Not every funeral is a sad and religious event — at least not in a few cities with modern undertakers who are willing to do almost anything to appease a grieving family.
Lifestyle
Funeral homes are beginning to discard the traditional casket displaying the deceased lying in it stiff as a board, and are instead ‘animating’ a corpse in the style of the life they lived. For example, 18-year-old Renard Matthews, who was robbed and murdered in New Orleans while walking his dog, was presented seated in a chair with a PlayStation controller in his hands, facing a television playing an NBA Celtics game. He was also flanked by his favorite snacks of Doritos and soda.
The family of 53-year-old Miriam “Mae Mae” Burbank wanted to remember their loved one as the fun-loving party girl she was in real life. So, they instructed the Charbonnet Labat Glapion Funeral Home to seat her at a table while holding a beer and her favorite cigarette, with disco lights on full blast as if she were at a nightclub. Then, instead of prayers and spiritual songs, they played club music and her family and friends danced around her in a party-like atmosphere.
“When I walked in, I feel like I was in her house and I didn’t hurt so much,” her sister Sherline Burbank said. “Because it’s more of her, and it’s like she’s not dead. It’s not like a funeral home. It’s like she’s just in the room with us.”
In 2015, 55-year-old Renato Garcia was bid goodbye while wearing the Green Lantern costume he often wore around town.
In Puerto Rico, the body of taxi driver Victor Perez Cardona was positioned inside his cab with his hands on the steering wheel — a request his daughter said was characteristic of a man who loved jokes.
Yes, folks, it’s the funeral of the future. No more sad occasions with mourners gawking at the deceased lying in a box. Now, loved ones are opting to recreate the actual life their dearly departed lived and to provide one last hurrah for their final sendoff.
How would you feel if you attended this sort of modern funeral? Would you want your own final celebration to be a traditional service or one that captured the life you lived?
THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY!
“How would you feel if you attended this sort of modern funeral?”
Creeped out and I’d probably head for the exit…very discreetly.
“Would you want your own final celebration to be a traditional service or one that captured the life you lived?”
I’m good with traditional.