Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's irascible Secretary of War, was as odd as two left shoes. Among other things, he had an unreasoning, morbid fear of death. In 1833 he was living in a boarding house, and when a servant girl died of cholera and was buried immediately, he dug up the girl's grave - he couldn't believe she was actually dead since she had served him lunch that very same day.
Eight years later, when his daughter Lucy died, he had her body exhumed and kept the coffin in his room for two years. And when his first wife Mary died he dressed and redressed her in her wedding clothes.
We all, I suppose, process “death” in ways as distinctive as our DNA.
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