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Clintonite after Clintonite. My question is, "So when does this so-called CHANGE start?"

Raytri, I too am sorry for the loss of your co-worker, and JP5 for the loss of your sister.

We can prevent many cancers - some experts even say MOST. Of course that doesn't help the ones who've already been stricken. What I don't understand is why this country couldn't spare even just a COUPLE billion from the annual anti-terror budget and put it toward fighting this TERRible disease. We have 400,000 people or so dying every year from the terror called cancer, and how many Americans have died from the other kind of terrorism - total, ever? I'm glad the terror war has been successful so far, but shouldn't somebody in a "culture of life" administration such as this one look at the numbers and see the need for a slight redistribution of funding?

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"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution."

- JFK

My condolences for the loss of your co-worker, raytri.

I have never been to a Catholic funeral. While I would find comfort in a more personal service, I imagine his family found a great deal of comfort in the Catholic ceremony. I'm sure I would find myself a little bewildered by it, too. Though anything that helps the family through their grief is good, IMO.

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"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." ~Ronald Reagan

Well, we have "x" amount of taxpayer dollars. We have to decide where it all goes. If you count all the decades we've been putting money towards the cure on cancer, it's a lot of money. Frankly, I think "cancer" should get the MOST by far of such dollars. NOT Aids. Yes, Aids is bad, but it effects far less people in our country than cancer does.....and the money should be divided accordingly, IMHO.

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Clintonite after Clintonite. My question is, "So when does this so-called CHANGE start?"

Part of the problem is that cancer isn't a single disease; it's dozens or hundreds of individual diseases, affecting different parts of the body. That's why we can treat skin cancer, for example, but have less success against lung cancer or brain cancer.

When deciding to spend research money, you can't just dump billions on "cancer." You have to allocate some to each kind of cancer -- except in those blue-sky research projects where they're trying to find a silver bullet that cures ALL cancers.

We have made huge strides against cancer in the last couple of decades. But the easy progress has been made; it'll get slower, harder and more expensive from now on.

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Man up.

Whatever helps the family is what should be done, naturally. The service is mostly for them. And the priests personalized the sermon, though that was a relatively minor part of the overall pageantry.

It also struck me as a little weird that, after a brief graveside service, everybody left and the body was actually buried without any witnesses -- not even the family. I assume that's not a Catholic thing, but more of cemetery standard practice. But if it was me, I'd want to be there through the whole thing.

Overall, I wasn't really bewildered by it; it wasn't the most conservative Catholic service I've ever been to. I was in Munich once over Christmas -- the heart of ultraconservative Bavaria -- and decided to check out a Catholic Christmas service. Centuries-old church, ultratraditional parish, in German mixed with Latin -- now THAT was medieval.

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Man up.

Its tough to lose a colleague. I understand the tedium of the funeral ritual, but it can serve as a soothing (though dull) support for the bereaved family. Sometimes I think, agnostic that I am, that this is an area where organised religion really serves a useful purpose - constructing supportive rituals on which people can fall-back at times of distress. Vonnegut says something on this in 'Cat's Cradle'; something to the effect that a very worthwhile and useful religion can be formulated and constructed on a complete pack of lies/fairy tales - foma (harmless untruths). (hey, wait a minute, maybe thats what I just dont get about George, oh no, my liberal illusions are crumbling around me, and in THAT sense, George was right all along!)

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"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."

Somber indeed. Although one thing about a work environment is the set rhythm and order to it, people are busy working so should not take long for the grieving to pass. I feel most for that family, lost an important component to their daily lives and probably lost their primary breadwinner.



As for the "full-on high ritual" of a catholic mass, I like em! the mass in latin, the choirs, the smoke effects, audience participation... put that in a real cathedral and its an impressive show.

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"When I'm in command, every mission is a suicide mission!" -Capt. Zapp Branigan
The United Church of the Latter Day Tangential Tarts

Sorry to hear about your co-worker.
Hmm, in all the Catholic funerals I've attended, I don't think I've ever been to one where anyone witnessed the actual burial, but I'm not sure if thats the norm or not.

The only non-christian funeral that I've ever attended was a classmate's father's funeral. They are Hindu. That was definitely a new experience for me. I guess it was the language and the type of chanting that was so different to me, not to mention the coconuts in the casket with him. Anybody know what that's about?

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Society is produced by our wants and government by our wickedness ~Thomas Paine