There is no human experience that frightens us so much as death. The prospect of death raises all the important questions. What, if anything, does my life mean? Is there any goal or purpose to my life? Was Shakespeare’s Macbeth right in summing up all human existence as ‘a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing’? Is there anything more, or is death the end?
Despite the modern advancements in science and medicine, we are helpless before it. In the crypt of St. Leonard’s church, Hythe, Kent, hundreds of visitors come each summer to stare at 500 neatly shelved skulls and 8,000 femur bones stacked carefully besides them. These human remains challenge healthy young tourists with the unspoken certainty: ‘As we are, so you will soon be.’ Looking at a display of bones, it is hard to picture the exhibits as people who once lived, loved, laughed and cried like us. Is that it? Is death the only c
