Abstract
Death is not a single concept. When I've been writing about funeral rituals, the mourning for Princess Diana, roadside shrines, the reporting of death in the news media, afterlife beliefs, or the contemporary interest in reincarnation, friends and acquaintances have been intrigued and have often given me, unasked, their own experiences and opinions. When I've been writing about dying or bereavement the conversation quickly turns to other things. Le Rochefoucauld once wrote, ‘Death, like the sun, cannot be looked at directly’. We need a filter. So when I've been writing about the filters—such as rituals, belief systems, or media reports—friends and acquaintances are attracted. But if they fear I'm looking directly at death, without a filter, they turn away. As would have most human beings in history and prehistory.