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Posted: 1/23/2020 12:16:35 PM EST
Went to say goodbye to a cousin last night since i cannot be there for the funeral.
You see the body on the floor on a pallet waiting for the homemade coffin. Kids ranging in age from baby to teenagers playing and looking at the body. Food of all kinds. A ton of people coming and going. Lots of laughing,talking and crying. House kept cold to preserve the body till funeral. Incence burning and icons. |
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How do you bury someone up there in the dead of winter? Isn't the ground frozen solid?
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nothing wrong with any of that. what is wrong is spending 10k on a coffin, being pumped full of embalming fluid and buried 6 feet down in the ground.
dust to dust, ashes to ashes, not dust to preserved like a specimen in a jar full of alcohol. |
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That's still the way it is in cold very very remote/rural places.
My great grandmother had an infant sibling die in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in the early 1900's, and they had to keep the baby's body in the wood shed until spring when the ground thawed. |
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Don’t forget Fred Meyer boxes everywhere. I used to fly into those villages.
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Sounds a lot like what my parents describe in 1940-50s rural Louisiana too.
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Pure muscle,pick and ice picks. It is tough digging. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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How do you bury someone up there in the dead of winter? Isn't the ground frozen solid? It is tough digging. Being from south Louisiana, this is completely foreign to me. |
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Sorry for your loss OP.
I tell my wife when my time is up to shove me in a pine box and forget the rest. |
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Icons and incense. A relic of the days when Orthodox was the primary religion in the area. When I attended a few they performed the grave-side rituals and prayers. They used the wood coffin, cover the deceased with a sheet, then pour wine (?) over the body and seal the coffin. Then they fill the grave. A nice ceremony. RIP.
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My SIL is a fourth generation Wyoming cowboy.
When his Grandpa died they buried him in the old graveyard that overlooks what used to be ranchland, and is now multi-million dollar estates. He arrived for the graveside service with a jacket and tie. He had a pair of leather gloves in his back pocket, and was carrying his riata. After the service, he and his cousins put on their gloves. They lowered the coffin into the grave with their ropes. Then, they picked up shovels from a pile next to the grave, and got to filling it in. |
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One of the most touching stories I've ever heard was when my buddy in AK (Homer area) had to deal with the passing and burial of his mother. He was surprised at how much he was involved in the process. He's not a religious guy but the church his Mom went to helped transport and store the body, help dig the burial plot, etc. He googled "how to build a coffin" and proceeded to make his own pine box version. Long story short was that he found that his "closure" in the whole affair was a much more comforting event. He was involved in EVERY phase of the process and not isolated like in most people's experience of the process.
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Went to say goodbye to a cousin last night since i cannot be there for the funeral. You see the body on the floor on a pallet waiting for the homemade coffin. Kids ranging in age from baby to teenagers playing and looking at the body. Food of all kinds. A ton of people coming and going. Lots of laughing,talking and crying. House kept cold to preserve the body till funeral. Incence burning and icons. View Quote |
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nothing wrong with any of that. what is wrong is spending 10k on a coffin, being pumped full of embalming fluid and buried 6 feet down in the ground. dust to dust, ashes to ashes, not dust to preserved like a specimen in a jar full of alcohol. View Quote |
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My neighbors father died in the winter and wanted to be buried in his home town in New Hampshire. They stored the body somewhere up there until springtime due to the frozen ground they said. Being from south Louisiana, this is completely foreign to me. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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How do you bury someone up there in the dead of winter? Isn't the ground frozen solid? It is tough digging. Being from south Louisiana, this is completely foreign to me. |
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I’ve seen pictures from the past of my people posing with a dead relative/neighbor. The body was in what is called a pinch-toe coffin. For the most part, no one is smiling. It was not unusual for as many as 2 dozen people surrounding the coffin on three sides in the picture.
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Just curious op, are you white, eskimo descendent or other?
Diff cultures have diff rituals and all. |
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My Dad wants something similar. He wants a pine box. I looked into it, commercially built $600 - $1400 depending on the options. Still kind of pricey imo, but hopefully it's better than some Home Depot 1x6's. He still wants everything else, but no metal coffin.
