"In cultures where individual achievement and aggrandizement are crucial to one's experience of self,the very notion of death evokes immense anxiety, because mortality limits one's opportunity to make a mark in life. Where identity is experienced in terms of connection and relationship, one might assume the idea of death would be just as terrifying insofar as it disconnects us from those we love. But, in fact, another dynamic comes often into play.
The little boy's smile is so like his father's, and his eyes are those of his grandmother. He laughs like his mother's sister, and so, probably, will his grandchildren. The continuities are so evident we can rest in them, feeling ourselves held securely in a web of intricate design. Life is not snuffed out when an individual dies; it gathers itself in and reconfigures from one instant to the next." (Carol Lee Flinders)
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