The Significance Of Funeral Transportation

Over the years, it’s easy to see how the funeral procession has progressed. The dead have always played a significant role in every culture, worldwide, and though some cultures, may honor the dead in different ways than others, the same reverence is paid to the last ride of the dead, all over. It’s not merely the process of putting a dead man in the ground: funeral processions mean much more than that. Regardless of religious beliefs, and spiritual dogma, Atheists and fundamentalists alike continue to pay respect to this timeless custom. So what is it about the hearse, the black carriage, or even the funeral Harley that makes people turn off their headlights, drive more slowly, or even pull off the road, pause and take note?

It’s not religious, so much as spiritual; it can be boiled, simmered and reduced down to a general sentimentality for the end of any man, woman, or child’s life. That person, now entering into the spiritual realm of their choice, deserves the respect of a last ride. The process of taking an object to be buried, surely, but also, the process of delivering a being to the afterlife. Whether it is by mule and cart, towards a mass grave, in times of plague, and war, or by a black carriage and a long procession of royalty towards an opulent tomb, –men and women will step aside to let them through.

It is the last ride. The hearse, the cart, the carriage, delivers the dead to the afterlife, to their final resting place, and it has been marked as an event since the dawn of humanity’s existence. The next time you’re complaining about funeral traffic, consider your own last ride, and whether you’d want to endure the sound of honking horns, or road rage, –in your own cold box.