What are you feelings on visitation at a funeral home?

Question

I am looking for serious responses here.
How does it make you feel to have to visit a funeral home?
What are your feelings of having an open casket for the deceased?
Is having the body there even necessary?

Answer 1

Well, for me, I think the hardest part of death is being confronted with other peoples' grief. It makes me very uncomfortable, and I never know what I should say or do. However, seeing the body brings closure for many people, and I had a friend who passed a few years ago and was cremated with no viewing. I definitely feel that it would have been easier for me to deal with it could I have seen him. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but, as you have probably heard, funerals are for the living, not the dead, and the same is true for visitation. Though it may seem creepy and weird, I truly think it provides closure and comfort for people, and a chance for them to offer one another support.

Answer 2

This is part of the grieving process. Some do find all parts of this essential in order to grieve properly. I also believe that visitation is an opportunity to support and strengthen the bereaved. Going to a funeral isn't exactly a cheerful experience for anyone. It's a reminder to us all of our own mortality. I think some need the open casket and the body to come to terms with the fact that the individual is actually dead. There are many who would find it impossible to move on with life without a thorough grieving process taking place and without the chance to say that silent, last good bye to the deceased.

Answer 3

Many people need the reality of seeing their loved one's body in the coffin. Personally I prefer a closed coffin. It's always a sobering time when I visit a funeral home. It's a reminder that all of us will some day be the body in the coffin. Of course when I go, it's always because I was a friend of the deceased or of their family so it's a sad time. However, it is comforting to the survivors to have people come to pay their respects so it's something that must be done.

Answer 4

First of all -- unless you cared about the deceased -- why prey on them AFTER their death - or even go to visit them in the Funeral Home?

I did experience many, many funerals over my life -- starting at a very early age in childhood as my elderly grandparents died ... then the Great Aunts .. then others .. including those who I served with in the Military.

Personally -- if you were not able to treat a person with dignity and respect (and HONOR!) during their lifetime, why do you come to the funeral home to have to see the 'display' of the body.

MY parents died in an Auto Accident -- my father had a Heart Attack at the wheel, and they died instantly -- and ... HORRIBLY -- one distant relative actually DEMANDED that the coffins be OPENED for display of my parents -- (How sick is that) so that they could see them ... WHY???

Answer 5

My mom just past and we had a service without her body and it easier to say good-bye. Most people aways say the body does not look like the person they knew. If I go to a funeral home b/c it was a friend I check out the ladies and see if I can hook up one of them for a date. It sounds sick but, they are dead not me and most of the time I get a number or two. If it's a family member, it's more of a reunion and if there are any friends of the family there I check out the ladies and see if I can hook up one of them for a date. Most of the time I get a number or two.

Answer 6

From what I can see the "American way of death" is like the American way of life - crude, in bad taste and over the top. The concept of having an open coffin is quite disgusting, if I wish to remember a person it is not as a corpse waxed and painted to look like a real person but as they were to me in life. I simply do not go to funerals (and that includes family) and when I die my will decrees that my remains will be cremated and ashes disposed of with no one present.

Answer 7

we've in basic terms long previous with the aid of this with the death of a relatives member & this is unsettling to assert the least. The physique very seldom is an intensive honestly resemblance of someone's visual attraction, i've got got here across. i could choose a closed casket with a image on appropriate & possibly different memorabillia regarding that persons life. i could particularly bear in ideas them the way they have been the final time I observed them. while my time is up I even have my families promise to not positioned themselves with the aid of that variety of grief, quite my granddaughter. 3 days of non-end grief is in basic terms too long formerly i bypass the fantastic resting place. deliver me to my grave the day when I bypass then have a memorial service interior the close to destiny & afterwards have a occasion that celebrates my life not mourns me & makes particularly everyone unhappy. it somewhat is a prepare that desires to get replaced. human beings will pay their respects with out particularly being there. Make a donation to a charitable or scientific examine enterprise in my memory & enable's get on with life. The grieving & healing technique is complicated adequate with out including greater trauma unnessessarily. The cost human beings bypass with the aid of is in basic terms ideas boggling now and returned. the intricate casket, the floral arrangements & so on. The deceased would not care she or he isn't there to be sure it. I as quickly as study that the definition of a real hypocrit is a Funeral Director who tries to look unhappy at a 10000 greenback burial & to me that approximately says all of it. in case you pick to deliver me off contented have me me cremated, lease a small airplane & unfold my ashes over a nudist colony. then you definately'll understand i'm chuffed in my new life. it's going to save on the hot cloth wardrobe as quickly as I get there as nicely!!

Answer 8

when my mom passed away she did not want a viewing. she was cremated and we had a service for her and then we brought her home. for some people its a way of all of their friends and family to say good bye and to show your respect. its a personal preference for every one.

Answer 9

The body needs to be there. It will help a lot of people with their closure.