Random Thoughts: Mortality

I've been thinking a lot recently about mortality. Don't know why. Maybe it's because the daughter in law of the man two beds down from me in hospital didn't bother ringing his five sons to inform them he was dying because it was 2am. Or that in the second ward they moved me to, one of the other patients, a 91year old lady, was shouting out all night 'If you're there God, please help me', or the look of fear in my dad's eyes as I repeated my symptoms to doctor after doctor alongside the glances they all gave each other, or my issues on LAD that have been plaguing me since May and affecting my faith big time, or maybe it's just the fact I've seen more episodes of Six Feet Under in the last 9 days than is actually healthy, but either way, I've been thinking about it a lot!
When I was young I was terrified of death, and thinking of a conversation with James on a walk last April, and seeing the Six Feet Under series I've been thinking about what a difference it makes having 'Open Casket' Funerals. About the way our culture shuts death away and doesn't acknowledge it properly. And I was thinking that maybe if we went back to the days when bodies were kept in the home until the funeral we wouldn't be so afraid or unwilling to discuss the topic. If something is seen as natural it's more easily accepted.
Then one episode I was watching the restorist in the program show pictures of his best work and then said that they were cremated and 'what a waste', and I thought, because obviously it's much less of a waste burying them underground?! And then I got to thinking about all the money that we put into embalming and restoring dead bodies only to let them decompose. Why do we spend so much money? I mean don't get me wrong, when we played Smoker's Wild as kids we always wanted to be the undertaker because they got all the money, and I appreciate it's a profession that needs to make a living. But is there really a need to spend money on making up dead bodies rather than using it for something productive.
But they do say that funeral's are for the living rather than the dead- which brings me back to the open casket thing. Although I think some faiths would say the funerals do actually have something to do with the soul of the deceased and are important. But can't your soul be restored without your body being? And that just leads me back to my whole issue on bodily resurrection and the after life. I'm going round and round in circles and something tells me I'm never going to come to an answer anyway because it's the one thing we can't avoid but know nothing about.