Would you pay your respects at a wake from a passenger’s seat or while shifting down to first?

A Los Angeles funeral parlor has instituted a novel, yet somewhat jarring new option for mourners. Instead of actually parking your car and saying a prayer or doing whatever it is atheists do casket-side, at the Robert L. Adams Mortuary in Compton, you can drive through a viewing lane and attend the visitation. Sound crass? Owner Peggy Scott Adams points to “convenience” as the main factor in offering the unusual mourning option:

“It’s a unique feature that sets us aside from other funeral parlors… You can come by after work, you don’t need to deal with parking, you can sign the book outside and the family knows that you paid your respects,” said Scott Adams. “It’s a convenience thing.”

Of course, convenience isn’t the only consideration when considering a drive-by grieving. Funerals are often a safety issue when gang or mafia deaths are involved:

In the 1980s, cemetery shootouts made gang members reluctant to gather for graveside services. The drive-thru’s glass partition is bulletproof, Scott Adams said, and so for a while the mortuary became a popular location for gang funerals.

Olivia Boudreaux, a mourner who attended a drive through viewing, says the detachment made the process simpler:

“I’m used to just going up and looking into the casket, and spending as much time as you need,” said Boudreaux. “But it’s good this way. Not quite as emotional.”

Would you pay respects in such a fashion, or does it come off as… well, disrespectful?

McMourning: LA funeral parlor offers drive-thru viewings is a post from: The Inquisitr

Marin Funeral Home in San Juan in Puerto Rico has made headlines before for posing a body in an unusual fashion.

Back in 2008, the company grabbed headlines for propping the body of 24-year-old Angel Pantoja Medina upright (as if standing) for his three-day wake at his mother’s home. Medina had previously told family members that he “wanted to be happy, standing” at his wake. Damaris Marin, the owner, has piqued international attention again with another interestingly posed body.

After 22-year-old David Morales Colón was shot to death last Thursday, family members brought the young man’s “Repsol-liveried Honda CBR600 F4″ to Marin for the unusual post-mortem display. The bike was given to Colón by an uncle before he died, and Marin posed the body atop the bike in a realistic racing pose, wearing street clothes and sunglasses.

According to a Puerto Rican news source, Colón survived a shooting previously, at the age of fourteen. He was buried yesterday in Rio Piedras. No word on whether the bike went with him.

Puerto Rican funeral home poses dead man on motorcycle is a post from: The Inquisitr

It’s hard to imagine how a funeral for a five-week-old baby lost to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) could become a more heartbreaking occasion for grieving parents.

But Terrie Rouse, 32, was shocked when she discovered she’d been fined £86 by her local council for lingering too long at baby Zane’s funeral, by ten whole minutes. Rouse explained the incident to The Sun:

Heartbroken Terrie said: “The vicar asked if I would like to spend a bit more time saying goodbye. I sat by the coffin for ten minutes, telling my son how much we loved him, begging him not to be scared.”

Terrie and her partner Lee Smythe were devastated when Zane died suddenly of SIDS in April at their home in Milton Keynes, Bucks. The couple waited three months for Zane’s body to be tested before he was released for funeral services. Terrie’s partner Lee described his outrage to Sky News:

“Terrie was weeping hysterically,” he said. “She just wanted a few extra minutes to say goodbye to our much-loved little boy.

“Nobody told us to speed up or said that we had to leave because we were taking up too much time. How could anyone be cruel enough to charge for this?”

A council spokesperson apologized for the charges and told Sky:

“We understand that sometimes more time may be preferred and so families are offered the chance to book extra time if they need it,” he said.

“This means when funerals that have not taken up this option over-run, a fee is automatically charged.

“However, when we learned that there were extenuating circumstances we, of course, refunded the extra charge.”

Mourning mom in UK fined for lingering at dead baby’s cremation is a post from: The Inquisitr

Ryan O’Neal admits to a doubly shocking faux pas in September’s issue of Vanity Fair.

At length, O’Neal discusses why he doesn’t believe he should have been a father. He describes the incident with Tatum at Farrah’s funeral:

“I had just put the casket in the hearse and I was watching it drive away when a beautiful blonde woman comes up and embraces me,” Ryan told me. “I said to her, ‘You have a drink on you? You have a car?’ She said, ‘Daddy, it’s me—Tatum!’ I was just trying to be funny with a strange Swedish woman, and it’s my daughter. It’s so sick.”

“That’s our relationship in a nutshell,” Tatum said when I asked her about it. “You make of it what you will.” She sighed. “It had been a few years since we’d seen each other, and he was always a ladies’ man, a bon vivant.”

Maintaining contact with only one of his several children (Redmond, his son with Farrah), O’Neal says he’s “never been happier.

“A couple of them I would take back.

“I don’t think I was supposed to be a father,” said the actor, who had Tatum, 45, and Griffin, 44, with first wife Joanna Moore; son Patrick, 42, with actress Leigh Taylor-Young; and son Redmond, 24, with Fawcett.

“Just look around at my work — they’re either in jail or they should be,” O’Neal said.

The Vanity Fair piece, entitled Beautiful People, Ugly Choices, is one of two VF covers for September. Farrah again is sharing the spotlight with Michael Jackson, who is the subject of the other September cover hitting newstands this week.

Ryan O’Neal accidentally hits on daughter Tatum… at Farrah’s funeral is a post from: The Inquisitr

For an extra fee, you can get your final farewell broadcast across the entire Web. Have some relatives who don’t want to make the journey? Let them watch from home! Want to digitally immortalize the moment to relive over and over at the click of a button? You’ve got it!

Now, to be fair, this place isn’t the first to try the idea — though it’s far from a widespread practice.

Is it a bad idea? Not necessarily. It is, after all, putting technology to a new and modern use — albeit it in an odd sort of way.

Still, for some reason, the whole thing leaves me with a bit of a weird feeling. Maybe there are some places where technology shouldn’t go. Maybe this is one of them.

Any thoughts?

Cyber Funerals Hit the Net is a post from: The Inquisitr