1. I didn’t know if I was going to watch the videos of five Memphis police officers beating up Tyree Nichols, leading to his death. It seems, among other things, an unnecessary invasion of privacy to me. But his family apparently wants the world to view it in the hopes that it will do some good in keeping this sort of thing from continuing to happen. Last night, when the videos were released, we did watch them. Probably a mistake. Who wants to see a man being assaulted in this way?
2. Nichols’ funeral is going to be next Wednesday. Will his mother decide here, too, that his casket should be open for the same reasons she wanted the videos made public? We shall see.
3. I just watched an absolutely fascinating (I mean absolutely fascinating) interview on TV on the Christiane Amanpour Show with Michele Norris interviewing Rev. Wheeler Parker of Chicago. Rev. Parker was Emmett Till’s first cousin, and was with him in Mississippi at the country store where Emmett got in trouble for whistling at a white woman, and was staying at their grandparents’ house the night Emmett was dragged away and then murdered. You may remember that Emmett Till’s mother insisted on an open coffin funeral, so that people could see the condition of his body, in the hope of keeping this sort of thing from continuing to happen. Parker, after all these years, has just released a book of his recollections. I think this is very important and hope that people read it and watch the interview.
4. That led me to thinking about that old joke about the elderly Jewish couple who moved to Miami to enjoy their golden years. But shortly after they moved, the husband passed away. At his funeral, too, was an open coffin. A friend of the widow said to her at the funeral “Bernie looks so good”. “Yes”, she replied “Florida did wonders for him.”
5. Then, I thought back to my grandparents’ funerals in the 1950s and 1970s, where all the caskets were open. And how much things had changed by the time my parents passed away, when most Jewish funerals, at least, had closed caskets, as they do today.
6. And my mind went to Lenin, and Mao, and Ho Chi Minh, whose bodies today can still be viewed, and whose bodies are today still carefully tended to make viewing possible.
7. And finally to King Tut and the exhibit we saw this week at the National Geographic Museum and whose mummified body was discovered 3000 years after he died. One of the most interesting part of that exhibit was the explanation of how mummification was accomplished – including taking the organs out of the body. Like Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh, the “person” was no longer there.

Should a dead person’s body be displayed? What is the right way to do things? What is the wrong way? It just isn’t an open and shut case.