Traumatised after viewing loved ones body in coffin

[Kiski39]

Today I went with my mum to view her partners body. He had cancer and his death was expected but came sooner than we had anticipated.
I only did it to support my mum, and I now can't get the image of him in the coffin lifeless out of my head. I've cried all day and it's now haunting me trying to get to sleep. I wish I hadn't done it and just remembered him as the amazing funny man he was. How do I get over this? I feel awful.

I hope you can return to the happy memories soon. Death is an inevitability unfortunately and hopefully it happens when we've had a good stretch of years if we are lucky. Cancer is cruel and the change in a loved ones appearance is heartbreaking. You were strong today for your mum, it's perfectly OK and normal to be feeling how you are right now.

I think it depends on the person.. I'm loving and emotional but also okay with death and dark things, and I found it so helpful each time. They all looked like waxworks and it has really helped me get closure that they aren't there anymore, they're in my heart and my memories. It's helped say goodbye.
The only person I saw who didn't look odd and waxy was someone who didn't get embalmed so he looked more like his natural self.

I agree with PP that looking at photos of the deceased helps to replace the sometimes shocking image. I arrived to visit a relative who had died moments before i arrived and he looked terrible. When I got home I couldn’t rest until I found a photo of him at my wedding looking lovely. It was very helpful.

Oh my goodness, I had never heard of this but sounds amazing! What a simple and cheap method to disassociate the mind. Thank you for sharing. I'll be trying to apply this to our young patients 😀
And for OP, it can be confronting seeing your loved one in their coffin, I think our minds can't cope with them looking similar to normal but not quite the same. We had an open casket for my mum, but only for family and then it was closed for the service. I didn't feel comfortable with people looking at her when she couldn't see them (weird I know)...

I feel for you, I’d never recommend seeing people in an open casket situation. I’ve seen many deceased and I have to say there’s a definite ‘sweet spot’ after death. Even with unpleasant deaths, the next day they seem to look nice and peaceful, and in general I’d highly recommend viewing and goodbye’s in this phase. However, leave it after 2 days or especially after embalming, it’s not a memory I’d want to retain.

I’ll never forget my grandmother, who had an open casket. As background, I’ve seen many deaths, dead bodies and a few open caskets where family/friends or whatnot have died, so dead bodies don’t worry me in the slightest. After falsely agreeing with my mum that she looked lovely (nope, did not), my mum instructed me to give her a kiss goodbye, which I did to satisfy her. The stuff used in embalming caused miniscule waxy flakes which clung to my lips and no matter how hard I tried (subtly, then when that didn’t work, going to the bathroom to give a good scrub with paper), I couldn’t get off but could feel for hours. Lesson learnt, and never again.

Of course you’re not being unreasonable. I did this with one of my Nans. I only did it to support my mum, like you did. But 2 decades later I still wish I hadn’t done it. The pain of the memory of it does fade eventually and you go back to remembering them how they were, but from time to time it will pop in your head though it doesn’t hurt as much. It’s more just a feeling of regret if I stop and think about it now. I last saw her a couple of days before she died, and although she was gravely ill, there was still the light of that feisty little woman in there that I loved so much. And that’s the woman I want to always remember, and I do now. Not what I saw that day. Now I find it hard to reconcile the two together

I'm not sure if this is helpful, but what were/are your views about death? Has anyone close to you died previously? It's said that seeing a loved one when they have passed away helps with the grieving process and accept their death.

I appreciate that this isn't the case for everyone, but I wonder if that's subconsciously what's making you upset? As now that you've seen him there's no denying that hes no longer here?

Hope you feel better about it all soon x

My Dad just passed I am not sure I want to see him 2 weeks after death. I was with him when he died, I have seen many dead bodies over the years( nursing background) but I saw my nan, his mom & it didn’t look like her she was gone. not sure I want that memory for my dad. So sorry for your loss

I feel the same way. I feel it's better as they don't look anything like when they were alive and their bodies are like old clothes they don't need anymore.

Time will heal and you are so good so support your mum xxx

the funeral directors suggested that I shouldn't go. After reading these posts I'm glad I didn't.

I promised my mum that I’d be with her when she died, she was in a hospice for the last 10 days of her life dying from lung cancer. I’m thankful that I did that for her, also my 2 daughters and my ex husband were there. She just stopped breathing and it was all very peaceful. We just stayed with her for a good 10 minutes before informing the staff that she’d gone. We were very touched when one of the staff opened a window in the room to ‘let her soul fly’, they then brought us all tea. I was more upset at leaving my mum on her own afterwards.
It was the first time I’d seen a dead body in real life, I didn’t find it as traumatic as I’d imagined and nearly 10 years later I have trouble actually remembering how she looked after she’d passed.
OP with time you’ll remember your loved one when they were alive and enjoying being with you.

