I don’t get open casket funerals. Am I the only one?

[Anonymous]

I think my atheist grandfather was the only open casket funeral I’ve been to that I can recall. I was 10 and didn’t find it distressing. Most of the funerals I’ve been to the person had been cremated ahead of the funeral.

Just before I turned 8, my older sister, who was 22, was murdered by her estranged husband. My mom took my brother and I to the funeral home to see her one last time. When we got there, she decided to make my brother and I wait by ourselves in the lobby while she and my step father went to view her body. That made me soooo angry and I felt angry for years, decades maybe. I had nightmares regularly for years about her not really being dead, or being buried alive etc. I think it would have helped if I had seen her that last time. Much later older brothers told me she didn’t look like herself because they had to use lots of makeup to cover her injuries, so maybe it would have given me a different set of nightmares, who knows?

All that is to say it can provide a sense of closure to see the body at rest, but it should always be the choice of the viewer whether or not to look.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The wake is open casket the funeral is always closed casket

Um, no. I’ve been to several open casket funerals.

At my cousins funeral they closed the casket at the end of the service.

[Anonymous]

When I go out in a blaze of glory, I'll be ashes, so there will be nothing to view.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I kind of think the Muslim and Jewish bury them right away is traumatic. Like they were alive this morning and by sundown they are in the ground.

+1. Also doesn’t give people who live far away time to get there.

[Anonymous]

Open caskets always make me think of how clear it is that the soul is no longer in the body.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Im Hindu. The first funeral. Went to was my moms. It was her wish to follow the tradition. I had to dress her body with help from the funeral home staff. My brother and I had to throw flowers on her body, sprinkle holy water, etc. then push her casket into the fire… it was surreal. She had actually wanted my young kids to come, but i kept them home. It wasnt easy by any means, but the ritual did give me a clear sense that my mom was not her body— her soul was free. It was a sense of closure.

This sounds beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

[Anonymous]

I am Italian American.

We have wakes at one of two funeral parlors, which means every wake brings back generations and decades of memories from previous wakes.

The doors close for the Rosary, and once you're stuck in there, you have to stay through the entire Rosary. LoL.

For elderly people who die of natural causes, wakes can be rather high spirited occasions with people laughing in the halls. Coffee and donuts always served in the basement.

Try paying respects to a deceased relative by kissing a cheek goodbye. As a child, I was never afraid of that. Maybe it helps to have closure.

This is my family also!! Another Italian family - the open casket doesn’t bother me or DC but I can respect that it does other people. DH and I both plan to donate bodies to science ( both had to get through cadaver lab ourselves), so we will be closed casket.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can do you one better, op-- I don't get funerals. I have buried enough loved ones to know that they don't provide closure.

I've made it clear that I don't want a funeral/obituary under any circumstance. Donate my body to science, enjoy the insurance money, and move on with life.

If you choose to donate to science, be sure to specify for what uses. People have ended up part of experiments they nor their family would have approved of had they known the full details (e.g., crash test dummy)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think my atheist grandfather was the only open casket funeral I’ve been to that I can recall. I was 10 and didn’t find it distressing. Most of the funerals I’ve been to the person had been cremated ahead of the funeral.

Just before I turned 8, my older sister, who was 22, was murdered by her estranged husband. My mom took my brother and I to the funeral home to see her one last time. When we got there, she decided to make my brother and I wait by ourselves in the lobby while she and my step father went to view her body. That made me soooo angry and I felt angry for years, decades maybe. I had nightmares regularly for years about her not really being dead, or being buried alive etc. I think it would have helped if I had seen her that last time. Much later older brothers told me she didn’t look like herself because they had to use lots of makeup to cover her injuries, so maybe it would have given me a different set of nightmares, who knows?

All that is to say it can provide a sense of closure to see the body at rest, but it should always be the choice of the viewer whether or not to look.

I never saw my father after he died and for decades I've had dreams he faked his death.

I'm sorry for your loss and what your sister, you, and your family went through.

[Anonymous]

You can also have your body composted. Your family can get soil back. I think the reason so many people are traumatized by dead bodies is that we have removed death from our lives and ironically instead of making us feel better it makes us feel worse. When my father grew up the dead were kept in the parlor on ice (no embalming). It gave people time to visit and come to terms with the loss. Dead people weren’t weird or scary, just dead.

[Anonymous]

You're able to look at the face 1 last time (assuming peaceful death) and for a lot of people that helps bring closure and say their goodbyes. Some mourners need that visual.

[Anonymous]

There is no such thing as an open casket funeral. The wake has the open casket.

Skip the wake and just go to funeral or burial at cemetery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no such thing as an open casket funeral. The wake has the open casket.

Skip the wake and just go to funeral or burial at cemetery.

I have been to open casket funerals. The saddest funeral I was at was for a fairly young father. His wife and children were at the coffin as it was closing. Still makes me teary. It was in a Catholic Church.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no such thing as an open casket funeral. The wake has the open casket.

Skip the wake and just go to funeral or burial at cemetery.

Speak for yourself as I have been to open casket funerals. In fact the only time the casket was closed was when a relative in the Coast Guard died during a rescue mission.

[Anonymous]

After my mom was wrecked with cancer, we did not embalm and did not do open casket. It was met with no small number of requests to go back in the back of the funeral home and have a special look--relatives who insisted they couldn't say goodbye without staring at her corpse. I've thought for a long time that it is weirdly gawky--would rather remember them alive and thriving than stuffed in a box with makeup on (20 years later the first thought of my uncle are his levitating hands perched above his stomach like a mannequin). People so uncomfortable with their own mortality have a lot of weird rituals.