oldslabsides wrote:  Yep. After the medical school is finished with the carcass.

I'm opposed to caskets - open or closed.  Give me an urn, please.

 justlistening wrote: 
I've been to a few too many open-casket wakes.  I understand their purpose but maybe their time has passed.

 justlistening wrote: 

I'm not opposed to an open casket. It's good to acknowledge a death that way and say goodbye. I just don't like it sitting there like furniture. I would like to see it in a special, private area separate from the gathering. Even a filmy curtain hanging around it would be okay.

 Alexandra wrote: 

Yeah, never liked it either.  Growing up in a Catholic family a wake and open casket were standard.  The theory I heard is that back when these things were harder to verify it was a way for family, friends, relatives to confirm another's death.  Have no idea if that's true - if it is I think that it's a tradition whose time has passed.

(This resurrected, empty thread seemed like the best place to post....)

Does anyone else find it a little weird, to be walking around an open-casket viewing, chatting and talking like it's a cocktail party with the guests? I know the departed's body isn't really them anymore.....but seems to me they could make it a more private area with a curtain around the casket for those who want to go pay respects, then move out into the open area to converse.

I remember at my brother's funeral, my eye kept going back to his casket and I kept thinking, gah! That was my brother. Just sitting there like a piece of furniture while everyone's milling around.


There's nothing like a viewing (I went to one yesterday) to really make one contemplate life and living and time left on earth and savoring people all around us who are still warm and breathing and moving and smiling.......