Question about funeral etiquette

[ronandannette]

My mom put an old set of keys in with my dad when he passed, since he always had to have a set of keys on him.

3 months later, we realized the old set of keys were to a work truck we needed to sell....

We did the same thing for my brother, but our sister insisted they had to be the actual keys he always carried. We actually had to have the casket re-opened when we realized they were the only set for that particular car and house. It was kind of a gong show at the time but it's actually a sweet memory we share now.

We buried my DH's grandmother last month, and it struck me that the funeral director was very meticulous in asking if the family wanted her glasses and if the family wanted to be there when the casket was closed. In other words, it seems like standard protocol is for the family to decide what is actually in the casket. I am pretty sure that the funeral director would have asked the family if they wanted that note in there. My point is that I do believe that it is not proper etiquette for acquaintances to put notes in caskets.

Having worked in funeral service, yes, the director should have asked before the casket was closed for the last time. The idea of etiquette in this situations is somewhat regional and cultural - for me and mine it wouldn't be surprising or offensive to have a friend or acquaintance place a token.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

My dad's casket actually had a little drawer in the lid. The funeral director told us we could bring small things to place in the drawer during the viewing. It was a private (immediate family only) viewing, so we were the only ones there. We each put in few pictures of him with us (his kids), and of him with his grandkids. My mom put his rosary in the drawer.

My uncle coached a high school football team, and many former and current team members were at his funeral. Just before they lowered his casket, someone placed a baseball cap with the team logo on it. We didn't mind a bit, since that team was a big part of his life. The hat remained on the casket and was buried with him.

 

[ZTator]

 

[barkley]

i wouldn't have an issue with it. i likely wouldn't do it myself w/ a non family member but wouldn't have had an issue with it if we had done an open casket with either of my parents. in my experience people can be entirely different interacting with co-workers vs. family and friends. i had co-workers who would share with each other feelings and emotions about their personal lives that they would never dream of sharing with anyone within or close to their families.

i feel funerals are for the living so if it provided a measure of peace for someone who knew my parent to place a private note in their final resting place i would respect the privacy of the relationship and leave it untouched.

 

[indimom]

I would have found it odd, but not upsetting. And I probably would have read it later.
When my grandfather died, a young woman walked through the receiving line and left a single rose inside his coffin. Everyone was trying to figure out their relationship and how she would know him... eventually someone put it together that she was a regular waitress at the restaurant where he ate breakfast most days. Obviously, his passing was meaningful to her.

 

[mrodgers]

Wow, I am feeling the complete opposite of everyone else. We do not own family members. There are people in everyone's lives other than family, maybe closer than family. I see this as a final private personal exchange and find it incredibly invasive of said person's privacy to pull it out and read it like everyone else is saying they would do.

 

[Hikergirl]

Wow, I am feeling the complete opposite of everyone else. We do not own family members. There are people in everyone's lives other than family, maybe closer than family. I see this as a final private personal exchange and find it incredibly invasive of said person's privacy to pull it out and read it like everyone else is saying they would do.

While I do understand that, do you really think it's appropriate for just anyone to be putting things in the casket with your loved one? I don't, I think it crosses a line. That is something that should be OK'd with the grieving family because they are the ones burying their loved one and they are the ones that should be deciding what is buried with them.
As far as I'm concerned, if a person has something to "say" to my loved one, come to the wake and say your peace to them while kneeling at their casket- don't put your items in it, unless you ask me and I say it is alright to do so. I would take it out, I wouldn't read it but I wouldn't leave in there either.

 

[ronandannette]

While I do understand that, do you really think it's appropriate for just anyone to be putting things in the casket with your loved one? I don't, I think it crosses a line. That is something that should be OK'd with the grieving family because they are the ones burying their loved one and they are the ones that should be deciding what is buried with them.
As far as I'm concerned, if a person has something to "say" to my loved one, come to the wake and say your peace to them while kneeling at their casket- don't put your items in it, unless you ask me and I say it is alright to do so. I would take it out, I wouldn't read it but I wouldn't leave in there either.

