just wondering if anyone has heard of this, whether it is a religious ritual, or if the family is just not in reality.
my patient's family said that they do not want their mother sent to the cooler when she dies because "she is very cold-natured." they also said they don't want her embalmed because they don't want her "stuck with any more needles."
um, hello? it's just going to be her shell in the cooler!
When my Grandmother died, we put her feathered hat in with her. Why?? Because she never left the house without it, and we thought she'd want to wear it when she met God. There really is no rhyme or reason, you just follow your heart.
One of the reasons I didn't bury him was that I felt that if I ever moved out of state, I would be leaving him behind. Now that I read this--I must be crazy?!?!?!
you aren't crazy.
my high school sweet heart (to whom i was engaged) died when i was 20 in a car accident and his parents had him cremated and put in a mosoleum (sp?). for the first two years, i visited everyday,i would talk to him, i wrote him letters about what was going on in the world and stuck them in there, because all i could think of was they locked him remains up in this tomb away from the sunshine that he loved so much.
when i moved to NC, i felt horrible. his family moved shortly after his death and now that i left, he would be all alone and wouldn't have any visitors. so nowadays, i write my letters and have them put into helium balloons.
the nurses in the ER the night he died in left him mangled and bloody when we came to ID the body. that sight was something that hurt me so badly. i know i would never, ever let a family member see their loved one that way. and then, of course, since it was a traumatic death, came the autopsy.
one of the medics on my squad was actually the one to respond to the call and pronouced him dead. he took me back to the scene the next day. in the grass, i found his driver's license and his watch. for some reason, i was really mad he didn't have his watch on and i bought it to the funeral home. i don't know why. he was never on time anyways.
i chose not to view the cremation with the family. i took many courses on forensics and i know the cremation process well. it would have torn me up.
his mom put together a basket of things that were cremated with him. among them, my favorite pictures of us (and i am kinda sad about this, because now i only have one.... but i really wanted to remember him the way i do, and not as i saw him in the morgue), a picture of his mom when she was pregnant with him, a bunch of family pictures, pictures of him playing baseball, his stuffed dog that he still had in his bed at the age of 21, a joint (from his brother), his baseball glove and a baseball, and the letter i wrote him the night he died---we had been fighting, and i never got to say goodbye.
reading this thread has me tearing up.
i realize the paramedic/nurse side of me would have at first looked cockeyed at this family.
then i realize the heartbroken young woman i was just 5 year ago and i realize that the impact of grief and death, whether anticipated or traumatic, brings you to your knees in a way nothing else can. you sometimes lose the rational thoughts and just want to protect all you have left---just the shell of the person you love. :redbeathe
just wondering if anyone has heard of this, whether it is a religious ritual, or if the family is just not in reality.
my patient's family said that they do not want their mother sent to the cooler when she dies because "she is very cold-natured." they also said they don't want her embalmed because they don't want her "stuck with any more needles."
um, hello? it's just going to be her shell in the cooler!
anyone ever heard of this before?
i've never heard of that being a religious ritual, just sounds like family that loves their mother and are trying to protect her in a way even though she has passed on. i think a little education at an appropriate moment would be in order for this family.
look at it this way, at least they care and care very much, because how many people do we see pass on with no one within a 5 mile radius.
Specializes in Psych, ER, Resp/Med, LTC, Education.
I would be curious as to if there are any state laws in regards to this......for sanitary reasons, or some other reasons. I gotta admit it's a bit weird but people do weird things when stressed and or dealing with death........so what are ya gonna do... people cope and deal with death in lots of different ways.....if I was the nurse I would tell the doc and let him or her address this as well as the funeral home....maybe call and ask if someone from there could come in and have a meeting with the family and doc so that all wishes could be honored as much as possible and all would be on the same page.
My dad also required an autopsy because he died suddenly at 51 in otherwise good health. They figured it was a MI, but had to confirm. Even though I understood, I didn't like it at all. My dad was an extremely private person, & the idea of a stranger seeing him like that is disturbing because we knew it would bother him.
We chose my dad's plot because it faces uphill toward his parents & in-laws, so he wouldn't be alone. He is also one row over from my mom's uncle. We chose the number (we were between one plot and the one next to it) because it was 2004, the year I graduated high school.
As others have said...when you're in the denial stage of grief, you're not rational. We also buried my dad with his favorite jeans & sweatshirt by his side, so he could "get changed" because he HATED wearing suits. We made the funeral director take off his tie also before the casket was closed b/c he hated wearing ties for any longer than he had to. My mom wrote him a letter & left him his glasses so he could read it. My brother left him his dad's baseball glove & I left him a picture of us from my graduation & a ticket from my pinning ceremony, because he was so proud that day.
