Didja know - Living rooms were once called "Death Rooms"

[packman]

Late 19th Century family viewing

I remember growing up in SW Pennsylvania where the dearly departed would lie in their caskets displayed in that front window of the house. As one would walk down the sidewalk, you could see the casket tilted ever so slightly to afford a viewing through the window .

[PoliticAverse]

1. So "picture windows" were for looking in? n/t

Last edited Tue Jan 16, 2018, 01:38 PM - Edit history (1)

[hlthe2b]

2. well, "parlors" for sure...

and yes, the deceased were "visited" there.

[Pharlo]

14. I have an old farmhouse (midwest) and it's been in the family for multiple generations.

There is a door that leads directly outside. We've never used it in my lifetime, but my mother said it was to get the bodies of the deceased in and out of the house without taking them through the entire house.

At first I thought she was joking, but then she told me about her grandfather's funeral. An Irish Wake - at some point during the viewing (apparently alcohol had been flowing freely - 'discreetly' among the men) a fight broke out, the coffin got knocked over and the body went rolling across the floor. She says she remembers seeing the body rolling around when the men picked the body up, placed him back in the coffin and had everything back in place before my grandmother (his daughter) found out what had happened.

Personally, I think my grandmother knew, because she always made comments under her breath whenever my great grandfather's service was mentioned

Edit: this is in reference to the parlor in my house. Another feature to the parlor is the double doors leading into the rest of the house. The only double door in the house.

[3catwoman3]

3. Taking pictures with a deceased family member in the...

...casket is just one of the creepiest practices EVER!. The first funeral I went to was that of my paternal grandmother. It was open casket. I was only 8. It made a major impression on me tht persists to this day (I'm now 66).

I think open casket services are barbaric.

[genxlib]

5. Agree

I have never understood the open casket thing. Why enforce that image as the last thing you remember about a person.

[3catwoman3]

6. Exactly right.

That image will never leave you.

Several years ago, the 20 year old daughter of our across-the-street neighbors died, probably drug related. Her mom had to go shopping for a dress for her body to wear in the casket. And then, stand there for hours next to the open casket during visitation. I think that is brutal and cruel. If one of our sons died, there is NO WAY I would be able to stand beside an open casket for hours and hours. Simply not possible.

[LeftInTX]

10. She could have chosen closed casket...

I don't believe any religion mandates open.

[TexasBushwhacker]

12. I will say this about open caskets

I always thought they were morbid, but then I had a friend who died of a heart attack in his 30s. They had a closed casket. We taught together, but I transferred to another school so we would only see each other during in service days. It took me a couple of years of looking for him during in services for it to really sink in.

I had another friend in her mid 40s who died in a car accident. They had an open casket. Her face and neck had heavy makeup to hide her injuries and it was awful seeing her like that. But she was dead and after the initial grief I had no problem talking about her.

So sometimes viewing the body can offer some closure.

[Kaleva]

4. Where I live, it was custom for family members to stay up with the dead at night

My Dad, who was quite young when his mother died, had to stay up for a couple of hours at night and stay with his dead mother who was laying in a casket in the living room.

[lunatica]

7. My sister and I went to a viewing of one of my uncles

It was the first time for both of us to see a dead person in a casket. My sister prodded the body and then matter of facktly told me to do the same. She said it felt like a rubber tire.

My sister is weird.

[Kristofer Bry]

8. Sarah Palin's Coinage, I Presume

[LeftInTX]

9. So I guess that is where the word parlor comes from

Learn something new every day!

[Laffy Kat]

11. Look, death is a part of life.

I think we are wrong to compartmentalize and even sterilize it. IMHO, our grandparents had the right idea. Sitting death-bedside with family and attending wakes connected us as family and community. It was perceived as what it was, a natural process we are all going to go through. Many kids these days are terrified of seeing a dead body, even that of a loved one. I like the old way better. I just do.

[NNadir]

13. My wife and I were just discussing our funerals. I told her I prefer being eaten by wild...

...animals - especially turkey buzzards - at the Body Farm, but, well, she wouldn't go for it. It's too disturbing she says.

Drat!!!

So I get incinerated, and when her time comes, she gets incinerated, and our boys mix the ashes and dump them somewhere around here in New Jersey - Big Sur, my first preference, is out.

The only thing I want for my boys though, is to avoid open caskets.

That sucks. My mother is dead now more than 40 years, and I still remember how much it sucked.

If you can't be discretely dumped at the body farm, well, quick incineration, out of sight, out of mind is the way to go.

On Valentine's day we're going to beginning to scope out restaurants to take whoever shows up, not that I expect anyone to break into important routines, like say, taking your grand kid to get a haircut, or anything like that.

The greatest thing for me, about dying is that it means I got to live, and live I did. My life has been very beautiful, but all truly beautiful things are best as memories, which I hope my boys will have.