Above all, the professor failed to understand that family is sacred. And the theme of family being sacred versus disposable can easily be used for storytelling. If it hasn't already been used.

My actual grandparents died when I was very young, but I was lucky to have a surrogate grandmother figure, a family friend whose actual family all lived far away. She lived to 99 with all her marbles. When she was on her death bed, she shared memories of high school dances and trips with her husband. Most of all, she kept saying how lucky she was.

Yossi, so true. Our families are, for better or worse, our shipmates on this journey called life. And decades upon decades of tiny, daily gestures and interactions can create a quilt of meaning far transcending spiritual concepts.

What a beautiful memory, Amos. And how wonderful this woman was in that place emotionally. That's one lesson death teaches us: How damn lucky we are.

And on the other side, just over the horizon, who are they most looking forward to meet? Not God, the Creator, made manifest, but...family... and the spirits of those with whom they passionately shared this life just ending. Screenwriters trying too hard to get that right and failing, and trying again, is an inherently good thing. A professor whose soul has been so petrified by a life spent in the passionless pursuit of passionless ideas that his tools of choice in the classroom are ridicule and cruelty? Not so much.

All good points being made here. Also - and I'm not sure how relevant this is - but aren't most of Shakespeare's plays really about family? And what about The Odyssey or Oedipus Rex? Some of our most cherished pieces of literature are deeply entrenched within the family unit.

John, you took the nice route re that professor. Me? I'd just call him an asshole. I spent the last 12 days of my mother's life at her bedside. I recounted that experience here. In talking with her best friend, she told me she had gone out with my mother. While having dinner, my mother had said, "I'm ready to be with Sam." That's my dad, who had died in 2003. That night, my mother had a stroke. Sent her into a coma. Such is the power of people to reunite with their loved ones, even in death.

And how many movies have we seen where in the Denouement, ghostly images of deceased friends and family emerge -- smiling, happy -- looking down on their beloved ones here on Earth. Harry Potter, Star Wars. Heck, I just screened "A Little Princess," the 1917 Mary Pickford film written by Frances Marion, and that movie showed a ghostly image of Sara's [Pickford] parents appearing over her shoulder, all aglow. What does that say but we WANT to be united with our loved ones, that connection we feel which is such a powerful pull.

How very true. This connection, this pull ... It has to be one of the most common wants through out all of human experience, regardless of race, gender or religion.

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