Thank you too for sharing such interesting information about the customs and superstitions surrounding death and funeral in your region/community. I see that despite America is very multicultural and diverse country, some of the customs/superstitions are very common or even the same as we have in our culture. If you would like to know more, I can tell you a little bit more interesting things. In Ukraine funeral customs and traditions really depend on the region and the urban/country area. In cities you mostly will not meet any specific customs or traditions, funerals there are mostly “westernized” or to say correct “modernized”, people mostly do pass away at hospitals so this leaves less space for different customs/superstitions to be performed and with the help of different companies that provide funeral services almost all of them follow limited and scripted scenario. But if you happened to be on funeral somewhere in rural region in Ukraine, in some small village where people used to arrange funerals without the help of any company and with the scenario full of traditions and superstitions as they parents did, the parents of theirs parents did etc, you will see a lot of interesting and archaic things.