When my mother died, my sister in law and I had to go out and ‘shop’ at Goodwill for a nice burial outfit. S-I-L was very picky and it took an hour while we filled up a shopping cart with possibilities. She rejected about 20, but we winnowed it down to two, and I picked the winner. A nice brown wool jumper and silk print blouse that just screamed ‘Mom’! (Also bought a beanie baby kitty to put in the coffin as mom was the most fervent cat lover ever born.). We hoped Mom would be wearing this outfit if she came back as a ghost instead of the nasty nursing home muu-muu she passed away in.
Almost exactly what happened to my mother. Both she and dad had made arrangements to have their bodies donated to the University of Kansas medical school. Dad died in 2016 and his wishes were honored (we received his ashes about 9 months later.) But Mom contracted covid twice in the year before she passed, and the school had instituted a policy to not take bodies that had been infected. So we had to quickly decide what to do; we opted for cremation by the funeral home and then had the memorial service several months later.
A similar thing can happen with organ donation.
You will your innards, eyes, etc., to the organ re-use program, you die, they harvest your parts, then your partly disassembled carcass is handed over to the undertakers for cremation, burial or whatever. If the organ donation folks then find the parts are unsuitable for [reasons], they’ll be destroyed as medical waste.
In some states, even if you don’t make a prearranged organ donation decision, the folks from the organ re-use program will contact the next of kin to ask for them to authorize donation. Which of course happens immediately post-death while the family is just learning that somebody died.
Which may leave the family members a bit nonplussed at having authorized the mutilation of dear old Mom to no benefit.
We did the Donor Dash yesterday; a run/walk to raise awareness/funds for organ donation. As with most charity events, there are some that are there for the race but many/most people have a connection to the cause so as you can imagine the crowd had lots of donor families there; many wearing matching shirts about their relative.
They had granola bars & both bottled water & cans of Red Bull. That company’s slogan is “Red Bull gives you wiiings” with images of angel’s wings. Can’t decide if that was marketing genius or a huge, callous oversight.
What I’m wearing today!
Get me out of here! I’ve been dead for a while.
The hospital gown ?!?
I’d vote for black pants, my purple velvet sleeveless shirt, and my oldest almost Hawaiian shirt over it. Maybe a bead necklace. Comfortable shoes.
I see the potential for a last practical joke 
It involves :
- an open casket,
- 2 pearl onions and
- 2 toothpicks…
… while Gibson cocktails are being served
I would Sooo not add any matches…
… just to get a last Somabitch out of you..
I will just borrow a suit.
Funeral homes in Mississippi (and perhaps other places) will lend/rent suits for the occasion. When it is time to close the casket, they remove the suit for the next customer. You can go into thrift stores and get lightly used suits that are being sold by the funeral homes. At least you could a few decades ago. Not sure what the current practice is. I live in Louisiana so I don’t have recent experience.
Okay, why is living in Louisiana related to not having recent experience?
good point. I am retired but used to work in Mississippi. My work friends would occasionally talk about the funeral home practices in Mississippi. Here in Louisiana things are a bit more conventional. And I am sure they are pretty conventional outside the rural areas of Mississippi. I do remember a co-worker that bought his business suit at a thrift store and commented that it had previously been used for funerals. Much good-natured teasing followed as he defended his purchase.
This is a great question! I think I’d opt for a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt I typically wear to bed. I’d be fine with just a comfy pair of socks. My RA makes it hard for me to be without shoes on. Since I’d be done, no shoes, please.