Remains
by Jeremy Killian

"Nancy Reagan follows the casket carrying her husband's remains." We have heard phrases akin to that all week, as if President Reagan had been burned beyond recognition in a fire, or dismembered horribly; as if all that was left were remains. Why the emphasis on the remains; why did the press not say "the President's body", or even "Mr. Reagan"? Yet, virtually every time the media referred to Mr. Reagan, the term "remains" followed.

I realize that this might be an inconsequential point to most; a discussion of semantics (not entirely unlike a discussion that I had once about whether "Charms" could truly be "Lucky") that might be a waste of time. However, I do wonder if the truth has snuck in through the back door of jargon. I wonder if, as happens so often in our language, the onomatopoeia of a word reveals something of the "soullishness" of the speaker.

Since the dawn of mankind, even pagans longed to believe that man was more than a series of cogs and wheels. For some reason, the soul, or spirit, of a person was always of greater value than the body. Men long to believe that their existence will not end, and since the body is so obviously perishable, men hope that another part, their essence, will continue. The ancients burned their dead on pyres, believing that finally, the eternal part of men would escape with the vanishing smoke. All efforts to describe man without an everlasting component stand in stark opposition to the historical conscience of mankind.

Thus it is only natural that we call a corpse "remains." On some level, this term acknowledges that there is something missing from this collection of cogs and electrical firings. The essence of Mr. Reagan is gone; he left his remains.

So what happens next? Many would deny the existence of Heaven or Hell based on purely scientific terms. These are typically the same people that would deny man his soul. Can we truly trust someone who would give us sixteen pragmatic proofs that gravity does not hold things down, or that the sky is not up?

As Ronald Reagan "touches the face of God," he is no longer concerned about his remains, but perhaps if we pause to consider this term, his remains might yield up something other than President Reagan; they might yield up the truth.