@coconot and others who are weirded out by American burial practices, you should look into green burial. It’s a growing trend right now. It’s burial in a more natural landscape without the use of embalming fluid, fancy-ass caskets, or vaults. Sometimes there is no marker and you are just buried in a field or forest. It’s a pretty cool return to the old way of doing things. GreenBurialCouncil.org is a good place to start researching.
This is what I’m writing my thesis on, so I’m the weird burial girl.

I’m getting a dual masters in American Studies and Environmental Studies. This topic seemed like a good way to combine both and bring in my obsession with visiting cemeteries and looking for dead relatives.

@MsMisery, I know! It’s nuts. Unless you have some kind of infectious disease that can contaminate the water table there’s no good reason to embalm. It’s just become part of the normal American funeral to do the whole process and some funeral homes can be big ol assholes about how they treat family. I’ve heard of people being told that the cost of a funeral can reflect the amount they loved the deceased.

I’d be a big fan getting turned into a diamond. Then I could be some creepy family heirloom that no one would actually want, but they also couldn’t bear to throw away.

@Bubbles, the reason your Irish friend had not heard of Irish twins….

I’m pretty sure that the phrase ‘Irish Twins’ is an ethnic/religious slur against the Irish.

Irish twins has to do with the fact that many Irish immigrants often had large families, sometimes with many of the children close together. So it became a way for non-Irish, Protestants to poke fun at the poor, illiterate Irish teeming on the American shores.

You can Google the ethnic/religious slurs && treatment leveled at the Irish during their mass migration to the U.S from about the late 1800’s to the turn of the century.
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A lot of times in the U.S. we grow up hearing things that are clearly slurs and we don’t even think about their origins. I can think of quite a few slurs that people (to this day) still say and act like it’s not a big deal.
1. jew someone down, jew someone
2. gyp, jip someone
3. Indian giver
4. Paddy wagon
5. The use of the N-word in any context
6. Redskin
7. Beaner or wetbacks

Just saying… don’t continue to perpetuate the stereotypes.

Meh, although I am not totally onboard with the whole embalming thing…the egyptians have been doing something very similar for thousands of years. mummification. Sure it was probably more green then what we are doing now, except for the massive pyramid. But the current american burial ceremony is similar in the sense of preserving our dead/loved ones.