What is the point of an open casket?

One valid point of it, I think, is to help survivors confront the fact of the death. From my personal experience, the body is clearly no longer the person I knew and loved; seeing it drives home the fact that the person is really gone. Yes, that’s difficult, but there’s also something healthy about it. It helps get past the denial stage of mourning. I’ve found that, for me at least, it’s better to grieve intensely as soon as possible than to gradually process it.

I always figured it was for saying your goodbyes to the person. You get to see them one last time.

Both my Mom and Dad died and were cremated. I never saw them “one last time.” I don’t any problem accepting the fact that they are dead. I am sure I would not have wanted to see them in that state. My kids won’t see me in that state, either.

It was horrifying.

I think open caskets may hark back to old royalty. They’d have an open casket so everyone could see that it was, indeed, the king that had died and not some imposter.

There does, indeed, need to be some traditional/cultural origin to this.

I found this.

http://www.answers.com/Q/How_did_the_tradition_of_open_casket_funerals_start

Sorry for not “linking”, but copy paste on tablets is disgusting.

Ah.

It is not a tradition in the Jewish faith and I was well into my 20s before I attended a viewing. I find it difficult too but I just glance at the body or if I don’t have to pass by it, I stay well away. I don’t question its importance to some but it’s not a practice I’m fond of.

Nothing creepy here:

The Russians, arguably the ones who perfected the practice, have put both Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin on long-term display. Lenin’s body has been embalmed in a large tomb near the Kremlin since shortly after his death in 1924, preserved by a steady 61 degree temperature and a strict regimen of mild bleachings and soaks in glycerol and potassium acetate.

Just because we don’t like something doesn’t mean there’s no point to it.

Everything everyone above said is right but I know in some cultures it is also a way of making sure the person is dead so as not to be buried alive. Necrophania was more common in the past.

The end where your feet go.

Pure spite! “Neener-neener-neener!”

@jca Truth.

I don’t believe there’s no point to an open casket—I’m sure it’s comforting for some to see the deceased one last time—but for me it’s unsettling and not a picture of a loved one I want to residing in my mind’s eye.

Just to see, and say good by one last time. I don’t have a problem with it.

Usually it’s just closure. I’m okay with that. Or if it’s a business associate you didn’t really trust it lets you confirm the SOB is dead.

Both of my parents were cremated. I didn’t even see their ashes. I don’t feel like I don’t have closure.

That’s cool that you don’t @Dutchess_III But some people, like myself, do better with closure when they have that type of thing. When I was 13, my dad died. I gave him a kiss on his shoulder when he was in the coffin.

The day of his cremation, my infant grandchild was brought to my house and the lid removed from the coffin, it was comforting to see him one last time although it was more than obvious he was not there and had gone but the process of grieving would have felt very incomplete without a final sight of him.

We all grieve in different ways and that is one of the important things to learn if one is to learn compassion.

@janbb Excellent answer. We all handle it in our own way.

So people can get a good last look at the person. Some family and friends may not have seen the deceased person for years.

The last funeral I went to the girl was dark purple in color. I don’t know if it was because she bled to death from the car accident she was in or what. I’ve never seen a dead person so ashen before.

She woke me up in a dream a year later saying my name. Her face was as if it were right in front of me. It was normal color and she was talking to me. She told me some personal things about her family members and shared her concerns about her children that she left behind.

I saw her house in Heaven and was relieved that she made it there. I saw her little girl and the girls name that she was pregnant with when she was killed in the car accident. She gave me messages to give to her family and one of her friends. She had told me how she had to warn her son not to go onto the highway when he wanted to chase after a red ball. She didn’t say the word “wind” when she was telling me how the wind took the ball across the highway, I don’t know why she didn’t say the word, she just showed me a force, the wind force.

I thought, I’m not supposed to be hearing the dead, or talking to them! Christians aren’t supposed to talk to the dead and she was asking me to get a pen and write down what all she wanted to say. Then I saw a vision of Jesus Christ and He gave me peace and I knew that He knew what was happening, and He was okay with it. So I got a pen and wrote what she said.

It was very strange, because Christians are taught not to believe in reincarnation, but she wasn’t reincarnated. When they put her casket down in that 6’ hole, her spirit was in Heaven. And I know she still watches over her two children she left behind on earth, but every night she and her little girl that’s in Heaven with her both come to her earthly children’s bedrooms and give them good night kisses. :)