It is really very shocking when you are expecting to see the person you knew and it is a very normal human reaction that you are having. It will take a little while to process the fact that you saw for yourself that the body was no longer fit and able to contain the wonderful person who had occupied it. It's shocking to see so starkly the difference between a body and a person. The person you knew and loved had already moved on from the body. He is free.

I was on FT with my family a few hours after my Dad passed and they were waiting for the undertaker. For some unfathomable reason, I asked to see him. My eyes still regret it but I felt so bad for them as they were actually there. Just remember that you were there to support your Mum and, painful as it is, you did a good thing.

Sacre bleu. Sod off

I have had good and bad experiences. I went to see my grandfather who was very ill prior, seeing him was good, looked peaceful.
Have seen others I wish I hadn't.
My DH grandfather I helped to lay out - a final kindness and comfort to the family that someone he knew was there at the end. A positive closure.
As an ex nurse death becomes part of living, rather than traumatic and scary xx

@Kiski39 It’s a shock.
Dad, half an hour after his death looked like he was sleeping- but two weeks later i went to seee him ( no one else did) and the spirit, the essence of him had long flown.
He was not Dad any more, Just an empty shell , a cast off skin.

His essence was elsewhere.

Death is never “ pretty”.

I don’t think I’d want to see someone I love like that again.

Remember them as they were.

I think it's quite different spending time with your loved one immediately after they passed to seeing them embalmed in a coffin. They don't look like themself.

Agreed.
A newly deceased person looks asleep.
After embalming they are shell like.
Even animals and birds.
The spirit , the animus, has flown.

I have heard of the Tetris thing too. It forces the brain into a different pattern and stops ptsd from developing.
I wish I had known it before.

I wanted to see my father and put a rose in his buttonhole.
However, we literally drove all day to get there and it was about ten at night. Pitch dark and pouring rain.
The funeral director had very kindly agreed to unlock for me as his house was on the same site.
I had no idea of the set up. SBXH had promised to come in with me and refused at the last minute. I never forgave him.

So the man showed me into a long corridor of cubicles, with most of it in darkness.
My dad was in the first one with a light on.
The man said something kind about how ill Dad had been, and then to my horror he went away, back into his house.

I had thought he would stay with me.

So I was alone in a building with I don’t know how many bodies, at night, pitch dark.
I told myself to get a grip but I couldn’t.
I put the rose in Dads buttonhole and he was so cold.
I tried to talk to him but I couldn’t stop crying. In fact I think I dripped on him.

He looked uncanny. He used to play a game with children where he pretended to be asleep and then said Boo when they tiptoed up to him, giggling.
He looked like that; as if he might suddenly say Boo. And once I had thought that, I couldn’t stay.
I said good bye. but also practically ran away into the rain. I couldn’t even find the way to the man’s front door and blundered about crying in the dark.

Eventually SBXH turned on the car headlights and I then found the way to the funeral director’s house to thank him and say he could lock up again.
He seemed surprised that I hadn’t stayed longer.
I cried for hours.

I said never again then.

It does fade. It was years ago now.

This is exactly what my husband describes. He was extremely close to his grandparents and, against his better judgement (purely because his mum was insistent that she wanted him there with her) he went and saw his grandfather's body in the coffin. This was decades ago and he still regrets it but over the years that one horrible memory has faded more than all of the happy ones from their life together.
💐

No disrespect to OP, but around 750,000 people die in the UK every year, and there are necessarily industries dealing with the disposal of these dead people. So it's sort of weird that nobody is aware of it somehow, and most of us have never seen a dead person, so it becomes traumatic if we do. I think it'd be better if such an every day fact of 'life' were more normalised. Might also help with the grieving process if 'dead people' weren't such a taboo / cannot be seen. It really does happen to us all in the end.

4 years ago, I found my dad dead in his bed. I just couldn't get that image out if my head and definitely didn't want to see him at the funeral home. Some advice I was given by a grief counsellor I saw, was to carry around a photo of him that I liked (I stuck it to the back of my phone), then every time that image of him lying there came into my head, look at the photo and recall a happy memory and eventually your brain replaces the bad image with the good one. It really did help.

I think Irish people do it better than the uptight English.
English people are so leery of death and it’s really almost taboo.

( I’m English by the way)

My Mum died when I was 2, ( Have adoptive mum now) and when Dad and an Auntie died I did do to see them.

The coldness was a shock
I wasn’t expecting that.

The Irish Wakes sound better with everyone supporting each other .