I DON'T WANT to look at the dead body.

The BBQ Pit
21

HEY!! What’s THAT s’posed to mean?!? Wanna back that accusation up with a cite there, Sparky? That sound you hear is the first of a twelve-pack of whoop-ass I’m 'bout to unload on you…

Alright, alright, you know I’m kidding, but I suppose you have a point. I said it elsewhere in one of Superdude’s threads: Part of what I’m hoping to get out of this whole SDMB experience is a better ability to rationalize before the mouth opens. That’s why I spend most of my time in MPSIMS and IMHO. I fit in there alongside “Guess what I just picked out of my toenail” and “I think I like vanilla”. Just ain’t got enough grey matter to put together cogent posts on more weighty matters.

HEY!! Are you talking to me, punk?!?

Kidding! Kidding again… geez, I thought screaming was what the Pit was for!

Really ain’t sure what your meaning is, Drastic. That feeble grey matter of mine is thinking you might be referring to how I linked my physical discomfort with dead things into my not understanding why people want to look at dead things, which I guess I did express in a way that is condemning. And I guess that was what Sua was referring to. And Stoid. Okay, another object lesson learned here, before your very eyes. I just didn’t expect to find posters in the Pit suggesting “Think before you rant.”

sigh Oh, well, guess I’ll mosey on back to MPSIMS. Hey, what’s that stuck in my toenail…

22

:eek: You mean THAT’S part of what it takes to be a Pitizen, too? Well, okay, bends over, but keep in mind I’m just doing this to fit in.

N.T.T.A.W.W.T. :smiley:

23

Open caskets don’t bother me for the reasons most people are saying… they bother me because I’m against the whole concept of embalming. We spend our whole lives taking in nutrients from the earth and when we die we’re supposed to give it back! Grr.

I want to be buried without a casket in a private cemetary on family land. No embalming. No cremation.

Not very likely though, is it. :confused:

24

Personally, I want to be mailed, in a box with no return address, and a fake destination. That way maybe I’ll end up in the dead letter office.

My friend who chose to blow his brains out in my kitchen wound up having an open casket funeral. He shot himself in the right side of the head, with a 158 grain hollowpoint, and chunks of his skull were left on my floor when they took him away. When me and his freinds, who were more his family than any of his blood relitives, entered the funeral chapel, we were absolutely horrified. Not only was it an open casket, with the much doctored up right side of his head facing you, but they put him in a brown polyester leisure suit! Knowing him as well as I did, I dont think there is anything more horrible they could have put him in. Upon seeing the body, I totally lost it, I was a non functioning human being for next couple of hours or so. As much damage as there was, I was totally unprepared for it being an open casket. It was kind of an interesting funeral, however. My friend was black, and much of his family was pretty racist(he used to call his grandmother a Nazi). Thats why he left home at 16 to begin with, he couldnt deal with it(his mother was abusive, so he lived with his grandmother). we all showed up at the funeral pretty much togeather. His biological family was in the first two rows, and the rest of the chapel was filled with what seemed like the entire punk comunity of Fort Worth. I had friends in California who heard about his death. I only remember one of his family coming up and talking to us. That night we had a wake for him, and the Nazi Skinheads had a party. People suck sometimes.

25

I don’t look at the dead anymore. After the funeral of my maternal grandfather I realized my last memory of him was lying back in the coffin. So if I am buried and not cremated I have left a set of instructions. One is absolutely no viewing. If anyone does wish to remember me I hope they will remember me alive. Another(again if I am buried) is that my coffin is to be the cheapest available. I want them to ask for the simple box that John Doe’s get buried in. To me it is a sin to spend unnecessary money on something that will just be put in the ground. And there will be a pall over the coffin anyway. As it says in my denominations manual on the various worship services"A white pal may be placed over the coffing to recall the white robe given in Baptism, the robe of Christ’s righteousness. The pall further has democratizing value, for it prevents both the display of a costly coffin and embarrassment at a simple one."

26

I definetly want an open casket when I die. Especially if I die in a horribly flaming car wreck, or am dismembered in a bizarre lawnmower accident, or parially devored by voles. You know, something messy. I’m dead, goddamnit. I don’t want anyone enjoying my funeral.

