Funeral Trend: Posing Deceased Like They're Alive

06-22-2014 • newser.com

The scene was the funeral of Christopher Rivera, a former fighter whose memorial service belongs to a relatively new trend: Bodies are posed the way they might have been seen in life. Others featured a man riding a motorcycle and a woman sitting in a chair. "It's been a real boom in Puerto Rico," says an exec at the funeral home that organized the events. "People have requested every type of funeral that could possibly come to mind."

It began with a man who stood at his funeral; he'd always wanted it that way, family said. And the phenomenon is no longer limited to Puerto Rico. It's been happening in New Orleans, too, where this month a deceased woman sat at a table with a cigarette and a beer during her funeral, the New York Times reports.