New Trend: ‘The Sexy Alive but Dead’
Sitting at a table, beer, whisky and cigarettes nearby, with nails painted in the colours of her favourite American football team, Miriam Burbank didn’t move much at the funeral.
But then again this was her own funeral.
Coffins are becoming optional at services in New Orleans. It’s the second time this year the corpse has been dressed up and displayed.
Wanting to demonstrate their mum, who died at the age of 53, had been full of life, Miriam’s daughters decided they wanted her exit to have a party feel.
It caused such a stir the Charbonnet-Labat Funeral Home has had calls from all over the world to do similar things with other dearly departed.
The bizarre services began in New Orleans in 2012 with the death of Lionel Batiste, a jazz musician and dapper man about town. Mr Batiste did not want people looking down at him, so at his service he was standing up, leaning on a lamp post, hands on his walking cane, hat tipped rakishly to one side.
And in April, well-known New Orleans socialite and philanthropist Mickey Easterling, 83, had a similar send-off.
As she was known for loving the finer things in life, she was arranged posing with a glass of bubbly in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She was dressed in an evening gown, complete with ornate hat and a pink feather boa.
Now it isn’t just in the Big Easy, that mourning relatives are thinking outside of the box.
At the Miami funeral of murdered record label executive Alexander Bernard Harris, mourners paid their respects as he sat in his yellow Lamborghini, wearing jeans, a red San Francisco 49ers baseball cap and sunglasses.
Coffins don't have to be boring though - check out these unusual caskets, or read on for more unusual send-offs.
His 16-year-old daughter Tareel Harris said at the time: “That’s his favourite car. He joked he wanted to be buried in it.”
And in Ohio, biker Billy Standley, 82, was buried in a glass casket astride his beloved Harley Davidson Electra Glide cruiser. He had started funeral preparations himself by buying three large plots next to his wife Lorna, big enough to accommodate him and his bike.
But letting the departed, depart in real style isn’t new. Thirty years ago Chicago gambler Willie Stokes Jr was buried in a casket resembling a Cadillac Seville.
Stokes, 28, who had been shot dead on the steps of a motel, was propped up in the driver’s seat. His car coffin boasted blinking headlights, a windscreen, Cadillac grille and a licence plate with Willie’s “Wimp” nickname.
Dressed for the occasion in a flaming red suit, he had several $1000 dollar bills sticking from his fingers.
It is not only in the mainland US that the trend for putting the “fun” into funerals has taken off.
In Puerto Rico, Angel Pantoja Medina, who was shot dead in 2008 and thrown over a bridge in his underwear, is now forever remembered as “el muerto parao” or dead man standing. His corpse was leant against a wall, dressed as a rapper and wearing his favourite New York Yankees cap.
His aunt Ana Delia Pantojas said: “All sorts came to see him – lawyers, judges. Everyone was saying things like, ‘for my wake I want to be in my recliner with a cup of coffee’.”
David N. Morales ColnSuch is the success of the funeral home’s alternative funerals, that they are keeping the embalming process that makes the poses possible a closely guarded secret.
One family even asked them to pose their son Carlos Cabrera as Che Guevara, cross-legged, head bowed, cigar in hand. The funeral home has even branched out into pet wakes, posing a dead German Shepherd dog called Capitan on his owner’s motorbike.
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