27

As keeper of the family archives I have several old photos of the departed before burial, with the rest of the family gathered around. The first time I found one of these pictures when I was a child it totally ooked me out. One is of my grandfather’s sister. She died in childbirth and she and the baby were both in the casket together. Another showed my grandfather sitting on a chair outside his house holding a little casket with his newborn son in it. I thought it was awful at first, but now it does remind me not only of the family history but what the relatives must have gone through in those times. I guess it makes it a bit more real than just a story would have. Perhaps that’s also a reason why people did it.
But it’s not for me.

28

You have a point…Screw the cremation, open caskets-just no embalming or prep work…how ever the coroner leaves whats left, seal it in a block of clear plastic and use it as a coffee table.

29

Two things.

  1. My family used to have the wake with the “guest of honor” present, in an open casket. Personally, I think that’s what drove the whisk(e)y drinking.

  2. Back in my Army days (1979-1985), “DED” was the 3-letter mnemonic for the duty status code meaning “deceased.”

30

Tygr I totally agree with your rant. I suppose viewing provides some closure for some but all in all it sucks.

31

I like the texan who had himself creamated, then loaded into shotgun shells. Then his buddies took the shells out and shot them at his favorite hunting grounds.

Cool.

My best friend was creamated as well. Sometimes I’m tempted to be creamated, poured into concrete, and made into a statue of myself, to sit in the cemetary. I’ll be in a thoughful pose, except for the middle finger…

32

My son was stillborn. We had him at home for a couple of days before the funeral. He was in a bassinet in the living room and if people wanted to see him, they could. Most people chose to and most people did it with dignity. However a hearty fuck you to the person who made a song and dance about how she’d never seen a dead body and how she might get upset if she saw him. I personally couldn’t give a flying fuck - just shut up already, I didn’t need to hear it.

And a solid fuck you to my MIL. She apparently had a nasty experience with a dead baby when she was ten. Choosing to spend 2 days ostentatiously refusing to see her grandson is one thing but to burst into the room as we are closing the coffin and make a big performance about saying good bye is whole other kettle of fish.

My dad didn’t see him, wouldn’t look at photos and refused to scatter the ashes. He just couldn’t cope - that’s absolutely fine by me.

Oh and while I’m on the subject - another fuck you to the person who brought her kids to the funeral because ‘they’d never been to one and she thought they would find it interesting’.

I’ve got photos of my boy which will go in my coffin at the end. It’s weird but every once in a while it does help to look at the photos. God knows I didn’t get a chance to make many memories with him :frowning:

33

But I think we all knew that already.

When my father-in-law died two years ago, his wife brought a camera to the funeral. I knew she had wanted to take pictures of the headstone, but I had no idea that it is something like customary in the South (this was in Arkansas) to take pictures of the body, until we got copies of the pictures. In the mail.

I love the woman dearly. I really, really do. She filled the hole left in my father-in-law when my husband’s mother died. She made his last few years blissfully happy. She is my children’s grandmother.

But DAMMIT she could have warned me! I had NO IDEA that people did this! I NEVER expected pictures of my father-in-law’s corpse (which looked really, really, good, FWIW) in my damn mailbox! GAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I was at the funeral! I saw him already! And I’ve got a truckload of pictures from when he was alive! Don’t send me the dead pictures without telling me!!! AIEEEEEEEEE!

MAN I’m glad to get that off my chest!

34

Same occupation (different country), same experience, same sort of thing. Only we didn’t get to see the body, and some of us still wonder.

35

I actually know of one circumstances in which a person close to me welcomed an open casket. She’d been traumatized as a child at her grandmother’s funeral - the custom in her Italian-American family was not only open casket, but…kiss the departed. She refused to attend any funerals for the next thirty years.

When she was forty, her father died. He’d been pretty sick with heart disease and spent a very hard last six months. She’d dreaded his funeral, but found herself actually believing the cliches - the embalmer did do a beautiful job and did make him “look natural.” As she put it, he looked ten years younger and, well, healthy; the image of him in the casket erased the image of him as a frail, dying man.

She kissed him, and it felt right.

