Rite of the Sitting Dead: Funeral Poses Mimic Life

[xchrom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/us/its-not-the-living-dead-just-a-funeral-with-flair.html?hp&_r=0


At the family’s request, a funeral home in New Orleans posed the body of Miriam Burbank for her service this month. Credit Percy McRay, via Reuters

NEW ORLEANS — All last week, people were calling Louis Charbonnet to find out how they might avoid lying down at their funerals. Funeral directors have called; so have people with their own requests, such as the woman who wanted to be seen for the last time standing over her cooking pot.

The calls started coming in to the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home during its June 12 viewing for Miriam Burbank, who died at 53 and spent her service sitting at a table amid miniature New Orleans Saints helmets, with a can of Busch beer at one hand and a menthol cigarette between her fingers, just as she had spent a good number of her living days.

Word of the arrangement began to spread, hundreds showed up, the news spread online, and now here was Mr. Charbonnet getting a call from a funeral director in Australia.

Ms. Burbank’s service was the second of its kind that Mr. Charbonnet had arranged, and the third in New Orleans in two years. But there have been others elsewhere, most notably in San Juan, P.R. Viewings there in recent years have included a paramedic displayed behind the wheel of his ambulance and, in 2011, a man dressed for his wake like Che Guevara, cigar in hand and seated Indian style.


The body of Christopher Rivera, a boxer who was shot to death, was propped up in a fake boxing ring for his wake in January in San Juan, P.R. Credit Ricardo Arduengo/Associated Press


***what would your tableau be - if you wanted to do such a thing?
mine would probably involve a disco ball..

[Submariner]

1. Maybe on a motorcycle

A man, who died after being shot last Thursday, April 22 in Puerto Rico, was embalmed in a non-traditional way.

Visitors at his wake will find him riding atop his motorcycle and complete with the attire and sunglasses. He is positioned as if he was revving the engine and in a fast highway.

David Morales Colon, 22 years old and a victim of shooting, was positioned in the lifelike manner as requested by his family, who brought the motorcycle at the funeral home after he was killed.

The motorcycle, a Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4 , was a gift to Colon by his uncle.

http://www.thisis50.com/profiles/blogs/riding-til-the-end-funeral

[joshcryer]

2. That's a rather impressive posturing.

Bravo to that Puerto Rician funeral guy. Impressive. Have to wonder 1) wtf they thought about the request and 2) how the heck they made it work so well. Lot of effort went into that, no doubt.