It seems I remembered wrong. I asked my dad-you can INDEED be buried without a coffin-in fact, he told me that muslims are often buried with nothing more than a shroud.
There are regulations, but it’s possible.
A few years ago my great-grandmother, at the age of 95, had pneumonia. (She recovered fully, but that’s another story.) However, she and my mom had several conversations during her time in the hospital about what she wanted to be wearing in the casket. As much as I detest the idea of an open casket for myself, I KNOW she’s going to have one, and I’m just going to have to live with it.
I only wish I had been there the day a nurse came into the room and asked, “So, what are you talking about?” and Mom answers, “The color of her casket lining!” Apparently, the look on the nurse’s face was just priceless…
Didn’t Bill Cosby have a routine similar to that? You’d walk up to the coffin and you’d hear a recording addressing you personally. “Hi, Bob. How’s the wife and kids? Don’t I look like myself?” 
Same here, except I was six. My step-grandfather (technically… he was still my grandad, and the only one I’d ever known) died after a long battle with cancer. I had known for WEEKS that he was going to die and I knew why. I understood the concept and was as prepared as I possibly could have been for his death. But I was still “too young to go”. And I’m one of those people who NEED to see the body. I don’t know why I need to. It’s obviously not for closure since I was still “in denial” for a YEAR after I’d see my best friend’s dead body. But I didn’t get to go to my grandfather’s funeral. That was the first time I slipped into a dark, quiet, morbid, sad poet phase. For a long time after his death, I’d have these dreams where he was there, looking at me, but he wasn’t saying or doing anything. Just sitting there with his hands together, prayer-style. And he looked like he might have been crying. In the last dream I had about him, after I’d turned 7, I broke the silence by hugging him and saying “See ya next time, Grampa”.
When my friend Amy hung herself, I skipped the funeral, but attended the wake the day before. I swear on all that is good and holy, her body was breathing. Her chest was moving up and down at a steady pace. She was breathing. Then again, I was somewhat less than sober that day. But it was still creepy.
My father died of cancer when he was 56 years old. It was a terrible wasting disease and he died slowly and hard. Because he went so quickly at the end and because he was a physician, I suspect that the attending doctor took him out as a favor, maybe at his own request. There are questions that you just don’t ask.
In any event, he looked pretty rough besides being dead. A six foot, two hundred pound former college football player, he weighed less than 90 lbs. when he died. My sister and I decided that the visitation and the funeral would be closed casket for the very reason that others have mentioned, we did not want our final memory of our father to be of that emaciated corpse. My grandmother, however, insisted on seeing the body and the undertaker did open the casket for her in a private room. Neither my sister nor I looked, even thought we went with the old lady.
What surprised me is that even though the whole town knew what had happened to him, we did have reports that some people were offended that the casket had been closed. No matter how gruesome, they wanted to see.
I am from L.A., but moved to the midwest recently. I find that people in the town where I currently reside sometimes react with horror that we had my dad cremated. One girl said, “That’s so mean!” (Like my dad cared at that point.) I’ve gotten other reactions of disfavor when I mention that my dad was cremated.
Do midwesterners have something against cremation? I remember hearing somewhere that Californians tend to choose cremation more than some other states.
Not having a lot of experience with dead bodies, I hadn’t really understood this until just last summer. I was at an antique store with my mother, sister, and MIL one day, and I entered a room they hadn’t been in yet. I casually glanced at a pencil sketch on the wall, and did a double-take: it was a dead infant. I’m standing there staring at it, trying to figure out if it’s really dead, when my sister comes in and says, “Huh. That baby’s dead.” So we get my mother and MIL (both nurses) and they confirm that yes, the baby is dead. Weird how it came out even in a casual sketch. The artist must have been really good.
I pity the person who buys it thinking it’s just a sketch of a sleeping baby, though.
At my brother’s visitation/funeral we didn’t even have a casket. We were having him cremated, so decided there was no point in renting a casket for the ceremonies. It was actually a great idea; the visitation hours were light and fun, and instead of sitting still and quietly looking at the closed casket (and where did that tradition come from?) we all walked around and talked and looked at the pictures and stuff that we’d placed around the room. Much better than the last funeral I’d been to.
I’d like to go on record as saying that cremation is a wonderful idea. I start to cry when I even think of my brother’s little body rotting and being eaten; I can’t imagine the kind of nightmares I’d have if that were really the case.
The laws may vary from state to state, but I’m pretty sure in most states you can’t rent a casket. You have to buy it, even if the person is being cremated. It just gets incinerated with the body. The metal parts are sifted out afterwards. (this exact point was brought up in last week’s episode of HBO’s “Six Feet Under”, a very funny show)
Spending thousands on a damn box to burn seems so pointless to my frugal Scottish nature.
