Quote:
Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Lucky you.
Everyone looks terrible and nothing like they did in real life - probably because they are dead.
When my best friend died last year, we were mortified by how "different" he looked.
Open caskets do help with closure, though.
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1. I agree. Embalming makes the person look very strange so that they barely resemble the living person.
2. I can't imagine you intended that pun.
3. I disagree, unless by closure you mean accepting that the living person is really gone.
I don't know if there are religious imperatives for having an open casket, but unless there are, I disagree with any other rationales for doing it. I don't want that to be my last memory of someone I love, or for it to be my loved ones' last memory of me. I think this is true even where a person has died after an illness that altered his or her appearance, because that's at least real and natural rather than surreal and totally unnatural.
Plus, embalming is one thing, but spiffing up a dead person to make his or her final social appearance is fucked up. Of course, people make these decisions in a time of grief, so it's not as if a whole lot of rational thought goes into the whole shindig. Fucking funeral industry. What a racket.
