Living close to other people's tragedies can make a dull, hard life easier to bear. Sad stories make your own troubles look smaller, and they bring some drama into empty days. Dealing with bad things all the time can also harden you against them, like fighting poison with poison.
Whoever handles a community's dead takes on the stain of death in its eyes. Neighbours will chat with them outside but never let them in the door, and blame them for bad luck. The work the village needs done is the same work that pushes the worker out.
In a struggling rural household, a man may refuse farm work as beneath him and call his gambling winnings his share, while his working wife supports the family and gets insults in return. Her paid labour earns her no respect at home. Meanwhile the young leave for the cities and stay there.
When a mourner is paid, sorrow becomes a job of costume and timing. The face is painted, the eulogy follows a formula of selfless devotion and hardship, and the crowd waits to be led into tears. A funeral can go ahead without anyone in it feeling much, because the feeling has been contracted out.
When someone has lived far longer than anyone expected, their death can bring a quiet relief rather than grief. People admit, if only to themselves, that they had been waiting. Some even feel a guilty thrill at the money it will bring.