Even though we are all out of denial now, 8 mos later, I'd never change anything we did that day.
I also do wonder what OPs pt/family means by "cold-natured". It would be interesting to find out.
I think it's beautiful the way you guys handled this. Heck, pharoahs and other rulers used to have whole pyramids of their household goods and personal belongings and their SERVANTS and RELATIVES buried with them.
I think this family was just doing what families do - holding on to some semblance of normalcy in the midst of shattering grief.
When my grandma died, we left all sorts of things in the casket w/ her. All of us knew that Nana wasn't 'there' anymore - it was more for us than for her. I put a bottle of nail polish in there, to remember one of my favorite memories of her. (Most of her years she belonged to a religion that didn't allow nail polish. Once she came to the realization that that didn't matter, she allowed herself the occasional flesh-toned nail polish. Once my grandfather (a preacher) walked in on her and my mom doing their nails, and asked them what they were doing. Nana's reply: "Sinning." )
When I deliver a fetal demise, we have a room on our floor where we keep the babies for a few hours while Mom/family are holding and saying goodbye. Sometimes they see baby once and are done, and sometimes they want to see him again - so we keep them there in order to bring them to the room more quickly.
When I am alone in that room with that baby doing footprints, pictures, and measurements, I treat him like he is alive. The parents would never know if I did otherwise but I can't do that. I don't even like putting him in the bucket to take to pathology if that's what family wants. And let me tell you, I've never done a set of footprints for parents of a dead baby where I wasn't shaking like a leaf on a tree.
All this to say, we hold to what we can of these folks because they were precious to us, and though we know their body is not their essence, it is all we have that is tangible.
Specializes in onc, M/S, hospice, nursing informatics.
I don't see it anymore odd than a nurse referring to a family member's deceased love one as just an empty shell.
OUCHIE!!!
:omy:
I didn't mean that statement to be offensive in any way, as I am very sensitive to other people's wishes and beliefs and would never in any way demean anyone for their choices. I also treat the deceased with the utmost respect and gentle care and respect. But to anyone who believes in an afterlife, a dead body is just the shell in which the spirit no longer resides.
I was merely seeking opinions about their desires, not insults about my words, whether they seem odd or not. Please forgive me if I insulted anyone; that was not my intention in any way.
I'm wondering how long it has taken some of you to go from thinking of your loved one as a physical "shell" to regarding them more as a memory?
i'm not 100% sure what you mean but i guess i'll explain what i mean.
i suppose for me, since my loss was not expected, it took me a long, long time. even though i saw the smoke rising from the cremation of his body, i didn't believe he wasn't there. even at his funeral. i KNEW he was dead in my brain, but inside my heart was breaking and did not believe it. i really, truly thought that night his memorial was held, that maybe this was all a sick joke and he was going to come out and say April Fool's or something. his casket was empty, with a big picture of him on top.... i still laid my hands on that casket and prayed, i don't remember for what.
i actually got a new cell phone this weekend and was unable to load my contacts. up until saturday night, his phone number was still programmed in my speed dial in my phone. i did not have the heart to hit the delete button.
i would call his phone after he died just to hear his voice, his mom didn't disconnect it for about a month. i just wanted to hear him talk. i knew he would never answer, but it was all i had. the voice on that message was something that made me feel like i was still close to him.
a few nights before he died, we went to the beach and had one of our famous sand fights. he got in my car and didn't wipe off his feet and got sand everywhere. and then just to make me mad, since it was a new car at the time, he made footprints on my windshield. i was madder then heck. after his death, those footprints meant so much to me that i had to ask my mother to please windex my car--i couldn't do it. i now have a tattoo of footprints in a heart on my belly. i think this was god's way of showing me that he puts people in your life for a reason, even only for a short time, and when they leave footprints on your heart... you are never, ever the same.
i suppose since i never got to hold him and feel his touch before he died that a physical aspect was sort of my unclosed door. i just wanted to look into his eyes one more time. and i knew i never could. so i suppose that my subconcious was trying to protect me.
i miss him like crazy. i went through many years of what if's, why me's, what now's. it is only now, as i have matured as an adult and have learned to truly love another man, that i remember his memory as only that. the memories before were so painful, even the happy ones... because i didn't ever want them to be anything but reality.
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gentlegiver, ASN, LPN, RN
848 Posts
When my Grandmother died, we put her feathered hat in with her. Why?? Because she never left the house without it, and we thought she'd want to wear it when she met God. There really is no rhyme or reason, you just follow your heart.