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When my grandmother passed away I was really young and my mam didn't want me to see her, because my mam for a long time could only see the embalmed version of her grandmother for decades after seeing it as a teen. But my cousins mother forced them to look at our grandmother even though none of them wanted to and were crying about not wanting to. Seeing her body left them in shambles and it was also hard for them to unsee it.Yeah that's a tradition called 'the viewing' and my family does it too. Granted, we were never forced to approach the body.
A year is far too long. We had to wait a few weeks for my aunt's body after she died because my mam had found her in her house dead. That was pretty rough, I thought I had managed to process it until the funeral when I broke down in front of family I'd never met :lThe funeral wasn't until an entire year later because the hospital wouldn't give back her remains. At that point the funeral was also much more difficult mentally. That's too much time between so it was like suddenly having to process it all again.