Where I live, when someone dies, their funeral is held at the very next day, but an american told me that in the US, the funeral may take place weeks after someone passed. So, what do you do with the corpse until then? Where is it stored?

45 comments

  1. I think it depends on the religion and/or personal wishes of the deceased and their families

  2. Not the next day unless the deceased’s family follow religious customs. It it held in a morgue I believe.

  3. it’s usually the next weekend or the weekend after that. you try to time it so as much family can come as possible – the us is a very large country with ineffective labor laws, so people might have trouble taking emergency time off or finding flights.

    the body is embalmed and kept in the morgue, or cremated (much more flexibility for the funeral timing there)

  4. They happen usually quite soon after someone’s passing-usually a week I would say from my personal experience (which thankfully is very limited).

    How is it feasible to hold a funeral the next day? Some people might have relatives on the other side of the planet.

  6. The funeral can be a couple of days after a person died or if they have family out of town you can delay it so the family can get there in time for the funeral. Bodies are kept in walk in coolers at the funeral home.

  7. Depends on the family, deceased’s wishes, and how they want to mourn/celebrate/remember, and availability of a funeral home and/or church for the service. When my paternal grandfather died, the funeral was the next weekend (4-5 days). When my maternal grandmother died, we didn’t have a funeral.

    Far flung families may take longer to allow relatives time to make travel arrangements and get from one side of the country to the other.

    A funeral home or mortuary prepares the body and can store it so it doesn’t decompose. Or cremates it if that’s the preference.

  8. It would be hard to have the funeral the very next day. You have to get the body prepared, you need to get a lot prepared and send out notification to all close friends and family.

  9. It depends on a lot of factors. Religion/culture. Wishes of the deceased. Family tradition.

    In my anecdotal experience it’s somewhere in-between. Most that I know of are very soon after (within days). If it’s a sudden loss sometimes it takes longer to get things arranged. If it was an expected loss it’s usually sooner.

  10. Usually not weeks. But days. There might be a daybof preparation then a wake that would last 1-3 days then the funeral. Some people will be buried the next day.

    Between death and burial the body would be kept at a morgue or/and a funeral home in a fridge and then be embalmed.

    It COULD be weeks if there was some extenuating circumstances or if an investigation was necessary by the authorities though this is likely true where you are as well.

  11. It really depends on the family. Funerals can be crazy expensive here, and sometimes the family needs to wait for the insurance company to cut a check. That’s usually pretty quickly, but it’s not instantaneous.

    The morgue will usually hold a body for about a week or so while the family makes funeral arrangements.

    Also where do you live that funerals can be arranged by the next day? I’ve lived abroad in 6 countries and I’ve never once seen a next-day funeral.

  15. My dad’s a pastor so growing up I saw this a lot. Most people have it done within a week. More than a week is pretty rare. However, during the pandemic, it started to become a lot more common to have a small viewing right after and then having a larger funeral weeks (or in one case months) later. During the height of Covid, it was just too hard to organize people.

    For funerals that have taken place weeks later, there was no body viewable. It was just for the ceremony to gather everyone to greave.

  16. My grandmother died in January 2005; she was cremated soon after, but we had to wait until spring to bury her remains and my grandfather’s remains in northern Minnesota. The ground would be too frozen to bury anyone in the winter.

  17. It depends on the circumstances. As far as I know, most people have their funeral within a week. What all that entails depends on the subculture.

  18. Sometimes it can go longer if someone wants to be buried and the frost is too deep in the ground to dig.

  19. Bro, how are you gonna invite folks to an event with a 24 hour notice? People here got plans, they got other events happening. We like to give people some days in advance to plan

  20. We are going to schedule it around me and my cousin(the last two in the family still in school). But minimum it would be 2 days after death because my cousin is in Boston without a car to get back to NJ.

  21. so, the funeral home has basically a deep freezer to keep the body on ice for awhile. now america is very diverse population wise and there are many different cultures but, typically funerals happen within the week. Week(s) plural, is more unusual, most parlors won’t hold bodies that long unless there are abnormal circumstances (or money paid).

  22. Generally it depends, but most funerals aren’t the next day. There are also a lot of different religions and cultures in the US so it can very wildly.

    My experience in a small christian community is the funeral is usually held within a week or so if someone’s passing. Bodies are typically embalmed with chemicals to keep the body from decomposing before the funeral. This gives the family time to gather and make arrangements. Usually there are 2 parts to a funeral. The first is a public viewing, where anyone can come and pay their respects. This is followed by a private religious ceremony for friends and family. Then the body is buried in a cemetery.

    Cremation is also common. A funeral may still happen before or after cremation. Obviously there is plenty of time for the service after cremation. Sometimes this involves “scattering ashes” where part of the cremated remains are poured on to the ground or water. Families may wait months to do this so the area is appropriate for the scattering. For instance in areas of deep snow or during the deceased person’s birthday.

  23. It took a couple weeks for my cousins funeral. My aunt is homeless and couldn’t afford it so she had to raise money for it which took a little bit. We got an anonymous donation of $3000 from some amazing person. They really helped out.

  24. If you die in February in the northern United States you might sit on ice for a month waiting for the ground to be soft enough to even dig your grave with machinery.

  25. It’s not a rule, but it generally takes a week or two.

    You need to do the embalming, get a venue, casket, etc. Plus notify those who would want to come and pay respects.

    A body, once embalmed, can be kept for 6-12 months.

  26. My grandpa passed a few months ago, and yes it was several weeks before the funeral. In the meantime he was cremated. Most of the family had to take off work and fly in from out of town, so we could not have been there if it were the next day.

