Huge cemeteries on the outskirts of cities and impersonal funeral rites help to keep the fact of death away from the living. In the big cities the ceremonies of death have been increasingly undermined. Once beautifully simple forms of mourning have been replaced by synthetic memorial parks, plastic flowers, and servicing conveniences. The small graveyards of parishes and neighbourhood churches which once put people into daily contact with the fact of death, with its grief and sometimes with its joy, have vanished, replaced by cemeteries owned by corporations far away from people's daily business and family lives.
When circumstances prevent them from making contact with the experience of mortality, and living with it, people are left depressed, confused or diminished. This is not only true about death, but is true also about attitudes towards dying: the two facets cannot be separated.