...and that would be OK too, if it made you feel better. These things are gestures, ways for people to honour the dead and comfort themselves in loss. It really wouldn’t matter if a scrap of paper spent eternity in the casket with the corpse or not.

 

[Skywalker]

Wow, I am feeling the complete opposite of everyone else. We do not own family members. There are people in everyone's lives other than family, maybe closer than family. I see this as a final private personal exchange and find it incredibly invasive of said person's privacy to pull it out and read it like everyone else is saying they would do.

To be clear, I would only read it to make sure my loved one wasn't being buried with some kind of written curse or hateful words and negativity lol. Failing that I am fine with the coworker having her moment of closure.
Families that get upset at how others choose to grieve can always opt for a private family service.

 

[Hikergirl]

...and that would be OK too, if it made you feel better. These things are gestures, ways for people to honour the dead and comfort themselves in loss. It really wouldn’t matter if a scrap of paper spent eternity in the casket with the corpse or not.

To be fair for some there is a deeper meaning of the things that are left in the casket of their loved one. While I know that the body is a corpse, that is not how I look at them when they are buried or when I go to visit their grave either. So for me, that piece of scrap paper in there does matter.
Obviously others are free to feel the way they do, I just think in the end, it is the family's feelings and reasoning on the matter that are the right ones in this kind of situation, not the stranger's.

 

[theluckyrabbit]

That woman must have felt that it was something very important to her -- something that was weighing on her heart and mind -- for her to have thought about it enough to have written it down and planned to have slipped it into the casket. It isn't something that would be expected (which is why it was so upsetting to the OP), and I doubt that woman makes a habit of doing things like this at other funerals (at least, I hope not). Maybe she felt very strongly about it, but didn't know what else to do since she didn't know any of the family members. As others have said, grief can take people in strange ways. I just hope that whatever was in that note brought some peace to that woman. Sometimes what seems to us to be a random act of kindness can be surprisingly important to the recipient. Maybe this was the result of something like that.

 

[luvsJack]

Wow, I am feeling the complete opposite of everyone else. We do not own family members. There are people in everyone's lives other than family, maybe closer than family. I see this as a final private personal exchange and find it incredibly invasive of said person's privacy to pull it out and read it like everyone else is saying they would do.

I totally agree. Does no one here have work friends that they may be close to but that don't know their family?

When my Dad died, there were people that knew him from different times in his life. Old Air Force buddies, his days as a mechanic, families from the baseball teams he coached, customers from the stores he and mom ran, friends from a veteran's group he was a part of. Now, some we all knew, some mom knew and some none of us knew.

The Air Force buddies left some collector type coins from the Air Force, and a couple of the baseball players left notes and one left a home run baseball (the kid hit the homerun) and some others may have left other things. The only thing that any of us even commented on about it was, "its comforting to know how much he was loved".

The director did ask us if we wanted anything that was left in the casket and we said no. To us, those things were things that were important between Dad and the person who left it. It wasn't any of our business.

 

[Welsh_Dragon]

If it is a relationship (of any sort) which the deceased person chose not to share with others while they were alive, I think that one should respect that privacy in death.

 

[Funfire240]

Please don't be angry with her for this, please. I lost my 35 yr old daughter and I can not tell you what grief will have you doing and acting. Maybe there were words that needed to be said between them and this was her only way to get closure. People do touch other people's life even though they were not important to them at the time. Trust me like a previous poster said it was done out of love. And I am so sorry for your loss , I am truly sorry. All that being said, I did have a brother in law that was a carpenter pass away, many years ago and one of our cousins put a hammer in the casket with him, now that was extreme, and to this day I still think how crazy that was, knowing he was probably hit in the head when the casket lowered, good grief ..lol.

