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It is not my intention to gross anyone out, but most people who die in the U.S. receive a post-mortem examination, commonly called an autopsy. An in many autopsies they remove organs from your body and may even remove your brain, to examine them for cause of death, etc. Usually the only people who are not autopsied are those who die in a hospital, nursing home, or who are recently under a doctors care, but even they may be autopsied. Regardless, even when it is obvious why a person died they can still be autopsied to make sure of the cause of death.
Often after an autopsy, organs are placed back into the chest cavity in no particular order, unless they are specified for scientific study. then they are kept in a jar filled with fluid at the morgue. Organs are also removed if indicated for donation on the person’s driver’s license. Therefore, disposal of human remains, either buried or cremated, are frequently not in the same condition as they were when the person died. Often an autopsy is court ordered and the family has no say in it. In the U.S., people are autopsied regardless whether they are to be buried, cremated, or otherwise disposed.
If the body is going to be buried, often the mortuary will embalm the body and do some cosmetic work on the face and head of the body, unless it is going to be a closed casket funeral, then the cosmetic work is skipped. If the body is going to be cremated, there can be large bone fragments, hipbones, skull, etc., that did not disintegrate in the cremation process, although after some cremations the crematorium has the equipment to crush those large bones into ashes. However, sometimes the entire body composition is not put in an urn because large bones that did not, or could not, be crushed completely, and those bones are otherwise discarded. It depends on the equipment available at the mortuary or crematorium. Metals in the body, such as pace-makers, artificial limbs or joints, knees, etc., are usually removed before cremation.
I have seen lots of autopsies and my first apartment after leaving the army was in a mortuary. I was an ambulance paramedic and my boss rented me an apartment in a mortuary which he owned. The embalming room was right across the hall outside the door of my apartment. But I slept very well at night.
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