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This article describes the main characteristics of funeral rituals, delving beyond their organisational aspects to bring out the underlying issues. Holding on to the dead, separation from the living and rearrangements of the positions occupied by the living in relation to the community of the dead – these are the main aspects of a pattern of ritual that varies between different cultures but is also universal. Funeral practices can be described and “explained” by showing how they arise from social imperatives or “understood” by saying that customs provide ways for the bereaved to demonstrate their attachment to loved ones and symbolically deny their loss. But the fundamental issue is that funerary ritual, which extends beyond the burial itself, forces societies to reach beyond their capacities for communication. And this is precisely what every culture and the work it does is all about – reaching for the incommunicable