There’s this quote from a dream I had long ago that says “the dead prefer silver.” I’ve been trying to figure out what it means.
It’s captured my interest for years. The image that came with the quote was of silver coins over a corpse’s eyes. And an understanding, that what most people do to honor the dead does not matter, but that this “silver” is what would.
After some thought and reading, there are specific sets of dualities between gold and silver that might be relevant here.
From a historical perspective, silver was used more widely in the Old World (and preferred to gold) because silver was relatively rare until the Spanish began to exploit silver mines in the Americas. So ancient European, African, and Asian civilizations valued silver more than gold both for its rarity, but also its beauty.1
From an economic perspective, gold is the preferred currency for large transactions while silver is preferred for smaller, everyday, transactions.2
So in relation to death and dying, I could also draw a duality between a formal mourning event (like a funeral or memorial) and an informal personal event (like remembering or vigils). The formal events, like gold, are for larger expressions (i.e., happen once or infrequently), are showy, and public. The informal events are routine occurrences that keep the memory of the dead alive. In other words, the funeral is for the living. But the enduring memories are for the dead.