The Casket Under the Coat Rack........

soylibre

One of the craziest things I ever witnessed as a JW was a funeral for an unbaptized publisher...she attended my cong. and was very quiet and softspoken...the type who never caused any trouble and who would ocassionaly comment, directly from the paragraph....nice lady with a young daughter about 11. Well one day she's driving down the road and gets hit by a Pepsi truck....(can anyone say lawsuit???) She's hospitalized and is in critical condition....to make a long story short...she's faced with the blood issue and finally gives in and accepts a transfusion and dies anyway...Ok let's fastforward...no one apparently knew about this except her mother....a non-JW who had studied off and on for years and years.....so the obituary appears and it's public knowledge that her funeral will be at such and such Kingdom Hall at such and such time....actually published info...well, she had TONS of non-JW family...typical of us black folk...anyway let me get to the point....apparently the day of the funeral, just some hours before in fact....the elders find out about the blood and don't want to have the funeral in the Kingdom Hall....but what are they to do???? It's been published and all these non-JW's are coming to grieve for their lost loved one!!!!!!! Well, when I got there the hearse was still out front of the KH and the casket was still in it...mind you I was running late!!!!! The elders wouldn't allow the body to come into the KH!!!!!! So she's in a casket, outside in the back of a hearse, in the dead of summer!!!! Okay, so all these "worldly" people start coming in....and by the way the funeral was delayed by two hours....elders trying to figure out what to do... Okay, so this stuffy white elder finally gets up and tries to conduct a funeral....and the family isn't that responsive...afterall...they want emotion...the majority attend black charismatic churches...well he flops...big time! Then to make it worse after his dry-ass discourse.....when people start to leave out of the KH...you hear loudddd crying....What had they done now???? They finally allowed the casket inside the KH....just barely...they had wheeled it into the foyer and pushed it up against the wall beneath the coat rack!!!!!!! Talk about complete disrespect for the dead...... I thought someone who died had been acquitted of their sins....NOT...(even though she did nothing wrong!) They had her picture sitting atop her casket....UNDER THE COAT RACK!!!!!!! Just another example of how JW's can be so completely self-righteous and unloving....no wonder the family of the dead got so irrate when they were offered tracts and brochures....I overheard one say...."NO way HONEY, I don't want any of THAT!" I laughed to myself and felt sick inside that I was part of something so cruel...

mommy

Oh Soy!
This is amazing! That is about all I can think to say right now, I am shocked! (((hugs)))
wendy

In a controversy the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

reagan_oconnor

My family has always had this big thing about having full-fledged funerals, showing the body in the casket, blah blah blah...

When my granny died 4 1/2 years ago, my uncle gave the "funeral talk." He barely knew her, never respected her in life, and gave the most moronic funeral talk I've ever heard. He went on and on about her smile, the way she talked to people... it was such bullshit. I wanted to get up and say, "she wasn't like that at all, but you wouldn't know the difference, because you never spent any time with her!" To this day, I regret not standing up to say something.

Once again, it was a poor excuse for a "Witnessing opportunity" for all of the "unbelieving" family that was there.

My husband (we were just newly dating at the time) thought it was the most awful, poor-excuse-for-a-eulogy-piece-of-trash he'd ever heard.

Reagan

I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul.

soylibre

Yes Reagan....they have no clue do they????? They never eulogize anyone....and expect people to react to death the way the give funeral talks....emotionless...painless....everything but HUMAN....

bboyneko

When I die I wanna be cremated..after researching what happens to your body upon death it's just gross and wasteful. Why spend so much money to bury a body? Just read some of the stuff that happens to your body:

According to a firm engaged in the marketing of a device to stop the leakage of bodily fluids from caskets, the adult human body contains approximately 10 to 25 gallons or more of liquids, depending on the body size. This liquid ultimately consists of water, locked inside the body's various soft tissues (muscles, organs, and fat). It is said that perhaps 75% of our body weight is actually just water.
Upon the death of an individual, there is virtually zero change in the amount of water locked into the body's tissues, whether the dead body is embalmed or not.
All bodies, living or dead, contain certain aerobic bacteria, anaerobic bacteria, and enzymes. These begin to break down and digest the tissues of the remains immediately upon death.
Depending on certain circumstances related to the cause and type of death, degree of embalming, and the ambient temperature, these enzymes and bacterial agents may cause an embalmed corpse to enter a putrifying, so-called "liquifaction" stage during the decomposition process, usually between one and three months after death. An unembalmed body may begin to liquify within a week or so, after it's entombment or interral.
When a corpse enters this liquifaction stage, the organs within the thorax, abdomen and skull will turn into viscous, foul- smelling liquid "goo". The water locked in muscle and fat tissue will also be released. Any embalming fluid in the body's veins and arteries will also leak out. When this happens, these liquids will be released into the casket, due to the decomposition of the epidermis (skin), which normally keeps the body's liquids within the body during life. If one were to disinter a casket from a grave or mausoleum several months after burial or emtombment, it is possible that perhaps 10 to 25 gallons, or more, of liquids could be sloshing about in the casket. Not a very pretty mental picture, is it?

not only that, your dead body inside that expensive cascket could kill someone!

Occasionally, the above situation may result in the phenomenon informally known within the Death Care Industry as "Exploding Casket Syndrome". This is due to a buildup of extreme pressures within the sealed casket. When this happens, the casket may quite literally blow up, spewing corpse liquids and body parts throughout the mausoleum crypt. This may result in serious damage to the crypt itself; obviously the casket and the body are extremely damaged or destroyed by the explosion. The decorative marble fronts of the crypts may even be blown out; thus, foul-smelling liquids, semi-solids, and casket pieces may be thrown into the public area of the mausoleum. This is not only a traumatic incident; nearby people could be injured or killed by pieces of mausoleum marble and concrete acting as shrapnel!

So why be like the egyptians who preserved the body because they beleived you'd actually need the physical body in the underworld. Or at least, do the sensible thing and allow the body to rot naturally in an open air area in a wooden coffin and just bury the bones.

-Dan

soylibre

Dan, once you've been cremated they can put your urn under the coat rack...

logical

Grrrr

Here I was eating my curry reading the posts... and then I read BBoy's post.

Thanks... now I dont feel like finishing this curry

soylibre

Loggiiii I knew you loved me...see here's proof...you replied to my post.....YOU CAN'T GET RID OF ME LOGGGIII I DUB YOU!!!!

Roamingfeline

Graphical, very graphical..

It is a real shame what they did to that woman, but I would have to say, they did the non-believing relatives a real favor! No way would they ever want to be a JW after a rotten display like that, and that's a good thing!

RCat

Skeptic

I am so sorry that your deceased friend was treated so badly. It shows that the elders had no compassion. The needs of the Society come first, people are unimportant. How unlike Jesus when dealing with the adulterous woman!

Witness funerals are a real sore point for me and my family.

In Canada, the funeral talk is like a form letter, the "insert name here" variety. It is a "witness" to a captive audience only; the deceased is of no importance.

A good friend of mine died, a devoted JW. She was greatly loved by all in the congregation. The brother who gave the talk loved her dearly, and you could see the grief on his face and in his voice. The talk, however, was the standard funeral talk. Nothing personal (well, maybe two sentences) about her was mentioned.

I was upset with this and decided to test it. In my head, I picked the name of a sister who was still alive and inserted her name whenever the name of the deceased was mentioned. It fit perfectly, as the talk was so generic.

"Gina/Sue/Sally/whomever believed in the resurrection as stated in John..."

It made me sick.

Richard

The Casket Under the Coat Rack........

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