This is not a “Need Answer Fast” thread.
In another thread, a Dope poster mentioned a pretty horrific incident where a woman lay dead in her bathtub for weeks and her remains had to be “carried out of the house in buckets.”
There are also, doubtlessly, numerous other incidents where human remains get burned, or dissolved, or mangled in a way that is just pretty awful, and I have to wonder - how are the remains disposed of, and is the funeral just done without the remains, and how are the families and relatives notified that, “Sorry, but you are best off not seeing the awful thing because the remains are in pretty gruesome shape?”
Do they still get cremated? And, uh…how? Would the aforementioned woman’s body get, uh, poured by buckets into something, and then put in a cremation oven? Would the buckets be poured into a coffin and laid into the ground, if the family opted for non-cremation? :eek:
When my mother died in a bicycle/car collision, we were told by the doctors essentially what you say - a tactful version of “You can see her if you want to, but we don’t think you want to.” (She was unconscious from the accident until time of death, so there were no final conversations to be had either way.)
There were no buckets or pieces, so some of the issues you mention didn’t apply here.
We lived in California at the time, so formal funerals and body viewings aren’t much of a thing to begin with. There was no body, casket or ashes present at the memorial.
In the days of the Vietnam war, remains that were, well, unenviable were sent home with a “Not for viewing” label.
I know of one case where such remains were viewed. A Russian cosmonaut, Vladaimir Komarov, who knew the contraption they wanted him to ride in would fail, demanded his remains be viewed if he died. He did and they were. You can google his name if you want to see what the results of that flight were. (not pretty, but work safe)
This is probably an exaggeration. Specifically, I think there would still have been bones remaining after a few weeks, even if the rest of the body had liquefied.
Isn’t that the main reason why the IDF uses casket for military funerals? My understanding is that in Israel casket aren’t usually used at all for Jewish burials; bodies are buried in the just the shroud. I know there’s never a viewing of the body at a Jewish funeral in the first place.
Years ago, I went to the funeral of a colleague who disappeared from work and couldn’t be contacted. He was eventually found in his home, dead and in a decomposed state a couple of months later, by his ex wife who was still registered as next of kin on some billing paperwork etc.
It seems as though the funeral directors had been unusually candid with her, and she was equally candid with us at the funeral. Apparently, his remains were bagged inside the coffin, packed between large absorbent cotton and paper-fibre pads to prevent movement or leakage. The bags and the padding were just additional fuel for the cremation, I guess.
I had a slightly different conversation than Mangetout many years ago in my IRC days. One of the other users worked in her city morgue and I asked a similar question. ‘Soup’ was processed as bio-waste and anything solid enough to be handled was put into a casket for burial or a box for cremation. I didn’t think to ask about the differences between someone dieing in a bathtub or just not being found in a bed for several weeks. I also don’t remember what city she was in.
