Smile, you're on post-death camera?

I grew up in the tradition of open caskets at wakes. It was just the way things were done. In fact, it was considered odd - even off-putting - when someone decided on a closed casket. It was only "excused" when the body was totally ravaged by cancer or had had his face shot off in Vietnam. Other than that, it was somehow considered selfish to go with a closed casket, as if you were depriving wake-goers of a good look see. What was the family trying to hide? 

Not that I ever actually said anything, but at a still relatively tender age, I did know what to say if I wanted to comment on the condition of the stiff deceased. "He looks good." "They did a great job with her."

And yet, the stiff deceased seldom does look particularly good.

At my father's wake - back when wakes were two day, two shifts each day (2-4 p.m., and 7-9 p.m.) affairs - a number of people commented on how good he looked, and what a great job Frank (who ran the funeral parlor) had done with him - this supposedly because, as a friend of my father, Frank wanted to make him look good. 

But the magic didn't work. Maybe because of what they did to my father's mouth - which I guess must have collapsed in on itself - my father rather resembled Galen in Planet of the Apes.

Even after nearly 50 years, I can perfectly recall how my father looked when he was laid out. Even without any photograph to use as an aide memoire. 

I was, vaguely, aware that some people did take post mortem snapshots of their loved ones. It just wasn't part of our tradition.

But it was a thing for some people.

Fast forward a dozen years from the death of my father to the death of my Uncle Jack. Jack was a state representative, and at his wake, a couple of his constituents came up to my Aunt Mary and my mother and asked if they minded if they took a couple of pictures of Jack in his casket. They wanted to be able to show it to a couple of friends who weren't able to make the wake. (I believe my mother said that the constituents were Irish. That's neither here nor there, I suppose, but it does sound ultra-Irish.)

Me? I have no interest in pictures of a dead body. But it's really no stranger than having an open casket at a wake, which I know freaks out people who didn't grow up looking at dead bodies lying down fully clothed, clutching rosary beads, in satin-lined caskets. (Big question: do you put on the person's glasses or not?)

So, while I started to react with an ick-factor shudder when my sister Kath sent me an article on an increase in the popularity after-death photography, by the time I read through the story, I was beyond "oh, why not" and into healthy-respect territory.

Photographing the dead, it seems, is taking off among those who opt for home funerals - another thing I have a healthy-respect for. 

I didn't have a home funeral when my husband died, and I didn't have a wake for Jim, either. He was cremated, with most of his ashes buried but some scattered - and some, after six years, still to be scattered. A month after Jim died, I had a memorial service that was highly personal and pretty DIY. In between, I sat a sort of shiva, with friends and family members popping by to help me grieve. It worked.

But I wouldn't have wanted to have a picture of Jim taken immediately after his death - eyes open, mouth agape. 

I realize that post-mortem pictures aren't taken in the immediate aftermath of death, but once there's been a chance to tune the body up a bit. 

Anyway, when Robert Alexander died, his family brought him back to a family farm in Oklahoma for a home funeral. And the family decided that a lot of them wanted a picture taken with Robert. And that they wanted a picture that included Robert, his six surviving siblings, and their mother. 

Unlike many memorial photos, however, the Alexander siblings just passed them back and forth among themselves. No social media postings. 

Amy Cunningham is a Brooklyn funeral director who helps out with home funerals.

“The photograph seals the emotion,” Ms. Cunningham said. “And with cellular phones ever-present, we’re going to be recording all kinds of things we never did previously. Death is just one of them. Though when you’re Facebook posting and the images are wedged between the latest Trump atrocity and cats who look like Hitler it can be jarring.” (Source: NY Times)

Not that I know anyone who's actually posted a picture of a dead body, but I'm not wild about this social media use. Maybe if someone had a dedicated account set up for such display. But the image of a dead body just showing up in your timeline, or Twitter or Insta feed, or, I guess for the youngs, on Tick Tock? Not my cup of tea. What are you supposed to do with this news? How should you react? As the article asks:

Do you choose the weeping smiley face or just hit “like”?

Precisely. 

What I do like about the concept (if not the execution) of death photography, is that it's an acknowledgement of death - not a denial. 

Not sure that I need to join the "death-positive" movement, but I'm all for accepting that dying is part of life. A big part of it. And, other than birth, pretty much the only thing that everyone in the world has in common. 

One good thing about growing up in my tradition was that there was no denial of death. While there may have a been a bit too much revelling in it on the part of the nuns -  glorification of gruesome martydoms and child-deaths, constant reminders that none of us deserved to live - there was no escaping that we were all born to die. 

Children went to wakes and funerals, and not just of close family members. If a neighbor died, the parent or even grandparent of a classmate, by late grammar school you were expected to go to the wake and/or funeral. 

In seventh grade, I was quite pissed off at my parents for refusing to let me go to the wake of an eighth grade girl who'd been hit by a car and killed. I wasn't a close friend of Dorliss, but my sister and I were part of a larger group that occasionally played or hung around together. She had a couple of older brothers - a major attraction - and her mother had a hairdressing salon in their basement - a minor attraction - so we occasionally hung out at Dorliss' house.

Anyway, my parents thought it would be too traumatic to see Dorliss' body at an open casket wake. Kath was old enough to go, but I would have to settle for the funeral. 

Everyone was, of couse, upset by the death of Dorliss. But I guess I was a somewhat callous seventh grader becaues I remember being more upset that I was the only one I knew who didn't go to the wake and see Dorliss - who was very pretty - laid out in an angel gown.

There was no option, but I absolutely would have looked at a picture of this if one had been available. 

But, yeah, I was a child wake and funeral goer. Everyone was. 

I was always amazed in adult life to find that there were plenty of folks who made it to adulthood without ever having been to a wake or funeral. How to reach adulthood without ever having known anyone who died???

Anyway, tomorrow's Ash Wednesday. You may see a few folks wandering around town with dirt smudges on their foreheads. Just the annual Catholic reminder that you're going back to dust. 

And while I don't think anyone needs to be dwelling on death, it is pretty damned inevitable. 

And that's something we all have to come to grips with, whether we want to remember it with a snapshot of not.