<p>"The recent boom in cosmetic procedures has raised the bar for many of us when it comes to appearance. And, it turns out, the dead are no exception.</p>
<p>As the population has becoming increasingly sophisticated about procedures to enhance their appearance, so have their requests, morticians say, for smoothing lines, plumping lips and even boosting sagging parts for that last big special occasion their funeral.</p>
<p>People used to say, just throw me in a pine box and bury me in the back yard, says Mark Duffey, president and CEO of Everest Funeral, a national funeral planning and concierge service. But thats all changing. Now people want to be remembered. A funeral is their last major event and they want to look good for it. Ive even had people say, I want you to get rid of my wrinkles and make me look younger.
[Final</a> touch: A cosmetic lift for your funeral? - Health care- msnbc.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28114566/]Final”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28114566/)</p>
<p>Good Lord. My family are under strict instructions - no open casket for me! Last funeral I went to they placed the casket at the exit, opened it and tilted it so that we had no option but to see the body as we left. I want my casket firmly closed thank you very much. Other than that I don’t really care.</p>
<p>I also find it strange when the picture in the obituary in the paper is one of the person 50 years ago. People who know you know the current you - why have a picture that is someone from the past. Especially if you have kids and the picture is from before they were even born.</p>
<p>Wow, the last thing I want anyone to say after I’m dead is that I look better than I did when I was alive or wonder why I waited so long to have that face lift.</p>
<p>I remember as a young adult going to the funeral of a close family friend (friend of my mothers) who ran a camp where I worked for many summers. It was an open casket. The funeral home put bright red lipstick on this woman-- a woman who never ever, in my memory had ever worn lipstick (or if she did, I never saw it). I understand what owlice is saying-- as it was very incongrous to see her with the lipstick.</p>
<p>"Maybe the people who have such things done know what it’s like to see someone in a casket who doesn’t resemble the person they knew and loved. "</p>
<p>I like closed casket funerals. I’d rather see a picture of my friend or loved one when they were alive and healthy than to see their corpse.</p>
<p>If you aren’t the one in charge of the funeral, what you’d rather see doesn’t really matter. It’s not as though it’s either/or, either; one can certainly have pictures regardless of whether the casket is open or closed. </p>
<p>Here you are calling people who want restorative work, which is mostly what the article was about, “narcissists,” and yet prefer NOT to see them at all at their own funeral, but instead see pictures of them when they were healthy and presumably looking a whoooole lot better. Wouldn’t that preference – that people see only images of them healthy, alive, – actually be the more narcissistic preference??</p>
<p>“Here you are calling people who want restorative work, which is mostly what the article was about, “narcissists,” and yet prefer NOT to see them at all at their own funeral, but instead see pictures of them when they were healthy and presumably looking a whoooole lot better. Wouldn’t that preference – that people see only images of them healthy, alive, – actually be the more narcissistic preference??”</p>
<p>I have never seen the point of open casket funerals.</p>
<p>I’m not calling people narcissists who want the ravages of illness or trauma removed from their dead bodies.</p>
<p>I am calling these kind of remarks reflective of narcissism:
“If my family has an open casket, I want to be fixed up to the max,” says Migliuri, who says she’s still haunted by her aunt’s appearance. “I want to look good. I want them to fill in my wrinkles; I want people to say, ‘God, she looks great. She looks better dead than alive.’””</p>