  27. Depends. As an American jew. (Orthodox), we arrange the funeral for the next day (although we try our best to do it on the exact day of death). We believe the soul of the deceased suffers until it’s buried, so we try our best to go through with this process as soon as possible.

  28. Most typical is within 3-5 days, but there are exceptions for a variety of reasons.

    One of my wife’s family just passed and they’re holding the funeral indefinitely for one of the granddaughters that lives overseas.

  29. Sometimes. Usually when a memorial/funeral is held weeks or months after a person has passed away, the deceased person has been cremated.

    There are a few reasons why this could be done–if there are no reasons to bury the person right away, a later service allows for the late person’s loved ones to take a little more time to make arrangements or travel.

    My partner’s family has adopted a new tradition–when someone passes over the winter, assuming that it fits her/her wishes, the family will hold a large memorial gathering in the Spring. This allows the family to plan ahead and the atmosphere is more festive for everyone and allows everyone the chance to remember the late family member with more happy memories, since they’re over the immediate shock and intense sadness of death. It’s a more joyous occasion (albeit still somewhat sad and always still respectful).

  30. They might not even have one. My dad died and no one really liked him very much so were all like “eh, let’s just not bother.” The coroner kept him a day or two or three until my brother contacted the funeral home and paid for the cheapest cremation. We live in the next state over and he died in a Thursday and they notified my brother Friday so it was a whole weekend thing, no rush job.

  31. One of my friend’s best friend was murdered by her boyfriend about 2 weeks ago and they still haven’t released her body to the family since they haven’t closed the investigation or anything yet. Meanwhile, when my great-grandpa died, it was maybe 3 days at the MOST.

    I think it just depends on the circumstances.

  33. The majority of funerals I’ve been to have been Jewish. We buy our dead as fast as possible, usually the next day unless there is a high-holy holiday or something.

    If the death is suspicious, then it goes to an autopsy or investigation for as long as it’s reasonable.

    For non-Jews – I’ve seen take up to a week or so. Sometimes families want a few days to inform people, make arrangements, schedule travel, hire babysitters, etc.

    The corpse is usually stored in a morgue/funeral home locker until it’s prepared for burial.

  34. Seems to be about 5-10 days after death, to give friends and family time to make travel arrangements and get there.

  35. This is entirely a family by family thing.

    My mom and her family didn’t get to any sort of memorial for my late maternal grandmother until several months later.

    My biological father’s family immediately had a funeral the next day when my paternal grandmother passed.

    Both of those branches of my family are drastically different from each other, so that doesn’t say much about the US, imho

  36. It costs money and takes time to organize a viewing of a potentially beloved family member.

    Also the US is the size of like 3 europes, so people may literally be very far away and have to fly in.

  38. I think typically if it’s weeks, it’s a memorial service and the person has been cremated. That’s what we did for my dad.

  39. I think it’s typically a few days to a week. The thing is, it’s hard to organize a whole funeral in one day – having to choose a venue for it to take place, invite all the guests, have everyone prepare their speeches and choose what music will be playing, etc. You can’t get all that decided in a day, especially while you’re going through the worst of the grieving.

    The one I attended took place about a week and a half after death, but the body was preserved because she wanted to be creamated.

    As far as open-casket funerals with full un-creamated bodies, I have no idea how that goes. I assume they use chemicals or something to preserve them.

  40. It’s usually 3-5 days. I’ve never seen it be weeks.

    The US is huge, so often times it takes several days for all of the family members to be able to get to one location.

  41. In my culture, the funeral is held 2-5 ish days after the passing so that funeral arrangements and newspaper announcements can be made and so the church ladies can organize the dinner.

  42. Generally speaking, 4-15 days after the person’s death is standard in America. Though it may be more or less than that depending on the circumstances.

  44. As someone who was active in planning the funerals for both of my grandparents:

    They were Methodists living in a small town in Kentucky and didn’t have any religious requirements for expedience. Both were buried 4 or 5 days after death to create time for the family to arrange the funeral (talk to the funeral home, design the service, hire an officiant, etc.).

    My grandfather was embalmed for an open casket service. Embalming slows the rate of decay significantly, and having the funeral several days later wasn’t an issue.

    My grandmother didn’t want an open casket. (She said if people didn’t come see her while she was alive, she didn’t want them gawking at her while she was dead.) Her body was refrigerated until time for the funeral.

    Funeral homes and morgues have refrigerators that can chill a body enough to delay composition by three or four weeks. Embalming processes similarly slow decay. If the delay is more than a few weeks, the body is generally cremated and funerals may involve interring or distributing the ashes.

  45. As someone who’s unofficially studied death for a few years now (and as an American), I can tell you this happens for a number of reasons. Sometimes it’s because the family wants it on a certain date (though in my experience, it’s no longer than a week or two post-mortem), sometimes it’s because they have to do major work to prepare the body due to extreme decomposition or pre-mortem bodily injuries (i.e. face sliced in half, ribcage collapsed, etc.). It also depends on their beliefs and religion in most cases. Also, sometimes bodies can’t be identified within like a day or two (not also going by decomposition stage if it takes the authorities a long time to find them). Sometimes it takes a long time to get a potential relative and even then, it’s not always the right relative.

    As far as where they’re kept, they’re kept in morgues inside coolers which slow the rate of decomposition to near nothing. But that’s if they’re going to be staying any longer than 24 hours and up to (I think) 72 hours. Until the day of internment comes, they just lie and wait.

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