My grandmother, recently, when she died in the hospital. We stayed with her long enough for her forehead and hands to begin cooling, but she still felt like a person. After embalming, people don’t feel like people anymore.
Anatomy lab - I touched several. Oddly enough, it didn’t faze me a bit.
My father, after we took him off life support, and my grandmother, in the nursing home shortly after they found her. Both of them, as well as my mother and other grandparents, in their caskets as well.
I actually spent quite a bit of time looking at my mother in her casket, and touching her hands and face. I was 11, and I remember doing it partly to show the other children in attendance(my best friend, and some cousins) that it was ok(and partly because it was such a strange sensation, of course…and one you never forget). We spent enough time up there that afterward I realized we had had an audience. I guess a lot of the older folks felt touched by us doing that, and pleased, in a weird way.
I can’t remember if I touched my dead grandmother or not, but I touched my mother’s body on her leg as I said goodbye in the hospital room. I was probably too numb to feel icky about it.
I touched the bones of a biology-lab demonstration skeleton. I was the only one in the class willing to do so. I’m not sure if that counts, though.
Meant to add, in my family, at least, I’ve always been encouraged to kiss the deceased, as well. My mother I kissed on the lips, my father and grandparents on the cheecks or hands, if I recall correctly.
In Anatomy Lab, they just don’t seem real. That time with my girlfriend, I had to keep telling myself it was real.
True, but the baby autopsy during my histopathology rotation in med tech school was extremely real and I don’t want to have to do that again. I was able to help with everything except undressing it and putting its clothes back on. That was too much for me.
Only if you did the ventriloquist routine.
My girlfriend of the time told me that they used to have “fascia fights.” Fascia is some sort of tissue that’s elastic like a rubber band, so they’d snap and shoot them at each other during class. Each semester, they would cremate all of the used cadavers and parts; if it was december, they’d wrap the smaller bits up like Christmas packages before sending them off. I think the medical school must have been at that National Lampoon’s Animal House university.
My Dad -after he died, I put my hand on his forehead & prayed the Lord’s Prayer and the Nicene Creed. It’s not a family or church tradition or anything I even thought about, it just seemed the thing to do at the time.
I was a volunteer EMT for three years and touched many many corpses.
Former hospital worker, EMT/Paramedic. Touched many corpses. They’ve never lied to me, asked to borrow money, or wanted a bite of my sandwich. Nice folks, all. 
Performed CPR on quite a few freshly dead people. Touched quite a few others who weren’t that fresh.
Sure, on my wedding night. HI-yo!
I had one puke in my mouth during CPR. Bonus points.
A couple in anatomy lab and one in an autopsy.
I think I’m the first person on this thread to say no.
Both my parents, a good friend of mine who died some months ago and the lad I mentioned in the thread in IMHO.
To my shame I still don’t know how to post links after 2years…must be senility
I made a glove out of the skin from a cadaver’s hand once and wore it for half the day.