MEME: Tuesday Two - Episode 20

Tuesday Two - Episode 20

It has been a crazy couple of weeks...much going on, and many distractions to keep me away from more regular blogging. I'm blatantly cheating on this one, by backdating this entry so it'll still register on Tuesday! Sorry for the delay.

For those who have never played, the rules are simple: I offer two different questions, both related to the same topic, but you only choose one of them to actually answer.

Carly of " Ellipsis...Suddenly Carly" was first to play last week! Congratulations, Carly!

Each tenth edition of the Tuesday Two requires that you go back to a previous edition and answer the question you didn't answer the first time around. So if you were trying to avoid a topic, here's where you find out whether the gamble paid off or not. (Of course, if you still don't want to answer, I won't send any henchmen to your door if you still don't!)

So answer your previously-unanswered question from one of the two previous editions:

EPISODE 14: BLOGGING

or

EPISODE 15: FUNERALS

Choose A or B, the one you didn't answer the first time around, indicate which question you're answering, then either answer the question in a comment or answer it in your journal and include the link in a comment. (To be considered "first to play," a link must be to the specific entry in which you answered the question.)

Remember: choose one or the other...not both!

Saved by procrastination! I didn't answer the Funerals' Tuesday Two so I can pick and choose. And I choose “A”.

QUESTION A:
How do you feel about open casket viewings or visitations at funeral homes? Does it bother you to see the decedent or do you feel a more complete sense of closure from it?

Truth be told, I don't feel much one way or the other. It is merely so much meat. I suspect that the allure is for those who believe in an after-life, just to be sure Uncle Joe or Aunt Fanny is really dead. You know the type. The ones from Missouri, “the show-me state.” Where I harbor no such illusion, the display of putrefying meat is a minor curiosity. The really interesting thing at a funeral is the behavior of the survivors, at least for me. I recall demanding to see my mother in her casket, but that was the skeptic in me. She'd died in hospital 300 miles away and I hadn't seen her for the three weeks prior to her death. So, like the curious monkeys from the aforementioned Missouri, I was just making sure that some huge cosmic hoax wasn't being played upon my little brothers and I. I can excuse that, from this vantage point. I was barely 15 and the prospect of being a motherless child was a bit daunting, indeed. So actual confirmation of the nasty news was needed.

Bottom line, viewings and visitations are fine by me. It is “human” nature to poke the dead one with a stick. Still too many crocodiles in the river to actually believe the one on the bank in front of you isn't just pretending. And there's always the hope for a vicarious thrill when the poking elicits a response. Even if it is just a bit of gas...