Taking another break from newsworthy estate issues, the NYT reported about the beginning of a funeral trend primarily in New Orleans where the deceased is not in a coffin but is posed as if alive.  A 53 year old woman was recently posed at a table holding her cigarette with a can of Busch beer in front of her. In April, a socialite was posed sitting on a bench on a downtown theater greeting guests.

Several points:

1.  Although the Big Easy boasts of putting the fun in funeral, spectacles are not always fun but can be morbid.

2.  I suspect that the beer and cigarette depicted might have contributed to the woman’s death at 53.

3. I know they were going for authenticity, but the woman was posed with a Busch beer instead of a nice microbrew as her final beer?FUNERAL-master675-v3