Open Casket

[QueenAdrock]

So is anyone on here pro-open casket? I myself think it's a horrible thing. I saw it for the first time when my great-aunt died, and it was my first time seeing a dead body and it freaked the FUCK outta me. I personally don't want people's last memories of me to be cold and white, I want them to have memories of me being full of life and walkin' around and doin' shit.

I think it was probably even worse when it was closed-casket for this boy who shot himself. It wouldn't be bad if they just said "closed casket," but everyone had been saying "closed casket because he shot his skull in two" so that scared me pretty bad too.

Either way, I'm against seeing dead bodies. It doesn't give me comfort, it only makes me sadder and freaks me out. (n)

[paulb]

i have mixed opinions. My grandpa was open casket'd and he looked fine, normal. But my grandma in Peru died and it was like with a glass covering her face and stuff and had cotton up her nose, which wasnt pleasent to see. and my uncle was closed casket'd but that was for another reason i wish i didnt know about. I personally would perfer closed i think.

[jackrock]

my grandpa was opened too, i was rather young but not disturbed by it...

i guess lots of it depends on how they went. peacefully- either would be fine. but if it were something tragic and not pleasant- then closed would be a good choice

[kleptomaniac]

it doesn't freak me out if they just look like they're sleeping.....


but it's sad all the same :(

[QueenAdrock]

That's what I thought too, I was like, it's okay. She's only sleeping. But I didn't see her chest rise or fall and she just looked so...vacant.

Though I do think it would be a classy touch to have myself and my husband taken to a taxidermist and stuffed and put on the couches in our kids' houses.

[Monsieur Decuts]

it would be nice if like the caskets were open a crack, and you could take a peak if you wanted, but could also approach it with out hving to look

that's what i want

[fucktopgirl]

i prefer incineration!

[Lindsey_1535]

The first and only funeral I've been to was open casket. It was weird cause I never knew him alive so it was jsut like hey so thats a dead body right there eh. If I knew him while he was alive I think it would have been a different deal altogether. I'm not a huge fan of open casket I suppose.

[jabumbo]

all the funerals i have been at in my time have been open, so i don't really know otherwise...


but me personally, i don't really know. but i wouldn't moind letting the doc's harvast my organs and send me to the creamatorium...

[QueenAdrock]

^Yeah I think that's probably why I was also freaked out. Since she was a great-aunt I saw her like, once, when I was two.

[QueenAdrock]

but i wouldn't moind letting the doc's harvast my organs and send me to the creamatorium...

After reading the insider-story of Filip Muller at Auschwitz, I can't read the word 'creamatorium' or hear it without cringing. In no way shape or form will I ever want to be creamated.

[fucktopgirl]

i prefer incineration!


cremation would be the proper word~

[kleptomaniac]

Though I do think it would be a classy touch to have myself and my husband taken to a taxidermist and stuffed and put on the couches in our kids' houses.


................okay.

[QueenAdrock]

I'm tellin' ya. It'd be awesome. But only if they were really little, like 5 or 6.

[fucktopgirl]

After reading the insider-story of Filip Muller at Auschwitz, I can't read the word 'creamatorium' or hear it without cringing. In no way shape or form will I ever want to be creamated.


you would'nt feel nothing ,you'd be dead!

[jabumbo]

well i don't think i would request being creamated, but i wouldnt say no to it. I mean, its up to the family. but i really don't want to say "well, its against my beliefs".

but, i think its deathly scary how much it costs for proper burial services, and i want to leave all the options open

[QueenAdrock]

you would'nt feel nothing ,you'd be dead!

Well, obviously. But the idea of incinerating my body after reading what had happened makes me sick to my stomach.

[ToucanSpam]

I think I'd probably lose my mind if I saw one of my relatives in an open casket. I mean literally lose it cimpletely. Not mad frustration/throwing shit, but literally just stop thinking and just be messed.

[kleptomaniac]

put my body in a casket and blast me off into space!!!! (!)



(after i'm dead, of course)

[Lindsey_1535]

put my body in a casket and blast me off into space!!!! (!)



(after i'm dead, of course)
like fry like fy

[Chicka B]

I've been to 4 funerals, and only 1 was a closed casket because I think it was from unnatural causes or something. But opened caskets never bothered me really because I was too young to understand.

[Loppfessor]

closed ones make it a lot harder to steal from the dead....



seriously though I've only been to one funeral in my life (thank God) and I can recall how fake my grandma looked and felt. Her skin had always been so soft and wrinkled but then it was hard and plastic like. That kinda freaked me out but I still got to kiss her goodbye so I guess that was good

[Documad]

I have always been offended by open caskets but after reading the Nancy Mitford book when I was a teenager, all I can think about when I see an open casket is all the super disgusting stuff they do to the corpse. It's so much worse than you think.

