Sorry, guess I wasn’t clear. The nurses’ attitudes, where they insisted that she needed to do this to get closure. She didn’t want to, and said that attitude was almost as bad as losing the baby.
Now I get it. Thank you.
Yeah. If the pregnant woman was OK with following her teachings in this dire situation and the nurses were oblivious, that’s not good. Not good at all. And them being insistently oppositional to the patient’s desires is especially unforgivable.
There’s a hell of a lot of different cultural expectations on this planet and without a scorecard it’s hard to keep them all straight. Medical staffers sure ought to know the practices for cultures common in their location though. Some medical staffer in small-town Kansas not knowing about e.g. Korean funeral (or stillbirth / miscarriage) practices might be forgiven for their ignorance. Somebody in Los Angeles? Not so much.
Not everyone’s funeral rituals involve what you describe.
A few months ago I helped to bury a Jewish friend of mine. For me shoveling dirt on the coffin was cathartic. This is, however, an area where people vary widely.
For me, seeing someone actually deceased, even a loved one (and I have been present when loved ones died), is better than not seeing them. Again, that’s me. It’s not everyone. And I’d much prefer an “honest” corpse than a body soaked in formaldehyde and slathered with makeup. Again, that’s me.
Heck, I can’t remember the last time anyone in my family had a deceased relative embalmed. Although we’re not crazy - the guest of honor at the memorial dinner is in an urn, not propped up on a chair downwind of the rest of the gathering.
I fully agree with this.
With my dad, it was the rise of the Sept 2020 wave so we didn’t have a shiva outside the immediate family. A blow up there has irreparably damaged the family dynamic, something a regular shiva might have avoided or just delayed the inevitable.
Filipino funeral
*After a death, the family will hold a wake for up to seven days in honor of their loved one. The person who died will be placed in a coffin and either kept at home or transported to a funeral home. The coffin is elaborately adorned with flowers and lights, and family and friends are encouraged to sign a guest book After a death, the family will hold a wake for up to seven days in honor of their loved one. The person who died will be placed in a coffin and either kept at home or transported to a funeral home. The coffin is elaborately adorned with flowers and lights, and family and friends are encouraged to sign a guest book. Those who visit may offer financial donations to help with funeral and burial costs. Food plays a significant role in the wake, as the family prepares or caters meals each evening for those who gather to pay respects
I used to “Pick up dead body.” as my friend’s wife would so cutely say and once grandpa was in a coffin in the middle of the living room with the family sitting around him. He was just laying on a table and we transferred him to our gurney.
I worked at a funeral home a long time ago and the guy do did the makeup did an outstanding job. Nothing like the exaggerated pasty cake white, red lipstick they show on TV or the movies.
Agree - we lost two successive babies at 20-ish weeks - almost on the cusp of viability; the process by which that resolved was labour, and birth; the baby is fully formed, just a bit on the small side, and not alive.
The maternity hospital ensured that we had time to see and hold (wrapped in a little blanket) our lost child and even arranged a simple burial service. Of course the whole time was pretty horrible, because none of it was what we had been hoping for, but I believe it helped to bring a sense of closure.
One of my first experiences with death involved my paternal grandfather who was in his 90’s when he died. I was 16 and my mother told me I needed to visit the funeral home in order to “view” the body. I remember asking, “But why? He’s dead.”, and she explained it was something people do.
I went, looked at the body for a few seconds and left. I knew he was dead before I arrived so for me, once I understand someone has died, that provides all the closure needed and looking at a corpse added nothing.
Years ago I read a book discussing the funeral industry and it had little, if any praise. Without going into too much detail, the book described the philosophy of many driven by pure profit and some unscrupulous methods to increase it. One method involved public mausoleums containing the remains of multiple people along with the pricing structure. Some undertakers would steer the bereaved into selected a more costly crypt situated high up on a wall because the higher the crypt, the closer the departed is to God.
Funerals may help some during the grieving process but I am not one of them.
I’m very sorry for your losses, Mangetout.
My sympathies to everyone who has gone through a funeral.
My beloved mother was diagnosed with bowel cancer and spent the last week of her life in a hospice.
The staff were excellent and she had plenty of visitors.
She asked me (her son) to give the eulogy as a celebration of her life. (She also wanted a closed casket and cremation.)
I read the eulogy to her a couple of days before she passed and she said it was exactly what she wanted. She added “I wish I could be there to hear you say it!”
So I asked her if I could repeat that remark as a deliberate joke to comfort mourners. She immediately agreed.
The service had cheerful music and then I gave the speech. When I got to “I wish I could be there to hear you say it!”, there was some instinctive laughter, then a pause. I said “Mum wanted you to laugh at that, so thank you.”
Afterwards several relatives said it was the most comforting funeral they had been to.
My Mum was a remarkable woman.
I doubt for many it’s how they like to spend their time. I go to funerals in support of the people who are grieving. My colleague recently lost her husband to cancer and she was very clear that having our support would make a huge difference to her.
The OPs style of funeral is not one I recognise. It’s something I associate more with Irish and Italian Catholic funerals. Certainly not Church of England (my cultural touchpoint), where my mother complains if the music is too sad and causes too many people to cry.
