I think you’re right (the linen being his hammock, which he slept in while alive and was sewn into after death). I realized that what I was picturing might have been from Amadeus.
I think ignorance is responsible for a lot of it. You’d be surprised how many people think that embalming and sealing a casket stop decomposition almost completely. The body begins decomposing at the second of death (sometimes before) and short of storing it in liquid nitrogen it’s going to keep on decomposing; most corpses are going to be gelatinous goop and bones within a few months of burial in spite of the embalmer or quality of coffin.
Medgar Evers was a total fluke- a variety of chance factors, most importantly a moisture lock, essentially mummified his body to the point that when it was exhumed more than 20 years after his burial he was still completely recognizable and only slightly decomposed. His youngest child looked at the corpse because he had no memory of his father and it was the only chance he had to see his face. (Lincoln’s body was also said to be surprisingly well preserved, though the flag it was draped in had disintegrated. Most bodies though are unrecognizable within a fairly short period of time. (Even Evers probably decomposed much more in the first few months of his re-interrment than in the 20 years before he was disturbed.)
Morbid but true and even relevant: I knew a man at Mercer University Medical Library in Macon, Georgia who became a plastination engineer. (Plastination is a process in which remains [not usually full body] are dehydrated and injected with silicon polymer and used for educational purposes or even art museum exhibits). This is the most up-to-date form of practical mummification. It’s an extremely expensive and high-tech process. (Somewhere on here I have the story of how on the day I met him he did show and tell of human remains [including conjoined twins who died at birth] for a 6th grade class- it didn’t go well.)
According to Arthur the Plastinating Librarian, even these body parts/bodies have to be disposed of after a few years because they continue to degrade. All of the aerobic and 99% of the anaerobic bacteria has been destroyed by this time and the process costs tens of thousands of dollars and can take months or even years, and yet just exposure to light and room temperature and touch/handling will ultimately destroy the remains. There’s just no beating the decay of dead bodies (and I totally don’t understand why people even spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars to try).
My father’s a mortician, and in his view, it’s all about greed. Funerals are more for the living, rather than the dead.
Ralph Stanley? It sounds like the same version that’s on the “O Brother Where Art Thou?” soundtrack. (Which, by the way, is an awesome CD.)
I wouldn’t say greed. I’d say there’s alot of conspicuous waste going on. The survivors often try to prove how rich they are by spending too much money. Go to any cemetery and you’ll see some amazingly huge headstones.
On a side note, you’re a geeky girl who likes animals and (as I learned while researching getting dad’s corpse from sunny Florida to the city of brotherly love) whos father is, as a funeral director, rich. Why couldn’t you be Jewish?
Guin is a witch doctor?
Mom never wanted to have a funeral so after spending down her estate before and at the nursing home, plus Medicare, we “kids” agreed to a “viewing” (vs. funeral) for her offspring, no embalming, then a (cardboard, I think) cremation container, with cremains delivered to sis by funeral director who lived across street from her, in a cardboard box (the ashes, not the residence). Medicare paid funeral home an apparent pittance and our co-pay was $400 (and the fun. director bitched about that!)
Read The American Way of Death, By Jessica Mitford and other tomes about the ripoff industry and its conglomerates that buy out the mom and pop parlors but keep the old name on the door to fool you.
No, the real marketing gimmicks are when they offer you a lifetime warranty on the casket.
I plan on donating whatever they can use and having the rest rendered extra crispy.
Although I am considering getting my urn ahead of time, because knowing mrAru, I might get a stainless steel box with my name, a timestamp and 'DFO" engraved on it.
[he is an emt on the side and suffers the peculiarities of the humor and DFO means done fell over. :smack: ]
I just read the story about the recovery of the body of Commodore JP Jones, founder of the US Navy. He died in Paris, sometime around 1794? and was buried an an obscure cemetary-which later was forgotten. The USA sent a tean to France in 1894 to recover the body-and they had quite a time locating it. Anyway, when the casket was found, JPJ was so well-preserved tat his face was recognizable. An autopsy was performed on the body, and confirmed that he died of pneumonia. Anyway, old JPJ was reburied at the chapel in Annapolis (at the USNA). Was the preservation unusual? Or were caskets better made then. 100 years is a long time!
It could have been due to vapor lock (as with Medgar Evers) that killed the aerobic bacteria, or a freak dehydration that caused mummification. Of course it could also be exaggerated, or remains other than JPJs that had the same basic facial structure.
Abraham Lincoln’s face was also recognizable when he was reinterred in 1901 (though he was given the best embalming available in 1865 which would certainly have helped).
From wiki’s Lincoln’s burial and exhumation:
Bodies have been recovered in deserts that were believed to be decade old murder victims which in fact turned out to be centuries old, and more famously the bog bodies (which were not embalmed at all) were believed to be years rather than many centuries old when first discovered. Some bodies were given crude preservatives of honey or (most notoriously with the fake mummy market in Victorian/Edwardian era Egypt) bitumen that caused far more preservation than would otherwise have happened.
PS- Zachary Taylor, who was also not embalmed, was also recognizable after 140 years when he was exhumed to be tested for arsenic poisoning. (The test for arsenic poisoning was negative.)
I can’t find a cite (not that I looked that hard), but I remember a few years ago a coffin was unearthed in one of the former 13 colonies that scientists said contained a near perfect vacuum lock. Tests were to be conducted from it on the air quality of the 18th century when it was opened. David Letterman made a quip to the effect of “They determined that air in the 18th century had far less pollutants than our own but for some reason it absolutely reeked of dead guy”.
Then there’s the strange-but-true (not an urban legend) tale of the posthumous adventures of outlaw Elmer McCurdy, whose body wound up as a hanged [from a noose] “wax” mannequin in a Long Beach, California amusement park haunted house. The proprietors had no idea it was a real body until his arm fell off and bone was exposed during, of all things, preparation for an episode of the Six Million Dollar Man. Pics of assorted goriness of poor dead Elmer.
There were also famous mummies purported to be John Wilkes Booth (said to have survived the fiery barn and died of natural causes much later), Jesse James (proven by DNA to have been buried in the grave where it was said he was in the 1880s), Geronimo (also proven to be in his rightful grave and not in the Skull & Bones clubhouse, though the remains exhibited were really those of an Indian of his era) and others that toured county fairs and similar attractions. Rumor has it that when Juan Peron returned to power in Argentina that Evita’s perfectly remained corpse (that her corpse was perfectly preserved is true) was given her old suite of rooms at the Casa Rosada and exhibited at occasional dinner parties decked in furs and jewelry, but there’s no confirmation of that and the odds are slim). Herod the Great was rumored to have practiced necrophilia with the honey preserved body of his second wife Mariamne as well, but he could have just had a sweet tooth.
Yet for the same price, if not cheaper, why not go for a handmade wooden one from these folks. I think their decor fits in much better as a wine rack before being needed.
My (late) priest died of lung cancer. When he was given the news that he was dying, he had a plain plywood box made. He did put shelves in it and use it as a bookcase until he needed it.
StG