My dad was made into a nice box of sand. We put him in his favorite stream and I visit every year. We'll put mom there too. The night before we went up north to spread dad's ashes, my sister and I had a knock down, drag out fight. When we weren't paying attention, mom went to sit in the car with dad's ashes. :o

Mom and I drove by a cemetary yesterday and saw all the wreaths on all the graves. We agreed it was a tremendous waste of money. I can't imagine someone mutilating my dad's body and then decorating the place where we put his chemical-filled, reconstructed corpse.

[QueenAdrock]

Oooh, explain what they do to the body. I wanna know.

[Documad]

The taking out the nasty bits and pumping you full of chemicals is the part that isn't so bad. They break bones and shorten people so they fit better. They sew and glue all kinds of things so the dead person's lips don't separate, etc. All so the dead person can have an open casket for no good reason. I read the original version, but The American Way of Death (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679771867/104-9190327-6260765?v=glance&n=283155) was updated in the 1990s. btw, those Mitford sisters were wacky. I said Nancy before, but it was Jessica who wrote about mortuaries. Oops. Nancy wrote (dated) fiction, I forget which one worshipped Hitler, and which one Churchill kept locked up.

I've been to dozens of funerals. Everyone always says the same thing at the open casket ones -- "doesn't she look great!" And you have to say something like "yeah" but you're really thinking that she doesn't look anything like herself and how it was really unfair to glue her eyelids open.

[yeahwho]

Looks as though I can cross my "Open Casket Buffet" idea off the things to do list. :mad:

[fucktopgirl]

The taking out the nasty bits and pumping you full of chemicals is the part that isn't so bad. They break bones and shorten people so they fit better. They sew and glue all kinds of things so the dead person's lips don't separate, etc. All so the dead person can have an open casket for no good reason. I read the original version, but The American Way of Death (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679771867/104-9190327-6260765?v=glance&n=283155) was updated in the 1990s. btw, those Mitford sisters were wacky. I said Nancy before, but it was Jessica who wrote about mortuaries. Oops. Nancy wrote (dated) fiction, I forget which one worshipped Hitler, and which one Churchill kept locked up.

I've been to dozens of funerals. Everyone always says the same thing at the open casket ones -- "doesn't she look great!" And you have to say something like "yeah" but you're really thinking that she doesn't look anything like herself and how it was really unfair to glue her eyelids open.



imagine the people who the job!You have to be really cold emotionaly or be detached.In high school,i had a girl who wanted to do that in life,we where like 16 .I though she was weird,i mean where is the fun!

[Medellia]

I don't know how I feel about it. My best friend and a guy that I was sort of friends with in high school died about six and a half years ago. She had a closed casket, he didn't. Even though it's been so long, sometimes I forget that she's actually dead since I didn't actually see her body. But on the rare occasions that I think about him, all I see is his corpse in a box, not any actual memories of him from when they were alive. Kinda confusing.

[mickill]

Out of all the funerals I've been to, only one was closed casket. It was for this girl I went to school with. She and her entire family had died in a plane crash. I have a cousin who died in a car accident, and when I saw her in her casket I was more or less afraid. Literally. She had bruises all over her face and neck. There appeared to be very little makeup on her. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Most of the funerals I've attended have been for people under 30 and not very many of them looked like wax figures. They just looked like they were asleep. But my aunt and uncle, who also died in a car crash, looked nothing like real people when I saw them.

My last memories of people are rarely of them laying in their caskets. It's usually the last time I saw them while they were still alive. And I'm glad.

[Medellia]

She had bruises all over her face and neck. There appeared to be very little makeup on her.
You could see the bruises on the guy I mentioned. The tried to cover it up and just mae it even more noticable. Which makes me even happoer that Randa's casket was closed. I know she was much worse looking than he was.

This thread sucks.

[Kid Presentable]

Word to mickill.

I had the oppurtunity to see my father in a final viewing which I declined.

I'm not for seeing him dead, his last years were bad enough. I prefer to remember the clever prick that he was, who built a lawnmower and outwitted the New Zealand breweries.

He flew in WW2, and as such I scattered his ashes from a plane that the local aero club donated. I didn't pilot it, of course. He just blew in the breeze. (y)


RIP. Never forgotten 6 years on.

[Beastie's Boy]

Fascinating

[mickill]

Apart from the girl I went to school with, only two other people I've known had closed casket ceremonies; one had been shot in the head, and one was tied to a chair and set on fire. I didn't go to either funeral, though. I think people are pretty pro-open casket where I live.

