Would You Look? If Your Loved One’s Body Was Tragically Disfigured, Would You Want to Look?

© 2009 Adrian Clark, Flickr | CC-BY-ND | via Wylio

It’s a hypothetical question that few of us will have to practically answer.

I laid in bed last night thinking about it.  Like I do so many nights, I think about my own mortality and the mortality of my loved ones.

My wife is off on vacation.  And before she left, she semi-seriously talked about her weird features that would help me identify her in the event of her tragic demise (yes, the morbid darkness of my work has crept into her soul).

Despite what you see on TV, you don’t always have to visually identify your tragically killed loved one.  It makes for great drama on TV to see the bereaved spouse walk into the morgue and look at their dead husband/wife, only to break into tears and yell, “NOOOOOOOOoooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”  But in real life, these dramatic identification scenes don’t always play out like they do in Hollywood.

But, the option often exists in the event of a tragic death: Do you want to see the corpse?

Often times the coroner, police officer or even the funeral director might try to dissuade you.  “You don’t want to remember him/her like this.” they might say.  Or, “If it were my son/daughter/spouse, I wouldn’t want to see them.”

But it IS your choice.

Mangled flesh.

Distorted visage.

Embalming and “restorative art” does come into play for tragic deaths.  Sometimes our restorative skills enable us to present an otherwise unpresentable body.   And sometimes, we hit a middle ground, where the deceased resembles the person they used to be, but is otherwise distorted, and mangled, and caked with makeup.  Sometimes there’s not much we can do.

I suppose the ethical question of “should you look at a mangled corpse?” is purely relative.  For some, it’s a dose of reality that plagues their dreams, that haunts their daydreaming.  For others, it’s a reality that gives them peace.  Knowing, actually seeing the corpse enables them to squelch the ever begging question, “But what if they are still alive?  What if that corpse that we buried WASN’T my loved one?  What if he/she is still OUT THERE?”

And yet, for others, they are simply happy to hold onto memories of life, having no desire to see the battered visage of their loved one?

What about you?