It is creepy.
Pictures of the dead go for big money on Ebay, though.. or they used to.
Postcards, photographs.. egad. I want to remember my loved ones alive, not cold,stiff and with makeup on.

Thank you, Charlie. Glad to know I'm not the only one.

Har har, Shuvee.

Interesting, MissusK.

Yes, Lynn, I did. I don't want to go into detail, but I was just very surprised when I saw someone take a picture of the deceased.

The new thing nowadays is to have the funeral videotaped. I can understand it on the one hand -- the family is too grief-stricken to really pay attention to the service and can watch it later when they can take it in better -- but on the other hand...who wants to watch a funeral over and over?

I come from a "don't look at the dead -- heck, the dead guy doesn't even get to come to the memorial service" kind of family. DH is Catholic. I haven't been to any funerals for his family yet, but I'm not looking forward to the whole viewing stuff when those days come along. Dead folks don't bother me, but I don't know why anyone would want to put a loved one "on display," so to speak. I've told DH that under no circumstances am I to be at my own service.

I was with two of my grandparents when they died. I can't remember what my grandfather looked like at that moment, because he really just seemed to have gone to sleep. My grandmother, however, looked awful, because for some unknown reason the nurses in the hospital had stuck in her bottom denture and she looked like a bulldog. I remember that as clearly as if it was yesterday. I sure don't need a picture for that to be burned into my head. Yuck.

I have a lot of pictures of relatives in their coffins. It was very common in my grandparent's culture as was an open casket that was opened yet again for viewing at the gravesite.

At the turn of the century it was quite common to photograph the dead and especially the children who died at an alarming rate.

I really do believe generations before us were more in touch with death and treated it with more respect.