Why do families have open casket

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, why do you care how other families choose to honor, remember, or say good bye to their loved ones? If something helps people while they are grieving, why should it matter to others?

Because I've been to two open casket viewings in the past year and they haunt me. Neither were Catholic, both just run of the mill protestant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the midwest this is routine--that's why people refer to the service the day before the actual service as the "viewing" in those parts (Lutherans don't call it a wake). All the time I was growing up people took photos of the person in the casket. When my dad died suddenly (heart attack) my mom struggled with what to do, she ended up doing a casket for the service because everyone would want to see how he looked. She told us we could go ahead and just cremate her and we asked if she wanted us to tell the neighbors she looked really good or if she looked terrible and it was a blessing(yes, she laughed).

Fading now, though, and cremation is a lot more common.

My cousin died (Lutheran) and there was a viewing in the morning the day of the service. Just even more unbearably sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 85 yr old mom wants an open casket. I can’t imagine anything worse but then again I want to be cremated.

Agree, cremation is the way for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, why do you care how other families choose to honor, remember, or say good bye to their loved ones? If something helps people while they are grieving, why should it matter to others?

Because I've been to two open casket viewings in the past year and they haunt me. Neither were Catholic, both just run of the mill protestant.

OP I get it. My family and my husband's family both do open casket funerals and I hate them. I generally just choose to remain at the back and not view the body -- that is not how I would like to remember my loved ones and I would much rather see photos of them alive then look at a dead body that is no longer them.

I still have upsetting memories of my grandmother's funeral and seeing her body and just feeling so upset to see her like that. I wish that was not my memory of her. I wish I could just remove it.

[Anonymous]

Viewing after death is an ancient pracitce for many religions and cultures. Just be glad we have embalming now. Centuries of people in their homes on ice, not on ice, surrounded by flowers to mask the smell of decay.

I personally find it a lovely ritual but I am Catholic and midwestern so I grew up with it. The first viewing I remember was my 2nd grade classmate who died of Leukemia. Her viewing was in our school gymnasium and every student went.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s macabre to look at a dead person. It’s odd to me that we hide away death so much in our culture. People just disappear. I don’t think everyone needs to have open caskets, but when I saw my grandparents and my stepfather in their caskets, it sank in in my brain that this was just a shell and they had now moved on. I don’t know if that’s what closure means to people, but it really did help me understand the truth.

[Anonymous]

I preferred my paternal grandparents’ open caskets, wake, funeral, & big party afterward (they were Catholic) to my maternal grandparents (Protestant) who just died. No wake, no caskets, no funeral. They were cremated and that was it. My family in Ireland still has open casket wakes at home. It’s a time to remember the person who has died, give the family closure, and it’s also a time to be in your own home, surrounded by family & friends while you’re grieving. It’s lovely actually.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I preferred my paternal grandparents’ open caskets, wake, funeral, & big party afterward (they were Catholic) to my maternal grandparents (Protestant) who just died. No wake, no caskets, no funeral. They were cremated and that was it. My family in Ireland still has open casket wakes at home. It’s a time to remember the person who has died, give the family closure, and it’s also a time to be in your own home, surrounded by family & friends while you’re grieving. It’s lovely actually.

I don’t want to host and feed a ton of people if I’m grieving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Viewings? It’s so macabre

Mrs. Kennedy said let the world see what they have done. But this was about her blood-stained dress. They did have a closed casket.

My sister tried to put a letter into my dad’s casket until my mother screamed at her. I’m 99% sure my sister went back and added the letter.

AFAIK, dead bodies can’t read letters. People are weird, OP.

Why would your mom care? There is a long tradition of burying momentos with loved ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I preferred my paternal grandparents’ open caskets, wake, funeral, & big party afterward (they were Catholic) to my maternal grandparents (Protestant) who just died. No wake, no caskets, no funeral. They were cremated and that was it. My family in Ireland still has open casket wakes at home. It’s a time to remember the person who has died, give the family closure, and it’s also a time to be in your own home, surrounded by family & friends while you’re grieving. It’s lovely actually.

I don’t want to host and feed a ton of people if I’m grieving.

Don’t if it’s not your thing. It’s many people’s thing….around the globe

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All death related culture is weird if you think about it like that. Nobody has normal, no macabre death rituals.

Huh? Saying goodbye to loved ones at a funeral (or celebration of life) and then burying or cremating them is perfectly normal. What would you prefer?

[Anonymous]

I don’t understand it either. It’s barbaric.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get it. My mom has many siblings who she deferred to when planning my grandmother’s funeral. It was open casket. Now, whenever I think of my grandmother, an image of her dead in a casket comes to mind. I would have much preferred to not have that image in my memory bank.

My father died when I was young. I am so thankful my mom didn’t do an open casket so when I think of my dad, the images that come to mind are of him alive instead of dead.

+1. I think of my dead mom (open casket) now every time I do savasana (corpse pose) in yoga.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's religion specific. In Judaism I have never once seen or heard of anyone having an open casket.

My family is half orthodox Jewish half religious Catholic (to the point where the most recently elderly deceased asked people to send money to the local convent as opposed to flowers)

I won’t try to lecture anyone on the absolute differences between a Catholic funeral and an Orthodox Jewish funeral

I will add, though, that as recently as less than a decade ago when I attended the most recenty recently elderly deceased from my Jewish side, an actual adult with a college education whom I had known for twenty years actually asked me if “we saved money in the Jewish cemeteries” because they bury all the bodies upright instead of vertical.

This is a DC forum and I know y’all know I am right about this happening

Also about the part where I hinted at never seeing this person again after that, because how do you go back from some things? Answer is, these days, and especially these days, sometimes you do not

[Anonymous]

And PS she also didn’t even know the difference between horizontal and vertical

That was all included in the bonus package