Why do they care about dead bodies?

[XYZ]

I want to understand why people embalm and contain corpses as if they are objects of importance to be preserved, and so much importance is placed upon recovering the remains of dead soldiers and natural disaster casualties. Is it purely religious observance, or something more?

What brought this to mind is the discovery of a Argentine submarine that sank a year ago, and seeing news stories where relatives of the deceased are demanding that their skeletons be brought up from the bottom of the ocean and shipped back to them. Similarly with the North Korean thaw, I didn't understand why Americans cared so much that dead body parts of soldiers who died 50+ year ago were being dug up and returned, they are dead, dead.

After my father died, I declined to look at his body with my mother before they took it to the mortuary, and again before burial. There didn't seem to be any reason to, he was dead. I would not be looking at him, but a lifeless corpse, and it would have felt unsettling to deliberately look at his body once he was no longer there.

Personally, I would want my remains to be cremated and returned to the earth, not sitting around in a box indefinitely. 

[Shadowraix]

I get exactly what you mean.

Finding such value in the bodies seems like an oddly materialistic thing to me. I don't need the body to remember or grieve. 

I didn't care about the body, but the personality and connection I formed I did care about. When it is no longer present with the body then it became like any other inanimate object.

But from the absolute I see what I formed a connection with is not done for and is ever present in everything that exists.

[Hellspeed]

Imagine is your father, what would you do? 

[ground]

18 hours ago, XYZ said:

I want to understand why people embalm and contain corpses as if they are objects of importance to be preserved, and so much importance is placed upon recovering the remains of dead soldiers and natural disaster casualties. Is it purely religious observance, or something more?

Since people care about words which are empty of inherent meaning and merely symbolic why shouldn't they care about empty forms like corpses which are symbolic, too, in the same way?

[Flammable]

Caring for dead bodies is meaningless, but do not forget that not caring for them is meaningless as well 

[Aaron p]

I think we value a dead body in the same way we value an alive one. Valuing memories, thoughts, mental functions...I guess it's all imagined value isint it