I guess if I could get away with it, clean out a spot in the shed and keep me in there till you can get a hole dug. How about some 3/4" pressure treated plywood with some metal reinforcement on the corners. Maybe tack some 2x4's underneath so you could get underneath it with a forklift. When I was a kid, we had a friend of the family, he was 89. His father was some sort of field doctor in WWI and he tagged along for some of it as a teenager, he was too young to fight. I don't remember all the details, but he talked about building coffins and his job was to tack the cloth to the inside of the box. That wasn't that many generations ago. |
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My Dad wants something similar. He wants a pine box. I looked into it, commercially built $600 - $1400 depending on the options. Still kind of pricey imo, but hopefully it's better than some Home Depot 1x6's. He still wants everything else, but no metal coffin. I guess if I could get away with it, clean out a spot in the shed and keep me in there till you can get a hole dug. How about some 3/4" pressure treated plywood with some metal reinforcement on the corners. Maybe tack some 2x4's underneath so you could get underneath it with a forklift. When I was a kid, we had a friend of the family, he was 89. His father was some sort of field doctor in WWI and he tagged along for some of it as a teenager, he was too young to fight. I don't remember all the details, but he talked about building coffins and his job was to tack the cloth to the inside of the box. That wasn't that many generations ago. View Quote |
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I worked with a guy here in So CA that told me about how he and his two sons were making a wood coffin for his dad that had recently passed.
I didn't know what to say. |
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My condolences on your loss.
The home wake was normal before WW2. I have read accounts of persons laid out on the dining room table moved to the living room for the wake. With and without the pine box. In my state you can have whatever box you want but you will put that in a concrete vault (unless cremated I believe) |
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Good ole fashioned wake...you learned with big families the reality of death at an early age.
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sounds more real and natural than the thousands people down here spend on coffins and chemicals etc, just to throw it in the ground, sorry about your cousin. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Went to say goodbye to a cousin last night since i cannot be there for the funeral. You see the body on the floor on a pallet waiting for the homemade coffin. Kids ranging in age from baby to teenagers playing and looking at the body. Food of all kinds. A ton of people coming and going. Lots of laughing,talking and crying. House kept cold to preserve the body till funeral. Incence burning and icons. |
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It happens a lot here, I've been to plenty of spring funerals of people that passed in the winter. They wait until the frost is out of the ground to dig the hole and pour the pad for the tombstone. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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How do you bury someone up there in the dead of winter? Isn't the ground frozen solid? It is tough digging. Being from south Louisiana, this is completely foreign to me. One relative was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the fall. He took his own life shortly thereafter. In his suicide note he apologized to the family for his selfish actions but stated he couldn't stand the thought of being in a crypt all winter. |
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First. Condolences.
Second. I agree with the guy stating how much closure there is when you have a body to work with. |
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My neighbors father died in the winter and wanted to be buried in his home town in New Hampshire. They stored the body somewhere up there until springtime due to the frozen ground they said. Being from south Louisiana, this is completely foreign to me. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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How do you bury someone up there in the dead of winter? Isn't the ground frozen solid? It is tough digging. Being from south Louisiana, this is completely foreign to me. |
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People used to have the body in the house until burial.
The funeral director I dealt with said he and his wife were planning on putting their bodies on dry ice and have the viewing in their home. He said most people don't know you can do that (at least in Michigan). |
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Went to say goodbye to a cousin last night since i cannot be there for the funeral. You see the body on the floor on a pallet waiting for the homemade coffin. Kids ranging in age from baby to teenagers playing and looking at the body. Food of all kinds. A ton of people coming and going. Lots of laughing,talking and crying. House kept cold to preserve the body till funeral. Incence burning and icons. View Quote |
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I'm getting cremated, waste of real estate to get buried in my opinion. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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nothing wrong with any of that. what is wrong is spending 10k on a coffin, being pumped full of embalming fluid and buried 6 feet down in the ground. dust to dust, ashes to ashes, not dust to preserved like a specimen in a jar full of alcohol. |
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A buddy of mine here locally had his grandmother pass away and after a couple of days, I went to visit him and was a bit startled to see grandma laid out on the parlor couch waiting for her husband to finish building her pine box so they could have the funeral in the family plot about a hundred yards from the house. No embalming, just a pine box with her favorite comforter from her bed as a liner and a small pillow. A couple of days later he called and asked me if I could help him and grandpa carry her to the final resting place.
Not all that uncommon in the more remote areas of Montana, all they require you to do is notify the coroner that there has been a death and where the deceased is resting. My FIL was not embalmed when he passed away, he is buried in Willamette National Cemetery in Portland OR. |
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OP, condolences about your cousin.
Burial laws in OK are the way they should be. I been thinking about being buried on my acreage, where its peaceful and the deer and animals roam free. In Oklahoma, you don't have to be embalmed, you do not have to have a casket and you can be buried on private property. It is suggested that you have the grave noted on the property deed but not required. |
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