Not crazy at all. My Grandfather ran a home improvement company and my little brother helped him at work while in high school. It was decided upon and my brother or dad (can't remember which now) placed a hammer in the casket with him because we all remember Grandpa having one close by him at all times ready to fix anything.

 

[mrodgers]

While I do understand that, do you really think it's appropriate for just anyone to be putting things in the casket with your loved one? I don't, I think it crosses a line. That is something that should be OK'd with the grieving family because they are the ones burying their loved one and they are the ones that should be deciding what is buried with them.
As far as I'm concerned, if a person has something to "say" to my loved one, come to the wake and say your peace to them while kneeling at their casket- don't put your items in it, unless you ask me and I say it is alright to do so. I would take it out, I wouldn't read it but I wouldn't leave in there either.

I also understand how family can feel about it as well. One thing I pull from the discussion is "loved one(s)" and the assumption of family being the most loved ones. May not always be the case. Loved ones are not only family.

 

[mumto3girls]

When FIL passed, his best friend came to the viewing and gave DH a note and asked him to put it in the casket (I think in FIL’s jacket pocket) just before the lid was closed on the casket the final time. I’m not sure why he didn’t want it done before then/do it himself—perhaps he thought the funeral director would remove it? Anyway, my DH was either told to read it and did so or was told what it said because I basically know what was written. I just remember that it was a torn piece/scrap of notebook paper and the sentiments were more deserving of better paper! LOL hopefully that doesn’t sound critical, it’s just the odd thought that struck me at the time. And BTW if we hadn’t known what was said, DH’s sister certainly would have read it!

Overall I would say that the family was both touched and amused by this gesture but this man was a family friend DH and SIL had known since they were babies and there was nothing secretive about it.

 

[Donaldswife]

I have been to a couple of funerals where slips of paper and pen were provided at the showing and a box was placed next to the casket for friends and family to leave a note to be buried with the deceased. I think it's a nice thing if provided and prompted to let people write down their thoughts and leave them. Both of these were sudden death situations and the person was rather young (a murder victim and a car accident) so maybe that played into the reasoning? I wouldn't have done it if not prompted to though....

 

[MrsDuck]

Definitely inappropriate! So sorry, OP.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I think asking first would have been appropriate honestly regardless of family or not. Family can discuss this together but that doesn't mean so and so should just up and put whatever in there unless the discussion with others involved is done.

I think we all would have thought it odd to do what happened in the OP for my grandmother's visitation. There was a lot of consideration about what would go in there with the immediate family a lot of figuring out the rings she would wear and the most important it seemed was having a few Irish things laid in the casket at her feet. It was more about what my grandmother would have wanted so a note tucked in there well no one would have known that she would have wanted that and so that would have come off as thoughtless really. Thoughtless in the respect that if so much care was taken on what went inside then a note just up and shows up there.

I can't answer if anyone would have read the note..I do know I would have been very curious but I think odds are I would have left the note unread. But I could see removing the note. As for what to do with the note afterwards..well I just don't honestly know.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Please don't be angry with her for this, please. I lost my 35 yr old daughter and I can not tell you what grief will have you doing and acting. Maybe there were words that needed to be said between them and this was her only way to get closure. People do touch other people's life even though they were not important to them at the time. Trust me like a previous poster said it was done out of love. And I am so sorry for your loss , I am truly sorry. All that being said, I did have a brother in law that was a carpenter pass away, many years ago and one of our cousins put a hammer in the casket with him, now that was extreme, and to this day I still think how crazy that was, knowing he was probably hit in the head when the casket lowered, good grief ..lol.

I think people put in things that either have sentimental value to the deceased or to the one still living. While some things may register as more odd than others the sentiment is still the same. I think some people just appreciate being asked first unless it really does seem like an agreed upon "this is totally fine" type thing.

In many ways a hammer is quite appropriate given the deceased's profession--maybe it was known he enjoyed the profession a lot or took immense pride in it. Though certainly the thought of a hammer well moving around while the casket was lowed is an interesting one lol.