[hitmonlee]

i've never seen an open casket, and while i think it would freak me out, i would also like to have a proper sense of closure. a couple of friends/relatives that have died, i still expect to see them around, and somehow don't really feel that they are dead. had i seen them in a casket, it might be easier to believe that they have actually gone.

[iceygirl]

so two things come to mind

my cousin was killed in a car accident, and his funeral was open casket, which sucked -

however in august my grandma got very ill and was in a coma-like state in the hospital for about 28 hours before she passed away. i went to the hospital and stayed there with her and helped make her last hours more comfterble. at her funeral, which was open casket, it felt nice to see her there because she looked wonderful. the body after the soul is gone, just a shell, but the visuals of looking at her lovely face for the last time gave me comfort because when she was at the hospital she didnt look that well. everyone is different. that was the first funeral i had been to that i was completely ok with the open casket. my cousins who were not at the hospital felt different about it than i did though.

[cookiepuss]

I'm very openly anti-open casket. I don't want my last memories of someone to be thier lifeless body. I just don't need that for closure. I understand that some people do need to view the body...but I still think it's a curious practice that people put themselves through.

As it went down at my dads funeral we had a viewing before the service. the only reason we did it was that two of my sisters insisted on it. My other sister and myself did not want it and we stood outside the chapel until the others had paid thier respects in their own way and came in once the casket was closed. that worked out just fine.

I'm leaving very explicit instructions for my own funeral though, no body is seeing the body. and I'm going to be cremated.

[mickill]

I had a cousin that passed about 2 years ago. The night before he died, I was at the hospital visiting him. He looked pretty rough, but still very much alive. When I saw him next, 3 days later, in his casket, he really didn't look all too different. Nothing like an empty shell, anyway.

[fucktopgirl]

like i said before,cremation is what i prefer!I mean seeing a body that is no more inhabited is weird!

but while we are on the subject of death,i think our society put a negative emphase on this natural process.Its has to be sad(a lot of time its is)the whole funeral process is morbid and lack of soul sometime.If you look in others culture,the death ,like mexican,is celebrated and view like a rite of passage.Here,its view like the end of life and its pretty depressing!

when i am gona be gone,i want people to get drunk and have a blast and laughing !

[mickill]

when i am gona be gone,i want people to get drunk and have a blast and laughing !
Um, I'd kinda want people to be maybe just a little sad, personally. Otherwise, it'd just kinda be like, you bastards!

[fucktopgirl]

Um, I'd kinda want people to be maybe just a little sad, personally. Otherwise, it'd just kinda be like, you bastards!


well yea,maybe a little bit of sadness,i dont want them to be like"alright she is gone let party!"But ya know,,

[DandyFop]

I haven't thought too much about this subject...I've only been to one funeral that I can remember, and it was open casket. The man died of Lou Gehrig's disease, and it was really sad to see it take over his body in his last few months. When we saw his corpse, it was grey and cold. It was kind of an affirmation that his "soul" wasn't there anymore, to me at least.

But, even then, I still forget that he's not alive. We ate Thanksgiving dinner with him and his family every year for like 10 years straight, and now we've had I think, 2 without him. It's still strange every year, remembering that he's not going to be there.

Personally I will probably donate my organs and be cremated. I don't care about having a headstone or any of that jazz, but who knows, maybe my opinion will change over time. I guess it is a nice way for people to have a certain place to come and visit, but after my grandkids are dead, nobody will visit it anyway right, unless I become some famous person who people sneak into the graveyard to leave me cocaine or something.

I do want a goofy funeral though, or wake, or whatever. I told my friends I wanted a cardboard standup of myself that is like, motion-sensored, and would say stuff when people walk by.

[Kid Presentable]

This will sound shit, but if you're decomposed by the time they find you do they put a suit on you?

[beastieangel01]

I don't know. I've only seen one open casket for my Grandmother, and it just hit me when I saw her that she really did pass. It was only when I saw her lying there that I finally cried.

So I'm not sure. I think it let me let go to be honest.

[voltanapricot]

When my darling granddad died he was in an open casket in the Chapel of Rest. Myself and the older kids of the family went and I’m so glad I did, it’s not as disturbing as you might think. Seeing his peaceful face was very reassuring to me. The worst part is leaving though because that’s it, you know? At the funeral it was closed, which I didn’t like so much.


I think I'd probably lose my mind if I saw one of my relatives in an open casket. I mean literally lose it cimpletely. Not mad frustration/throwing shit, but literally just stop thinking and just be messed.
Yeah, in some cases I really do think closed casket is probably better, my auntie lost her best friend in the Bali bombing a few years back and the body was in a real state, the horror of seeing her friend like that could have been spared.