Lonely Planet author Anita Isalska learns about life and death from cultures around the world

But as shocking as it is to be confronted with our dark history, I am convinced that visiting these places has enabled me to live a more fulfilling and honest life.

I felt this most acutely in Hiroshima, Japan. As one of the sites of the atomic bombings in World War II, this Japanese city is almost synonymous with death and grief on a monumental scale.

The city is literally overshadowed by the destroyed Genbaku Dome, the only building to survive the 1945 explosion. Yet the culture is exuberant and welcoming, and people devote incredible energy to peace activism. The clear awareness of our mortality can inspire us to live full, liberated lives and fight for a better world.

2. Remembering the dead can be sad, funny or anything in between

My study of dark history has taken me to many cemeteries: war memorials, ossuaries, moss-covered old graveyards, you name it. Not all of them are sad places.

Take Romania’s Merry Cemetery, for example: it’s a colorful burial site where the tombstones are decorated with rainbow-colored cartoons. Among the sentimental portraits and tributes, you’ll also see caricatures of people getting drunk or insulting their son-in-law.

The idea of ​​remembering people in their gloriously flawed reality can be unsettling if you grew up with a taboo against speaking ill of the dead. But there are so many cultures that weave laughter and irreverence into their funeral customs. The Merry Cemetery is just one example; there are whiskey-soaked jokes at Irish wakes, and there’s Gai Jatra in Nepal, a memorial festival with painted moustaches and stand-up comedians.

When we lose someone, it triggers a kaleidoscope of different emotions. And while heartbreak and grief need space, humor and pure joy also need space.

3. In times of loss, community is the only consolation

I had previously been interested in death and burial customs around the world, but my own experiences with loss turned it into an obsession.

I wanted to understand how other cultures mourned and celebrated the lives of the dead. Coming from a Polish-British background where grief is equal parts vodka and a stiff upper lip, I wanted to gain that wisdom for myself.

Imagine how I felt coming from the strict UK and seeing a crowd of feather-clad dancers parade through the French Quarter in New Orleans. This was not a party, but a funeral, New Orleans style – not just friends and family of the deceased, but passers-by joining in the glittering, shimmering procession. Full of joy and respect, people who had never met the deceased joined in the party, perhaps dancing for their own deceased loved ones or for themselves. Compassion for the loss of others was a community project. None of us were alone.

4. Living with the dead is more powerful than letting go

I once went for a walk on the Day of the Dead in Potrero Del Sol Park in San Francisco, not far from where I live. This commemoration has its origins in Mexico but is celebrated throughout the Americas, and parts of San Francisco glow almost orange with their marigold garlands.

When you think of Day of the Dead, you might think of costumed processions and people wearing skull makeup, and that’s often true – but it’s also an intimate meeting between the living and the dead. Throughout the park, families had set up altars to remember their loved ones. Many participants were deeply grieving, reliving their sensory memories of the deceased by gathering their old perfumes, gym clothes and favorite beers.

Walking around the various altars, one felt as if one were encountering the dead as they were in life—what an honor!—rather than walking past the cold engravings on their tombstones. It is a tangible way for the dead to live on, just as they do in our minds.

5. The only thing that defies death is human creativity

We all live with the dead, especially soon after a loss. When we grieve, we talk about the dead as if they were entering the room. We even imagine their stern retorts or their roars of laughter in conversations in which they are not participating.

All over the world, people have found an extraordinary variety of ways to live with the dead. Often it’s celebrations like Day of the Dead, but sometimes more literal things – like wearing Korean cremation beads or even mummifying our loved ones, from ancient Egypt to today in some remote areas of Papua New Guinea.

For many of us, death is a place of no return, an unbridgeable gap… and yet here we are, bridging it endlessly with remembrance and celebration. This is human ingenuity: more eternal and enduring than death itself.

“Lonely Planet’s Guide to Death, Grief And Rebirth” is now available in all good bookstores.