A mother said she did not have a chance to view the body of her son after he died from an accident. In an effort to protect her, family, and friends, the funeral director urged her not to do so. Now every time we correspond she tells how much she regrets that decision.

We now live in a world that thinks viewing the body is plastic at best and probably gross; that the less we experience during the funeral process the better off we will be and the less we will grieve. My brother was immediately cremated with no one having a chance to view because he was convinced this would be easier on his family. Just the opposite was true. He is missing and presumed dead to me and I have had a much harder time dealing with his death. 

Viewing is certainly not an easy thing to do, but the facing of reality is the first step toward dealing with our grief. When a person enters the grief journey in denial and closed off from reality, it is much harder to find a way to open to the reality at a later date. 

In cases of trauma when there has been extensive damage done to the body, the pressure to avoid viewing is even greater. What is not usually realized is that this leaves too much to our imaginations and imagination has a way of intensifying and distorting the image in our minds.

I have no idea how many readers of these posts were denied or not encouraged to view and are now struggling with reality and overactive imaginations. The question becomes how best to work through the lack of having had the chance to view.

I think finding someone who will listen and not try to explain this need away becomes vital. Just having someone understand how hard this is to deal with is a major step.

I think there needs to be enhanced efforts to establish the significance and the memory of the loved one. The more they are remembered and the more others tell about how they remember helps keep the person alive and makes the loss more real. 

And, there is a more extreme action that can be taken but should be thought out carefully and approached with some trusted person to accompany and counsel. This idea was brought to me in a painful and graphic experience.

The woman who served as office manager in our company suffered the suicide of her sixteen-year-old son. I got to the house just as she was about to go into the room where her son had shot himself and asked her not to go in. She complied and the mortician and I removed his body. Fortunately, the funeral director was able to hide the damage and the family got to see the son that night.

A year later she told me she was going to the police and get the pictures they took of her son in the room where he died. I asked her why and she said, “I know those pictures are bad, but I have spent a year listening to people whisper that he blew his head off. Those pictures cannot be as bad as my imagination has made it, I must see.” 

She brought the pictures to me so we could view them together. I waited a few months and then asked her how the pictures had impacted her feelings and thoughts. She said, “What a relief, the pictures were so much better than my imagination had made it.”

I told that story to a group of women at a Compassionate Friends conference and one woman jumped to her feet and said, “There will be pictures?” I said, “Perhaps, yes.” She left the conference the next morning and returned home, got the pictures and later wrote me saying, “I got the pictures. I was afraid to look at them by myself so I took them to my counselor so he could be with me when I saw them. I cannot tell you what a relief the pictures were. He looked so much better than may imagination had made it.”

This is not a blanket invitation nor a suggestion that everyone or anyone get pictures. There may not be pictures available in most cases but from my experiences I feel there are some folks out there who need to give this idea a try. If you do, please let me know the results and the impact. There is no research in this area that we can use to know whether or not this is a good or a bad idea, and the only way we will ever know is from the reports of those who gave it a try.

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