Do you or do you not hesitate in doing this during a wake?

I don’t hesitate. It seems like an important part of my own process. It drives home the fact of their death in a way that just knowing they’ve died can’t entirely accomplish. It’s not pleasant, but it helps flush the grief through a little faster, in my opinion.

It seems like it’s part of the ritual, and if It’ll help their loved ones it’s something I do without hesitating. I hate funerals but I’ve been to so many I’ve gotten to accept the death and try to help the loved ones.

I go to very few wakes or funerals. I don’t look at the dead person unless a family member drags me over to see “how good she looks.” Oh my Lord, I hate all of it.

I can’t say for sure because I don’t have much of a comparison point; I’ve only been to two open-casket funerals in the past 15 years, both for young men. I had completely different reactions—yet, both times, yes, I really felt my mortality.

One of them had commited suicide with a gun to his head, so the strategically placed hat and the makeup made the whole thing weird. I didn’t want to stare, but the abnormality of his looks made it hard not to look away. That took away from any sense of peace and farewell. I would’ve much preferred not to have seen this.

The second one died in a car accident and looked like he was asleep. Seeing him was a good moment—I had a small conversation with him in my head and experienced the same thing @thorninmud mentioned—a healthy purge of grief.

Any death of someone close reminds me of my mortality. As for the caskets, I think it depends completely on my relationship with that person and how they have been set up. And when I go, put my ashes in a urn, put up a picture of me laughing, have a story-based, music intensive service, then toss my ashes from my favorite mountain on a windy day.

I have never understood the concept of a “viewing”. I consider it morbid and disturbing.

The first viewing that I ever attended was for my grandfather, and while I knew what to expect, the sight of him there was a visceral, painful shock. My second funeral was for my grandmother, I stayed as far away as possible from the open casket. Those waxy, unnatural figures were not the people I loved, and to even see them that way was incredibly painful.

I’ve been to too many funerals. I also feel it is morbid, as @syz said. I used to look. I am accustomed to dealing with the deceased, I have handled and prepared corpses. I have seen many loved ones after their passing.

At this point, I prefer not to look. I gain nothing from it. However, I can understand how some may get something from it, and I wouldn’t judge them for that. It just isn’t for me.

In a not very long time period we have gone from caring for, preparing and keeping our loved ones bodies on view when most people died at home in the early part of the last century and for centuries before that. Death is now sterilized, sanitized, theatrically made up and because of this hiding from the natural we have become even more frightened and closed off from this very natural experience.

Infact, it was custom in the Victorian era to take photographs of the dead, posed and kept as keepsakes. Their are thousands of Memento Mori sites online. I think it is our conditioning more than anything else that brings up anxiety about viewing dead bodies.

Viewing the body is just part of the process fro me. I don’t enjoy it and I don’t shy away from it. Seeing the lifelessness brings me into the focus that it was the personality and not the body that made me appreciate the person. It also reinforces that I will never experience the person again.

Surprisingly, I have seen very few bodies at funerals in the last 30 years, just about everyone seems to be cremated these days.

@Coloma I believe that is part of it, for me. I dislike a lot about the current rituals. I gain nothing from that process (personally. I know that some people do find it to be a necessary part of healing.)
I feel 1000 times more comfortable looking at a person who has passed, who has not yet been “made up” than I do a corpse in a coffin with that bizarre, orangey makeup and strange expression. I find that more distressing than healing.

Never. Ever ever. I didn’t even view my father or sister when they died. I prefer that my last memory of them be when they were alive.

Once, when my niece died, my brother in law compelled me to view the body and to this day I regret it.

Incidentally, it is also against Jewish tradition to view bodies, and that’s part of the reason I don’t.

I’d rather remember them alive and moving around than in that final sleep. I’ll go look, if that is what is going on, but I’ll remember the living person, not the dead one.

I was really relieved at my friend’s funeral that there was no viewing. I didn’t want to think of her that way, all dead and cold and the opposite of the lively person I’d known. I’ve gone to 4 other funerals where there was a viewing and I just quickly glance and try to move past the body as soon as possible. I didn’t even realize until the death of my friend, the first one that really, really hit me hard how much viewing the body doesn’t do anything for me.

I go to wakes. They don’t invite the dead guy.

I’ve never been to a funeral or wake where the body was visible. I think I would find it very uncomfortable.

Seeing the dead doesn’t bother me, but it has been a long time since I have been to a viewing or open casket funeral. With funerals so expensive most people I know have opted for cremation.

Viewing dead bodies hasn’t bothered me and similar to what @zenvelo wrote, it seems to return my focus to the living and reassure me the body holds no more of the person who was alive.

If the family has an open casket I view the body out of respect for the family. The body may be an “empty shell” but it is an empty shell that looks pretty much exactly like the person you knew and cared about. It doesn’t bother me at all. I sat with my mother’s body at the hospital when she died and with her body at the funeral home. Same with my dad. It was just so very, very hard to say goodbye to them and I wanted a little more time. It’s like they’re only just sleeping. It doesn’t freak me out at all.

My next door neighbors’ daughter is an orderly and works at the morgue at one of the local hospitals and one of her jobs is to “warm up” still born babies for a last visit with their mothers, and fathers. I don’t know how she manages that though. That would be too much for me. But she says the same thing; the thinks of the babies as just sleeping, so she deals with and can handle it.

I actually prefer to sit by the casket, pop open a beer, and share a few last jokes with the deceased.

Okay, okay, all kidding aside… I like the ritual of “viewing” the body because, for me at least, it offers a sense of closure. I look at their face one last time and say my final goodbyes. I usually cry a little, but after it’s over, I feel better for it.

For my viewing, I have arranged for the funeral home to put a little smile on my face, and my right hand will lay on my chest with only the middle finger extended.

Who could cry while looking at that ? The mortuary has no ‘custom pose’ charge, my wife suffers only one final embarrassment, but people will remember my service with a laugh for the rest of their days..

Everybody wins…....(well, almost everybody….)