Caskets, open or closed?

It's curious what goes through the mind isn't it? I spend a lot of time imagining what my funeral will be like, weird really as I won't ever know, unless I suddenly pop out of my body as an awesome 21st century ghost - 22nd century if I live long enough, unlikely, but I'm not ruling that possibility out!!

I would like an open casket, so my family can have a final image of me, something to remember me with. I like this idea, so long as I didn't get mauled by a bloodthirsty squirrel on my way home with the groceries... If you look facially presentable I think it would be nice to have that last look. When I attended my grans funeral, and my sisters, they both had closed caskets and that made me sad and frustrated that I didn't get the last look/image of them.

Instead there were framed pictures of them stood on top their coffins.

I would also like to be buried rather than cremated. I like the idea of everyone stood around my grave and the whole "earth to earth," performance you see on tv, assuming this happens in real life.

It's curious what goes through the mind isn't it? I spend a lot of time imagining what my funeral will be like, weird really as I won't ever know, unless I suddenly pop out of my body as an awesome 21st century ghost - 22nd century if I live long enough, unlikely, but I'm not ruling that possibility out!!

I would like an open casket, so my family can have a final image of me, something to remember me with. I like this idea, so long as I didn't get mauled by a bloodthirsty squirrel on my way home with the groceries... If you look facially presentable I think it would be nice to have that last look. When I attended my grans funeral, and my sisters, they both had closed caskets and that made me sad and frustrated that I didn't get the last look/image of them.

Instead there were framed pictures of them stood on top their coffins.

I would also like to be buried rather than cremated. I like the idea of everyone stood around my grave and the whole "earth to earth," performance you see on tv, assuming this happens in real life.

Mortuary and funeral practices intrigue me, both modern and historical and especially pre-historical.

I agree that we are very strange about death and bodies, particularly in Britain, we want them tidied away so as we don't have think about mortality, especially our own.

I don't really want to be remembered, I'm quite happy to disapear into the other world and have nobody remember me, I certainly don't want a load of weeping and wailing, if anyone did remember me then I'd hope it was fondly and not with anger or hatred, but then I'd be way beyond any of that.

I'd quite like a green burial, my body in a shroud and left to lie curled up in a sleeping postition in my earth bed, but if not then a simple cremation and my ashes scattered at the local neolithic burial mound. I think it would be good if we could have newly build mounds with niches for individuals or families and their pets, ashes, somewhere a comunity could come together and celebrate the dead as well as more personal memories.

“Earth to earth”  happens at most of the gravesides I’ve been at. Although I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, I remember with a nice ‘fuzzy feeling’ the Ash Wednesday rituals in which foreheads would be marked with charcoal like ash, in the form of a cross, together with the accompanying words “remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”. I always found the idea of us coming out of nothing and our bodies being of carbon rather comforting.