The seed is the vegetable equivalent of a fertilized egg, and the Earth acts as the seeds womb. Development begins once the seed is planted in the Earth. In mammals the fertilized egg must be planted in the womb of a female for development. Man reproduces by means of sex cells, however, the Earth Mother reproduces her creations by means of any one of the other body cells with the information stored in the DNA of the nucleus of the cell.
I walk alone and wait about the Earth, which is my Mother's gate knock-knocking with my staff from night to noon and crying "Mother, open to me soon! Look at me Mother, won't you let me in? See how I wither, flesh and bone and skin! Alas! When will these bones be laid to rest? (Chaucer)
While it is taken for granted that the burial of a seemingly lifeless seed will lead to the development of a plant, when man plants an equally seemingly lifeless person in the ground it is considered a great tragedy. Solemn pallbearers carry the human seed as though they were conveying it to the outskirts of the Solar System. Relatives clad in black are filled with despair at every muffled word of the last rites. The human seed consigned to the Earth, is bitterly mourned. Far from having the atmosphere of a garden, full of the promise of a fruitful new season, a graveyard has an atmosphere of finality, as though a hidden hand which condemns humanity to eternal oblivion has reached out and snatched for itself a struggling victim.
A cemetry saddens us because it is the only place in the world in which we do not meet our dead again. (Francios Mauriac)
When you bury a seed in the ground you can later see the plant growing over the burial place. By observing the growth of a plant, your eyes provide testimony that is the seed is not wiped out of existence.
We do not see Nature with our eyes, but with our understanding and our hearts. (William Hazlitt) When you return to a graveyard a few weeks after the planting, you do not see your planted friend standing, young and vigorous, above the soil where you planted him. Mother Earth reproduces man with information stored in the DNA of his planted body. Your "individuality", "identity", that which makes you uniquely who you are, consists of information in the form of energy, and it is planted with you in the soil. Sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. (William Cullen Bryant