ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates some of the ironies, paradoxes and absurdities involved in the contemporary late modern 'death system's' adamant aspirations and determination to deal with-and if possible 'kill off'-death and to control the span of life being lived prior to death. Instead of physiological death and material decay being the key temporal referents of social life, in late modern societies the temporal referents are now becoming social death and the shortening half-lives of memories of individual's existences. With late modernity the chapter witnesses new mortuary practices that have and will entail new cultural stances toward death transcendence and time. The chapter discuses the new ars moriendi and how it shifts the temporal themes of mortuary ritual from the future to the past, from reassurances of eternal life to restoring the past lives of the deceased. It has a tangible measure of completeness to share at funerals with fully checked-off bucket lists. The items themselves are largely defined by the market.
