Rite of the Sitting Dead: Funeral Poses Mimic Life [View all]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/us/its-not-the-living-dead-just-a-funeral-with-flair.html?hp&_r=0


At the family’s request, a funeral home in New Orleans posed the body of Miriam Burbank for her service this month. Credit Percy McRay, via Reuters

NEW ORLEANS — All last week, people were calling Louis Charbonnet to find out how they might avoid lying down at their funerals. Funeral directors have called; so have people with their own requests, such as the woman who wanted to be seen for the last time standing over her cooking pot.

The calls started coming in to the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home during its June 12 viewing for Miriam Burbank, who died at 53 and spent her service sitting at a table amid miniature New Orleans Saints helmets, with a can of Busch beer at one hand and a menthol cigarette between her fingers, just as she had spent a good number of her living days.

Word of the arrangement began to spread, hundreds showed up, the news spread online, and now here was Mr. Charbonnet getting a call from a funeral director in Australia.

Ms. Burbank’s service was the second of its kind that Mr. Charbonnet had arranged, and the third in New Orleans in two years. But there have been others elsewhere, most notably in San Juan, P.R. Viewings there in recent years have included a paramedic displayed behind the wheel of his ambulance and, in 2011, a man dressed for his wake like Che Guevara, cigar in hand and seated Indian style.


The body of Christopher Rivera, a boxer who was shot to death, was propped up in a fake boxing ring for his wake in January in San Juan, P.R. Credit Ricardo Arduengo/Associated Press


***what would your tableau be - if you wanted to do such a thing?
mine would probably involve a disco ball..