Embalming is not required, unless you are having a viewing or want your intact body shipped anywhere.
You can specify you want “immediate cremation” to avoid being embalmed, which is what I want. Just make sure your family members know this…otherwise you will get embalmed. The whole idea of those chemicals being pumped into my body is icky, along with people looking at me when I’m dead. The decomposition process is much more drawn out and, um, well, grosser when a body is embalmed. Add to that the water-tight casket, a concrete vault and the whole process could take decades. Yuck. Not for me, thanks. I want the $100 cardboard box and immediate cremation, please. And I don’t want my ashes sitting in an urn on someone’s mantel, either. Scatter them somewhere.
My husband’s great-aunt died a few months ago and someone (the mortician or one of her children), whoever, chose to have her get some sort of post-life facelift. She was 95 years old, and looked it. She was very wrinkled (She looked a little like that old lady from “The Wedding Singer” who did the rap song), but when we went to the viewing, her face was smooth and unlined. She didn’t look normal at all; not like the Aunt Nanny I knew and loved. It really creeped me out. And the makeup was too heavy.
At my nephew’s funeral (he died of cancer at the age of four) my sister had an open coffin. She had been advised to do so for her oldest son’s sake,to help Chris (he was nine at the time) understand that death was permanent.
It was brutal. People would enter,see Craig , and just lose it. One of my friends, whose children were friends with my nephews,stood there and wept hysterically. We had pictures of Craig from happier times on a table and we would show people those. Still,it was so hard for me and the rest of the family to keep it together.
After the service,the family all said goodbye to Craig before they closed the casket. I kissed him goodbye and told him how much I loved him. If that makes me sick, so be it.
Actually, if you are going to be cremated but still have a viewing you can purchase cheap caskets made from particle board or a thick cardboard that looks as nice as the real thing. It is only a few hundred dollars instead of thousands.
After the viewing, they toss the whole thing, coffin and all, into the incinerator.
No, you’re not sick at all.
I meant to say in my original post that I agreed with the OP I that I find viewings a tad creepy. I would rather not see the dead body, either. Of course, that’s just me. I know it gives some people comfort to touch and see a loved one a final time, but it’s just not for me.
I’ve never had a really close family member die, but one of my best friends died suddenly a couple years ago, and even then I was kinda creeped out by the viewing. To each his own.
Another who wants to be cremated and scattered. I, a vermaphobe, don’t like the idea of being underground. As far as being viewed, I suppose I’d prefer not to be but I also understand the need of some for that type of closure.
Regarding death photos: We have a few family members phtographed in their final state, generally done prior to 1940. I think it was a very common practice when my mother was young (in Europe). The only photos we have of my mother’s brothers were those taken when they were dying/dead from the Spanish Flu. In fact, one of the weirder items that Mom has is her own photo, taken when she was a few months old and her parents thought she was also dying of the flu. They had propped her nearly-comatose body up on the sofa and snapped the picture. That photo and the subject is now 83 years old.
Once again, laws vary, but as for being buried without being embalmed, I think you’d better plan to die where you want to be buried. If your body has to be shipped, it has to be embalmed.
Is it a private cemetary already established? If not, I’m sure there is a ton of red tape to go through to be buried in a place that is not an established cemetary. I know you can be buried on private land, but there are regulations on where you can be…the size of the property, how close you are to ground water, other property, stuff like that. It’s not like you can dig a hole in the backyard of your quarter-acre home in a housing development and toss your dear departed in.
Exactly-if you don’t want to be embalmed, you have to be buried immediately, and you can’t be laid out.
Just be glad you’re not Russian Orthodox. From what I understand, the tradition is to kiss the dead body. When Alexander III died, the embalming wasn’t up to par, and I’ve read the corpse smelled horrible!
I live in a small town in Mexico. There are no funeral parlors and the wakes are usually held in the home of the deceased or one of it’s relatives. The coffin is usually exhibited in the living room. They may even block the street off at each corner and set up chairs for the mourners outside. This has shaken up many an unaware gringo who happens innocently upon the scene on the way back to their hotel from a night on the town.
Because the bodies aren’t embalmed they sometimes pack the casket with ice. Burial can be within 24 hrs, it’s rare that they wait 48.
Since so many people have relatives living in the US there are occasions when they wait until they arrive before having the funeral. The body can get quite smelly by then especially if it’s in the summer.
Closed caskets are a tradition in my family, and thank the Good Lord for that. I’ve only been to one funeral, and the casket was closed. I was one of the pallbearers, and the job was like moving a small trunk.
As for me, definetly cremation. If it’s possible, I want my ashes placed in a stone urn and built into a cathedral’s foundation. That would definetly be cool.