This question’s kind of morbid, but the practice is pretty morbid too. I know a few people who clip and save obituaries of people they know, and also keep the little booklets from the funeral (the pamphlet that lists the person’s accomplishments, pallbearers etc.) as mementos.
Is this a wide-spread practice?
Do you do this, and if so, do you ever go back and read them again?
Bonus question: Do you take, or keep photographs of people in their coffins, and if so, do you take those out and look at them too?
I’ll go first: No, I don’t, *but * I’ve never had a person die who was really close to me. I don’t own any pictures of dead people either, and probably never will. I was innocently looking through my grandmother’s photo album at age five, then ::BAM:: coffin pictures. :eek:
I kind of feel like I ought to, when it’s family or whatever, but generally it gets tossed in my car and eventually thrown out. When my grandfather died the funeral home gave us some bookmarked shaped copies of the obituary, laminated. I have it somewhere, but it spells my mom’s name wrong.
No, I don’t do any of the things you mentioned. Maybe this is unusual, but I’ve only been to four funerals in my life so far. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to take a picture of the coffin! I didn’t know anybody did that.
My father’s a mortician and he saves all of those things-mostly family ones, though.
I save stuff regarding relatives, but then I’m into genealogy so it goes with the territory.
I’ve never nailed this down, but undertakers had a “last picture” custom - I presume they took a pic of the deceased laid out in the coffin and sent copies to family members. The practice seems to have died out.
(If you find puns in the preceeding paragraph, it’s not my fault.)
I do save this stuff, most were blood relatives. Unfortunately, for whatever reason they are not all in one spot, but I do have them here and there.
I do look at them from time to time.
I have heard of the practice of taking coffin pictures, but I thought that was last done in the 19th or early 20th century, I did not know that people still did this.
Old people still take coffin pictures sometimes, at least in the South in my experience.
Well, my grandmother is old, and from the south, so that probably explains her little collection.
I only save the booklets from the closets of friends or relatives. I only have saved five. In a decade they can jog things in your memory that you had forgotten.
I read the OBITs in the local newspaper
Once I read the OBIt of a Math Teacher who took personal glee in making sure I DID NOT recieve a scholarship I really needed… It made me warm inside to see he had passed.
regards
FML
My parents do this. I have never saved any obits, or kept the little booklets other than one. My grandma passed away when I was in high school and I went to the funeral (of course). They handed out the little booklets and all, and when I left I had to go to work (I was working 3rd shift) so I put the booklet in my glovebox in the car. Never had the heart to take it out. 4 years later and it’s still there.
Pictures of coffins? that’s too much…really…
Brendon Small
It was quite common prior to WWII.
I save obits of various favorite people that I DON’T know, but admire. I think that all of them are authors. I don’t actively seek them out, but if they’re in my newspaper, I clip and save them.
I don’t save obits of people I know. They just seem so impersonal. Instead, I write my own obit for them in my diary, usually memories of them.
I always save the prayer cards you get at the funeral home, the ones with the picture (often religious) on the front, and on the back is the deceased person’s info plus a prayer or the ubiquitous “Irish Blessing.” I keep them in my missal, between the pages of the prayers for the day they died. Honestly, it’s more of a filing system than anything else. The missal was originally my mother’s, who also kept her prayer cards filed in it, so it’s weird/interesting/fun(?) to see if any dead people match up with previously dead people from the 40s and 50s. I do go back and look at them periodically.
I also have some old (like 1910-1920s) pictures of family members in coffins surrounded by other (living) family members. Somewhat recently, my mother tried to take a picture of all of my cousins at my uncle’s funeral – we have Christmas photos from when we were little with us kids lined up by age – and she wanted to do the same thing in front of the coffin! I don’t remember if we gave in or not - we might have.
My uncle does the coffin picture thing… it’s just plain ‘icky’ in my opinion.
I do save the booklets for people I was close to, and for my maternal grandmother, I still have the entire newspaper that her obituary was in… it’s quite interesting to look at what else was going on in her local area as well as the world when she passed.
My mom, dad, and best friend died within 14 months about ten years back. I keep all 3 of their obits in my wallet.
My wife saves the prayer cards as well. The ones for our babies are stuck in her mirror frame, the ones for relatives are kept in our family Bible.
The only obituary I ever saved was for a stranger. I was flipping through the obits and ran across the one for Sister Concepta Ungaritis of the Casmir Sisters. Her name sounded like some reproductive disease and her order sounded like they should have been wearing soft woolen sweaters. I actually cut it out and carried it in my wallet for a few months.
People take photos of their loved ones in the casket all of the time. Perhaps its cultural to Japanese Americans and a practice arising from the old days when cremated remains could not be shipped back to japan so families would ship a group photo around the casket along with a lock of hair to be interred in the family plot in accordance with tradition.
have however done services for non-Japanese Americans and have seen this done with the services of Latinos, Euros and African Americans as well, so perhaps its not entirely cultural. Seems to me the only folks who find it weird are White Americans since recent white Europeans immigrant families have done this at their services on serveral occasions.
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Thread closed due to excessive thread bumping.
CoffinMan, please do not bump every thread that you can find on a topic as you have done here today.