You never can tell what direction a comment section is going to go on the internet. I should know that by now. Yet I have to admit I was surprised when an MCB thread about a departed friend turned into a slagging-off of open-casket visitations and burials.
Southern Beale on 13 September, 2007 at 6:37 pm #
Is it just a southern thing? I didn’t know that.
We sure didn’t oooh and ahh over the remains of our people. In fact, we didn’t bury our people. Everyone in my family was cremated.
Much more civilized, IMHO.
Well, as I said over there, I’m not Southern.
The first dead body I saw in a casket was Betty Ann. I was six years old, and Betty Ann had been my babysitter for the first year of my life. Her daughter Jeanie was my best friend. And breast cancer took Betty Ann, and my parents took me to her viewing and her funeral. It must have been February, because I had some of those candy hearts with me to snack on. The line to see the body seemed to take forever. When we got there it was obvious to me that whatever made Betty Ann “real” wasn’t there anymore. It was my first object lesson in the difference between the soul and the soulcage. I wasn’t scared by her body, but I was scared of the sadness in Jeanie’s eyes. I remember giving her my candy hearts. I didn’t know what else I could do.
I’ve since seen more lifeless bodies, had more memories and been evermore mindful of the husks of death. I’ve said goodbye to the waxy visages of my father-in-law and my grandfather. It helps to see them, to realise that there is a person who is no longer there, who has gone on.
Viewing bodies is important. I always think of The Godfather. Vito Corleone called in massive favours on behalf of the undertaker who asked that his daughter be avenged. When he agreed to take care of the vengeance, Corleone’s people didn’t ask for money. They simply marked the undertaker’s card with a favour due. “You owe your Don a service…”
The service? To make the body of Sonny Corleone viewable by his mother. That’s how important seeing bodies is. That’s why we do it. It allows us to say “good-bye”. Or, better yet, “see you later”.
I’m still wondering where this magical, civilized place from which Southern Beale and her family hails is.
You know, it’s just not cool to critique how people mourn their dead. All of us have different ways to do it, some that honestly I would consider a bit odd… but still. It’s one of those things where if you disagree, you keep your mouth or typing hands still.
On top of that, having a few months ago come across my grandmother’s body in the nursing home not twenty minutes after she passed due to me not quite making it in time after the staff of the nursing home had called us in, and seeing her vacant body, eyes greyed and lustreless, jaw hanging obsecenly, it was a comfort at the funeral home a few days later to see her fixed up in her Sunday finery, with her favorite earrings on.
To see her as she would want to be presented.
I understand where SB is coming from, but I just don’t think it quite necessary to tell others how they should respect their dead.
I’m not sure how cremation is incompatible with a wake/receiving of friends/etc.
Oh I have nothing AGAINST cremation; I think I’ll probably be cremated myself.
I just was surprised at the implication that an open-casket viewing of the deceased was a backward, uncivilised behaviour.
The service? To make the body of Sonny Corleone viewable by his mother. That’s how important seeing bodies is. That’s why we do it. It allows us to say “good-bye”. Or, better yet, “see you later”.
But, Kat, surely it does that only if we come from a tradition that expects an open casket. It let Sonny Corleone’s mother say goodbye, sure. And it would have let you say goodbye. But it would have interfered with my saying goodbye (if you or I had a son like Sonny), because I come from a no-visitation, plain closed casket tradition, and it would have been completely out of place at my son the gangster’s funeral. It would, in fact, be completely outrageous in my tradition.
We do experience the rituals of death according to our own traditions. It doesn’t make other people’s traditions wrong, barbaric, or even unusual. (I mean, I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to avoid open-casket visitations, or how to avoid actually viewing the dead body if I couldn’t, because it feels completely wrong to me, but I’ve got all this experience because it’s fairly common.) But I’m never going to let anyone I love be displayed after death.
Wow, I think that’s publishable, Kat. And I suspect that you and nm aren’t far apart on the subject. Thus, I pretty much agree with what everyone above has said.
Sorry if you took my comment as a criticism or a critique (and re-reading it I can see how you’d get that impression). I really WAS asking a question. I really did want to know. I still do.
The handful of Southern funerals I’ve been involved in all consisted of a long “visitation” with the body at a funeral home, followed by an open casket funeral. This is so completely alien to me, and I wonder if this is a Southern tradition or connected to a particular religious tradition or what. Where I’m from there’s a cremation and a memorial service, but those were largely secular affairs.