I have seen a funeral picture of my (Texan) grandmother, who died when I was a toddler. Creeped me out to see it - my dad handed it to me and muttered how he couldn’t stand it, but he couldn’t really throw it away either. I also have all the memento mori from my mother’s funeral when I was five - the condolence cards, the guest book, the obituaries. My dad’s mother had kept them for me and then presented them a few years ago. I have no idea what the hell to do with them now; neither my dad nor I want to keep them, but anything else seems sacriligious.

I read in the Wall Street Journal a few months ago about these “memorial parks” that are springing up - no embalming, no ordinary headstones, just burial in rose patch or some such thing. I like that concept.

36

Well, that’s a relief.

37

My dad always wanted to see the “Guest of Honor” at funerals, because it helped the grieving process along, and helped people accept that the person was dead.

However, when my dad suddenly died, none of us could face seeing him in a casket. I refused to see his body in the hospital (we were sleeping in the waiting room of the hospital when he passed away during the night.) I just was a total basket case. I know someone suggested to me that maybe it would be a good idea to see him before they took him from his hospital bed (he had a heart attack) but I refused.

Anyway, we had him cremated, never having a “viewing” of the body at any time. It was a wonderful memorial service, full of flowers. We played his favorite music, by Jean Sibelius. I designed the memorial service program (I don’t know what they call it - the little flyer they hand out with the program notes for the service.) Anyway, I did the calligraphy for it, did a drawing of him of the front cover, and wrote a little essay about his life on the back cover, and had lots of copies made. Everyone loved it. Extra copies were passed out to relatives and friends all over the country. It was even published in the local Post Office newsletter (he worked for the P.O. for 41 years.) I don’t know how I designed that thing - I was in such a freaked out state. I know he saw that I’d done it, and I know was proud of me, though. I think he liked the fact that I stiffed Forest Lawn out of $12 by designing and printing my own memorial service program, rather than paying them to do it. :smiley: (My dad had a thing about how some funeral homes rip off the grieving.)

I still have dreams about my dad, that he isn’t dead. I used to dream that he’d just been really sick, and now he was wondering why my mom had sold the house and moved away. I had these dreams a lot right after he died, but they’ve tapered off. Some have speculated that I have the dreams because I never saw his dead body. I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, I don’t care. I still wouldn’t have wanted to see it.

Anyway, I know I am rambling. The thing was, NONE of us could have stood to see him in a casket. (For another thing, my dad would have hated to see us pay all that money to Forest Lawn! :wink: ) Also, my sister and I are potters, and we had this idea to make him a custom made urn out of pottery. (We haven’t done that yet, though.) And then there’s the idea to use a bit of his ashes as a glaze ingredient. Potters do this a lot.

Anyway, that’s what I want - I’d like to end up in a good glaze.

38

<gape> <snaps mouth shut again>
I’m not sure which is more horrible – the kid-bringer’s rationale, or the fact that she chose to share it with the mother who just lost a child. I’m so sorry for your loss.

39

Heh–too funny! I must admit that I too am hopeless at funerals (or any other ‘serious’ events, for that matter). When I was a pall-bearer at my Grandpa’s funeral (and I really respected this guy, BTW), we were carrying his casket up the stairs and into the church and jostled it accidentally. Anyway, something (probably his corpse) shifted and knocked against the inside of the coffin whereupon Wabbit, in his infinite wisdom, thumps the top of the casket and loudly says “Stay put, you old coot!” Everyone laughed and it lightened the mood considerably but my mom has accused me of ‘ruining’ the event for years now. sigh Just wait til she sees what I do at HER funeral… :wink:

40

Bingo.

My grandmother died almost a month ago. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital after a brain hemorrhage, and it was not pretty watching a frail old woman who’d lost most of her higher brain functions waste away and die. That is most definitely not the last memory I want to have of her. There was an open caket “visitation” at the funeral home the day before the funeral, per her long-planned instructions. I was pleased to see that she looked very much like the Grandma I want to remember, rather than the tormented woman whose deathbed we’d spent so much time at. So as Oxy says, there can indeed be an upside to seeing the body.

For myself, I absolutely hate the concept of the open casket. My family has strict orders to have my body summarily fried to a crisp and the remnants chucked in the Rio Grande.