A tisket, a tasket, a manicure and haircut in your casket?

You’ve always known that your hair and nails are made of dead skin cells – or if you didn’t know, you do now.  Gross, I know. So it just makes sense that when you die, your skin dies too, therefore making longer hair and nails. Right?  Don’t be so sure…

It is a common belief that your hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.  With novels such as “All Quiet on the Western Front” citing nails that “twist themselves into corkscrews and grow and grow,” you might start planning manicures and barber visits to your tombstone years down the line after you have passed.

So should you start frantically Google-ing someone to tame that mane once you’re gone?  Not a chance!  Fortunately, this is just one of the many common misconceptions about death. Phew!

Once a body is no longer living, it begins to dehydrate. Your flesh begins to dry up and pull away from your nails and hair. This retraction of skin makes it LOOK like your nails are longer when in fact, it’s all the same length as when you kicked the bucket. What an optical illusion….

Actual hair growth requires a whole complex set of hormones regulating to occur. All of which cannot regulate after death! Thank goodness we cleared that up…cancel those manicures!

In the spirit of common misconceptions about death, here are a few craaazy superstitions about death you might find interesting…

– If a dead person’s eyes are left open, he’ll find someone to take with him.

– It’s bad luck to count the cars in a funeral cortege.

– Nothing new should be worn to a funeral, especially new shoes. (Hit up that thrift store…ah!!)

I bet your hair would make a lovely wreath.

Didn’t I tell you that Sunset Hill and Herr Funeral Homes are full of legends?  Well, not only are the cemetery grounds peppered with gravestones of legend after legend, but the walls and shelves inside the funeral homes are also adorned with legendary pieces of history.  From hair wreaths passed down for generations to old embalming fluid recipes, Bob is intrigued by the lengths (and strands) that loved ones go through to remember those who have passed.

And now Bob is quite the local legend himself.  As the St. Louis Metropolitan Area’s Suburban Journal claims, “Collinsville funeral home owner finds humor in afterlife,” with Bob adding that the funeral home industry, “is really not a downer business.”  Photos and more information about his incredible collection can be read in the full article that ran last Tuesday: http://suburbanjournals.stltoday.com/articles/2009/09/15/madison/news/0916cvj-funeral.txt

His old and assumably dusty collections sure do give a whole new meaning to “scattering ashes.”