loss of intimacy

I have been reading a book called Rest in Peace by Gary Laderman. It is actually a good book and worth checking out. 
One of the sections Laderman discusses is the loss of intimacy that we have with the deceased. This does not mean that we do not care about the person who is deceased but the relationship has changed. 
The relationship between the dead and the living began to change during the 20th century. It began to become easier to imagine the dead than to actually see them. There was once an intimacy that connected the remains of the deceased to the family members and friends. Three social factors were seen as a dividing factor:
- hospitals became the place of dying
- change in demographic patterns
- the modern funeral home grew in popularity

A mortality revolution was identified during the first part of the 20th century as there was a disappearance of the corpse from American lives.  Death rates began to decline and life expectancy began to increase. 

In regards to demographic patterns, Laderman discusses the aspects of improvements in sanitation and personal hygiene, breakthroughs in the medical field and with technologies, eating habits became healthier, and public health reforms.  As a result of this, the loss of a family member became less and less instead of occurring on a more frequent basis. 
As health needs changed, hospitals became the place to care for those who were sick and it became the place where people died. With the utilization of more hospitals, this also caused the separation of death from the lives of the family. Professionals in the medical field began to assume the power to define death at the beginning of the 20th century. As we moved towards the medicalization of death, the physician became the person in charge of the dying process.

Laderman, G. (2003). Rest in peace: A cultural history of death and the funeral home in twentieth-century America. New York: Oxford University Press.

If you want to check out his book, there is an ebook available: http://books.google.com/books?id=-gnGKq64MP0C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=funeral+at+home+in+early+20th+century&source=bl&ots=PPs3hu_dyE&sig=xiDSxZRw3ybVHPRunnQ2QexNJgk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=cTSpUqHQBY6-qQGHz4HYBg&ved=0CGUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=funeral%20at%20home%20in%20early%2020th%20century&f=false