Slight tangent:
If you haven’t seen The Casketeers on Netflix you should if you can. It’s old now, 2018, but it’s about a Maori funeral home and it’s sweet, funny, poignant, and interesting all at once. I ended up using subtitles because they flow from English to a bit of Maori and back again, and I wanted to know what they were saying. Also, as it’s NZ accented English, sometimes its took me a minute to get what they were saying.
They go into a bit about Polynesian death and funeral rituals too, and I found it really interesting (despite my not attending funerals if at all possible).
On the topic of closure at seeing the body, I can kind of relate a little.
My mother was slowly dying in the hospital in 1996. And my father, apparently for irrational reasons (he later had a nervous breakdown) wouldn’t let my uncle or me see her at the hospital. So seeing her in the coffin was also in a way my last chance to say goodbye, although I remember it was kind of disappointing too.
And yes, I did make sure it was her (FWIW, I heard of cases where the accidentally switched corpses at the funeral parlor). She was also the only corpse I ever touched. I felt I had to.
You know, corpses, after they’ve been embalmed are hard and cold, kind of like marble. I was thinking, perhaps shortly after this, mortuary science should step in and try to make them more lifelike, for the sake of the relatives. I can even think of a way. Plasticize them. Replace their fluids with a plastic polymer. That way they’d be warm to the touch, and movable too.
Sorry to get morbid. But someone had to say it.
My sister passed away about a month ago after a long bout of cancer, and she had indicated a desire for a “natural” funeral, which a local funeral home was able to accommodate.
The body was prepared but not embalmed, and laid out in a viewing room wrapped only in a light sheet. We were offered the chance to wash and anoint it as we felt comfortable and appropriate. My niece and my other sister washed her face and head and anointed it with oil, I washed the hands, and my brother-in-law washed the feet (commenting that “this is the only time she would ever let me massage her feet without complaining”). While we did this, we played music my sister had loved from various points in her life (likely making this the only funeral to feature the song “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes).
Once we had done, my BIL and my older sister, aided by the funeral director, dressed the body and wrapped it in a shroud which was then covered in rose petals and some artwork my daughter had provided. A casket was used for the drive to the gravesite, which was in a cemetery with a “natural” section, but the burial was only in the shroud, in a grave with no markings and allowed to grow wild. The usual speeches were given at graveside.
While it was, to borrow the cliche, “what she would have wanted”, I am very much aware that the whole rigmarole is for the benefit of those of us left behind who wished to say our goodbyes and to help in the grieving process rather than for my sister. My mother struggled to understand why we had done it this way rather than the more common casket-and-gravestone approach, but for me this was a much more personal and natural way to do it, and I would recommend it if you’re not squeamish about touching a dead body.
The first funeral I attended was for my paternal grandfather when I was 10. Since then, I’ve been to viewings and funerals for the rest of my grandparents, my dad, several uncles and aunts, one nephew, and one cousin. It’s just what was done. I don’t think I was stigmatized by any of them. I’ve heard tales of children being forced to kiss dead relatives goodbye in the casket - thankfully, that never happened to me. But I do think there was a certain amount of closure and comfort in the repeated routines.
But my grandkids won’t go thru that - at least not for me. My remains are being donated to the state anatomy board to use as they do, and when they’re done, the cremains will be returned to my daughter who, I hope, will sprinkle them in the Chesapeake Bay and that will be that.
Thank you - it was a very long time ago now, although it still makes me sad from time to time. I have two wonderful grown-up children now (who arguably, might never have been born if the first two pregnancies had succeeded)
I guess I would be remiss if I didn’t include my bad experiences. As an adult, funerals don’t phase me in the least. I realize around adolescence that death is just a natural part of life, of being human.
But I went to my mother’s Uncle John’s funeral at age nine. And I was literally traumatized by it for years to come.
I kept having this terrible fear (I might as well tell you) that I was still in the funeral parlor. That I’d wake up, and find myself alone with the corpse.
Doesn’t make any sense to me now though. A corpse is just a hunk of dead, lifeless material. Sorry to be blunt but it’s true.
But tell me that then. Whoa…
Well, because funerals are a community rite of closure, there are standards of behavior (which vary according to culture). In this way, the majority of attendees will get their needs met. If you don’t feel your emotions are adequately addressed, a community rite is not the place to do it, often. In some cultures, scream-crying and tearing your clothes is the norm, and in others, solemn silence, and yet others, laughing and drinking. In any such gathering, I assume some of the attendees are simply going through the motions or gutting through to the end, depending.
At my mother’s “celebration of life”, the best I could offer was showing up, and that was entirely for the living. Her maxim was always, “if you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all,” a rule which both she and I obeyed. We barely spoke to each other my whole life. Others shared their affectionate memories, but I didn’t have any. Did this ritual assist me in any way? No. But it was necessary to go to.
I prefer an open casket, if I wasn’t present at the actual death. In cases where I didn’t actually see a person dead, I continue feeling as if they’re still alive somewhere…they just haven’t called in a while, or maybe they’re just about to walk through the door.
When my dad died I knew he did not want a funeral. He, like I, thought they were morbid religious craziness. My sister, distraught over his death arranged a funeral anyway. I did not go, but I did not interfere with my sister’s plans.
Decades later when my mom died we went through the same dance.
It was not necessary that I attend either, and I chose not to.