My family does memorial services, which are really celebrations of the life of the deceased. One I remember in particular, for a very punny friend of ours who died of AIDS... people were telling stories of bad puns he had told, and I got to tell the story of the time he went through this long shaggy dog story about me making tea out of koalas and serving it with little bits of fur in it, since "the koala tea of Mrrzy is not strained" - And I hadn't read Shakespeare yet and didn't get it! He was SO mad. It's still one of my favorite memories of him. I have, however, attended funerals on my children's side of the family, and they always seemed very anthropological to me.. "it's not my tribe" kind of stuff. Seeing the actual dead body seems incredibly bizarre to me, although I understand (intellectually) that folks who are used to funerals probably consider us cold or something for NOT having the person whose life is being celebrated present... De gustibus disputandum non est all over again.