Both Lenin and Lincoln were stuffed chock full of preservatives. They did so for viewing purposes - Lincoln’s body had a long journey home from Washington to Springfield, and of course the warm spring weather wouldn’t have been the ideal conditions for a natural viewing. Lenin got a small break - the cold Russian winter kept his body frozen for a couple of months, but he had to be chemically preserved later on while the mausoleum was built. Even now they have to drain him and refresh the preservant supply on a yearly basis, IIRC.
Several posters have expressed the opinion that viewings are creepy and morbid.
My maternal grandmother spent the last few years of her life rotting away in a nursing home. My mother had bad memories of helplessly watching her wither away.
When Grandma died, the embalmer made her look much better, healthier, and not in pain. Mom found the viewing to be a great comfort.
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As for themselves, Mom and Dad both favor cremation. They grew up during the Depression, and they prefer frugality. Dad has a plot in his family’s cemetary. Mom does not want to spend eternity surrounded by strangers, so she has specified a location where she wants her ashes scattered.
As for me, cremate and scatter. Real estate is too @#$% expensive to waste on graveyards. The PC people want me to recycle, so I will start recycling!
I think how much of a help viewing is, largely depends on the quality of the embalming.
In my grandmother’s case, she looked kind of freaky and deformed, although she had died very suddenly. Not helpful.
In my grandfather’s case, however, they did a perfect job, and he looked very peaceful and dignified. It was kind of comforting to see him.
My father ended up looking like a completely different person. In his case, the funeral home opened up the casket for us before the guests arrived; we collectively decided that with him looking like that, there was no point in having a viewing, so we asked them to close the casket. Instead, we put a photograph on top of the casket, and made two big display boards with some of our favourite photos of him.
As for the pine box option, I’m pretty sure my mom said that she chose that for her parents when they went in the past few years, because we weren’t having a viewing or a graveside visit. There really was no reason to spend the money on anything else. It’s not like we didn’t so something for them. My grandmother had played piano and organ in that church for about 50 years, and her memorial looked almost like Sunday morning service in attendance.
Gosh darn you, I was going to be the first person to link to that! A pox on you!
I have a wonderful book called Stiff by Mary Roach. Did you know bodies donated to science can become crash-test dummies or be decapitated and used to train plastic surgeons?
Also, I can’t recommend The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch enough. He’s a poet-undertaker whose essays justify burial and modern funeral tradition far better than I could.
As for me, I’d like my usable organs to be donated and then have the leftovers buried. I’ve always loved cemeteries, and I can’t imagine not being a part of one some day. My survivors are welcome to cheap out on the actual burial, but I intend to leave money in a trust for the headstone, which I’d like done in as close to the style of colonial/early America as can be found today. Cemetery art is beautiful, and maybe I’m vain, but I want some of it dedicated to me.
The last time I heard about corpses being used in an, uh, experimental military fashion, it was after they’d been discected by the med students. The students have to practice sewing people up, too, and it makes no never mind to the army that your dead body had its innards played with before they got it. Also, the story I heard about used “unclaimed” bodies- they weren’t wanted back by the donor’s families.
My grandma looked a hell of a lot better than she did the day before she died, but it was still weird. They had glued her mouth shut. (the nursing home had lost her false teeth)
Upon reading these, um, “quaint” posts, I recalled hiking up on Mt. Washington once with my dad. We passed a plaque on a stone that read something to the effect of “So-and-so died near this spot on such-and-such a date”. I stated out loud how unfortunate that was. My dad quickly said, “Why? He died doing exactly what he loved.” So, I’m guessing my hiking-obsessed father would probably love to be left on a mountain somewhere, either in ashes or in a trash bag, as he has so often gruffly suggested.
As for me, I haven’t given much thought to the whole ordeal, seeing as I have nearly reached the ripe old age of 21. I like the idea of having a headstone, but I don’t really want to take up too much space. Maybe if I donate enough moola to my old high school they can bury my ashes under the cornerstone of whatever new building they plan to construct, and engrave on it “Okaybear’s Ghost is Currently Haunting the Dining Hall”. Oh, to creep out the freshmen, that would be a hoot. Or a haunt. Eesh.
I’m for cremation as well. I would like my ashes to brought up to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in the Superior National Forest and sprinkled there. Hopefully, my friends would be able to do it. I would also like a little stone plaque placed there (although, Im pretty sure that’s illiegal). Hopefully they won’t sprinkle me anywhere near a trail or portage, but rather by a rock outcropping that juts out into a lake. No service, no memorial, just sprinkle and go about and have some fun.
I don’t care what they do with me after I’m dead. I won’t be there, it won’t affect me in any way. Death services are for the living, so whatever my wife wants done with me after my viable organs are removed and used to extend somebody else’s life is fine with me. Or not, it will make no difference. I hope she doesn’t spend a lot of money, but if it’s worth it to her, I can’t really object.
Until I read this:
Is it possible to designate that you want your corpse to be used as a crash-test dummy? Cause that would be so cool. Even better, put me in one of those rocket sleds they crash into walls at mach 2 out in the deserts of the Southwest. Vaporized in less than a thousanth of a second. That would be awesome.
I think you’ve answered your own question. Being interested in history, one of the things I often think about is how for the vast, vast bulk of people in this world, their names will never be remembered or mentioned much more thatn 25 or so years beyond their death. Yet most people, at least unconsciously, want to feel important. Few people want to admit that their name will not live on the lips of men, that in a few years, no one will know that they were even on this earth. I think that the headstone is one attempt to have at least some visible record of the common man’s existence.
Until they come up with a cure for dying of Being Cool, I will be cryogenically frozen and the entire machinery, along with sufficient power to last well into the 95th century, will be buried fifty feet underground in a vast chamber filled with statues of myself and poems about me written by me. I will personally place a curse on the place by pumping the air full of some ghastly disease I haven’t decided on yet (but it’ll probably involve puking). The chamber will be enclosed within a purpose-built spacecraft, also buried fifty feet down, which is designed to function as an escape pod should the earth be destroyed during my long wait for a cure. Should the earth be about to plummet into the sun/collide with a comet/elect President Cosby, the spacecraft will take off, proceed until it finds a suitable Class-M planet, seed it with my DNA, and bury itself, waiting for my descendants to come up with a cure instead. Then when I’m finally cured and released I will reign FOREVER as THE MAN WITH THE RIGHT IDEA.
I should add that the power requirements to maintain this burial-plan will actually increase the likelihood of the earth’s demise substantially. In fact they’ll ensure it. But don’t worry, as the ship leaves everyone on earth will receive a free t-shirt.
In other news, is there no society on earth where burial customs are designed to prevent the deceased getting out, rather than nature getting in?
You realize, of course, it will say “My planet got destroyed to preserve the body of THE MAN WITH THE RIGHT IDEA and all I got was this lousy T-shirt”.
Nothing fancy for me. Just a pine box. Or maybe stone? Yeah that’s it - a stone sarcophagus! In a pyramid! A huge Egyptian pyramid that can be seen shining across the desert for miles and miles…
Hey, hey, hey Actually, that’s the best idea you’ve put forth. It’d sure be better than the choices we’ve got now. You might just be the man w/ the right idea yet. Oh wait…you didn’t endorse Cosby did you.
