I'm Swedish, and ethnic Swedes don't have open-casket funerals - it's just not done. A friend of mine, also an ethnic Swede, was recently invited to a Muslim funeral. Not only was the dead woman carried on an open bier, but her relatives were filming her all the time. When they arrived at the grave, and the woman was lowered down into it, one man kept filming her, down in the grave, for several minutes. Everyone was standing close by to watch, too.
I've been to several funerals, but as I said, the dead person was always in a closed coffin. But I have seen my share of dead bodies, though. When I was twenty, I was working at a hospital as an unqualified nurse's assistant. I can't say that this hospital was understaffed, but the patients kept using their alarms all the time, usually to ask for a glass of water or something. After a while, us nurse's assistants didn't exactly come running to whoever was calling for us whenever we heard this alarm signal. And wouldn't you know that one day a man had a heart attack. We let the alarm sound for about a minute before we went to check on him, and I think he might have been dead already. I'm not at all sure of that, however. We ran to get the nurse in charge, but she was very new and inexperienced, and she couldn't find the proper equipment needed to revive him. He died. It was horrible. I felt so guilty, I can't tell you. To make matters even worse, I had to help wash the dead body afterwards. The most horrible thing of all was putting my hand into his mouth to remove his false teeth. Sure I was wearing gloves, but I could feel how alive his mouth seemed. It was warm as if he had been alive, and the insides of his cheeks were wet and soft and smooth and slick and perfect. To feel his mouth like that, so seemingly alive, and to know he was so dead, was terribly jarring.
Then my grandfather died. He was 94, he had been a widower for nine years, and he had just had enough. He stopped eating and drinking. A few of us relatives were there. He was delirious and scared, so we decided we should start singing for him. We sang his favorite hymn. Immediately he seemed to relax, and after less than a minute he just let out a sigh, and died. I still believe he thought he was hearing the heavenly choir welcoming him into paradise. I am, as I have said before, very much an agnostic, but I'm so glad I was singing my grandfather's favorite hymn to him when he died.
After that, my father died, and I, my mother and my aunt were there with him. He was so sick and in so much pain. He was frightened, too. I still feel so sorry for him.
Then there was my neighbour, a 75-year-old lady who had been a smoker all her life, and her body was worn out. During her last year, I bought groceries for her, went to the chemist's occasionally and generally came to check on her to see if she was okay. One evening, she was so very, very much worse than she had been before. I wanted her to go to the hospital, but she refused. I stayed with her for some time, we made phone calls to her daughter who lived about a hundred miles away, and we called a medical helpline where you can get medical advice. Well, as I said, my neighbour refused to go to hospital. I went home. The next morning, I used the spare key she had given me to let myself into her apartment, just to see if she was okay. It was early, and she was asleep, but she seemed peaceful. I left to go to work, calling her later from work, and she seemed okay. When I came back that evening, she was terrible. But she had put up a big note on her fridge: "I don't want to go to hospital, signed, XX XX." What could I do? I called her daughter again. I fixed water bottles with straws. I helped her go to bed and I stayed for a while. Guess I could have stayed the night, but I didn't. And the next morning, when I let myself in with her keys again, she was dead.
So as I said, I have seen my share of dead people in my life... which is not to say I would be particularly interested in viewing a dead body in an open casket at a funeral. I would do it if the relatives wanted me to, but I wouldn't do it for myself.
Ann
