Some funeral practices, traditions fail to make sense

When you stop to consider all the weird stuff we encounter every day of our lives, you begin to wonder: How did we get to be so strange?

A few weeks ago a reader called to say there was one thing that was bugging her that I never had addressed in this column.

"What's that?" I naively asked.

"Why," she asked, "do they put glasses on dead people?"

Good question. This is something I have wondered about myself.

She said she understands that some people are more recognizable with their spectacles on, but certainly they didn't wear glasses when they were sleeping unless they happened to fall asleep with them on. And they definitely don't need to wear glasses when they are dead.

Now, I am not being disrespectful, so save your indignation. Think about it. When you go into a funeral home to pay your respects, don't you find it odd, laughable even, to see someone lying in a casket with his glasses on?

How much better would it be to have a gentleman, who perhaps wore glasses all the time, to have his spectacles tucked into a case in the breast pocket of his suit• Perhaps a woman who always wore eyeglasses could be holding the glasses by the stems in her hands. That is, if they were necessary at all.

The woman who called made a good point, when she asked: "Why not stick her purse in there, too, or all her jewelry, or a book or tools• It's not like you're going to take it with you." Indeed.

There are some of us who believe the whole funeral ritual thing is barbaric. Why, we wonder, do we dress people up in suits and ties or go out and buy clothing for them to be buried in• And as for frilly negligees, what's that all about?

And makeup?

It seems to me, a person should be buried in whatever they were comfortable in during their lifetime. If that was a sweatshirt and sweatpants, then they should travel to the next world in comfort.

And burying people with their jewelry, as in diamonds etc., is beyond ridiculous. How many of those gems actually make it into the ground• Hmmm. Let me see, a five-carat diamond on a dead woman's finger or a five-carat diamond sold at market value• That's a rough one.

Again, I am not being disrespectful. Jewelry is for the living. Once you are dead and gone, the last thing you need weighing you down is a rock on your finger.

Moving on to expensive caskets. Why• Dead is dead. I seriously doubt that you care what you are lying in. If you are lucky, your soul has left your body and gone to a better place and you don't need a mahogany casket for transportation.

If it's all for show, shame on your family. People should treat their loved ones with love and dignity and respect while they are living. If you never visited mother when she was alive, never sent her flowers and never bothered to even ask how she was faring, don't make a big show upon her demise. A $10,000 casket and flowers to the ceiling won't make up for your neglect and won't buy you a space where she's probably going.

Funerals, they say, are for the living. They provide closure, it is said.

Some of us take issue with that. When the doctor pronounces a loved one dead, that's closure and no amount of pomp, circumstance and tears is going to make it any more final.