Respecting the Dead

I credit Dr. Zahi Hawass with teaching me how to respect death and those who have passed on.  As a child I was intensely interested in Ancient Egypt and watched whatever documentaries I could get my hands on.  Dr. Hawass is a well-known archeologist and Egyptologist who appeared in many of these documentaries.  I realize there's been some controversy surrounding him this past decade but when I was younger, he absolutely was my hero.

I admired his care and attention to artifacts and how he would pray over a tomb or sarcophagus before opening it.  He always referred to mummies as he/she, never "it".  He fought for artifacts in London and France to be transported back to Egypt where they belong.
I picked up on his reverence for the dead and for the customs surrounding death.  I noticed that ritual is a key aspect to the afterlife.
Now I'm very careful if I take pictures of graveyards or graves, which is rare.  I tag all the pictures of dead people or graveyards on my tumblr with "rip".  Whenever I'm in a cemetery I try to help keep it clean and throw away trash.  I fix flower arrangements and decorations.  I want to learn more about multicultural death rituals so I can be respectful in a broader way.  I learned last year that in Jewish culture, it's a sign of respect to place small stones on graves as a way to maintain the grave and show that the deceased hasn't been forgotten.
Anyway, respecting the dead is important to me, and it's a quality I expect paranormal researchers and/or those interested in the paranormal to have.