Interesting. More and more funerals that I’ve attended recently have been closed casket, if there was even a casket. Cremation is becoming a very popular choice around here.
Now, when I was younger, virtually every funeral was open casket. The noted exception was that of my cousin, who died in a horrific auto crash.
orthodox church has open casket/coffin. unless the condition of the deceased would not allow it.
i’ve been to quite a few funerals. my mum was a choir member, and as she was an older parent she was concerned that my first funeral would be her’s or my father’s. so she would take me with her when she sang at them.
i got a bit accustomed to it. until a good friend died in a car crash. that one hit hard and i haven’t been able to get back to my former “meh”.
I’ve never been to a funeral, period. I think it’s grotesque, and I don’t need to be reminded what sort of person the deceased was. I don’t feel like I’ve missed anything. But this is likely a sidetrack and I’ll leave it alone now.
That’s how I’ve always felt about the many animals I’ve lost over the years. No, thank you, vet’s office, I don’t want burials or ashes or pawprints. The animating spirit is gone; what’s left is just a husk.
ETA: It’s also how I view my own prospective corpse. I’m gone; do whatever seems right with what’s left behind. Body farm, donate to science, cremate, but I’d rather not go the casket and vault route.
The last one I was at was my Daddy’s.
2013.
I was kinda crazy at the time. Wasn’t even thinking about creepy or grotesque.
Apparently I was the creepy one there. Over the years it’s always brought up when my siblings are here.
My sister made sure I saw a grief therapist after it. That’s where I realized what was happening to me. I was always closest to him. I was the damaged kid of all of us. He protected me more than I could realize. And when he died I lost my bearings. I felt alone even though I had a large family and my children and husband.
I had no hand rails navigating the long stairs I saw coming. No safety net.
I got my help and am now able to see.
I’m Jewish, almost all the funerals I’ve gone to had closed caskets. Maybe all of them. I’ve been to a handful of wakes where there was a body lying there. I found that pretty creepy. I went to one as an elder cousin was dying, and it really freaked me out that they’d managed to make the dead body like “livelier” than my cousin.
My Aunt Nell always said she’d haunt folks if they opened her casket after death.
She said “a dead body oughta look dead, not like it could run a road race, when you’re dead you oughta look dead.”
I don’t know if my cousins respected her wishes. I didn’t go to her funeral.
When our kids were young the nice old man 2 doors down died. We took our little kids (oldest couldn’t have been 9) to the open casket wake. Thought these days young people don’t see many corpses and that there was some value in understanding the finality of death. Don’t think that was the worst of our parenting choices…
I remember stopping at an old great aunt’s wake a few years earlier when my eldest was a toddler. Aunt Amelia never looked as good as she did in that casket. Our impression was that most if not all were very happy to have a cheerful little girl as a distraction. (Back then the standard was a 2-day wake.)
I want to be buried. I want to be put in the ground and have a big slab placed over me and I want my loved ones to come by once a year and place stones on that slab for as long as anyone who remembers me is still alive. I think I’ve earned that.
Composting grandpaw.
What happens when the house sells and the new owners plant tomatoes? 
I guess they’ll grow really well in that enriched soil.
My father wanted his ashes scattered on his vegetable garden.
Sadly, the house had been sold, and it seemed too weird to ask the new owners for permission. So he picked another spot.