Just wondering if I’m alone on this. I absolutely will not go to a funeral. I have met a few people who don’t do to funerals because they get too emotional and can’t handle it, which I have no problem with, but isn’t exactly how I feel. I just don’t go because the dead hunk of flesh that sits in the coffin has nothing to do with the actual person I knew, loved and cared about. I know I will never change my opinion on this because one of the hardest things I ever did was thoughtfully explain to my parents in their moment of grief why I wouldn’t be attending my grandparents funerals, but I did it, and finally made them understand. I’ve had several people tell me how cold-hearted I am becuase I wouldn’t go to the actual funeral service of my grandmother, but they can have their opinion. I just can’t see any honor in crying over a motionless body, when I can remember their true essence in my words and deeds. Does anybody else have a similar grieving ritual, or am I completely alone.
I’m morally opposed to not going to funerals. I think everybody should be forced to attend every funeral at gunpoint.
You know, wolfman, I used to be firmly in your corner.
I thought that funerals were WRONG, and stupid, and without any value whatsoever. After all, the person you loved is gone, and mourning their body is of no value, whatsoever.
I went to them, of course, because I valued the living and wanted to support them. But, I thought that it was not something I would ever feel as though I needed in order to say goodbye.
Then, three years ago I lost my mother to cancer. I loved my mother more than I can tell you. She had a smile that lit up the room, and she had more love in her than most people ever dream of having.
When she died, and we knew she was terminal so it shouldn’t have been a shock, I was devastated. Prior expectation does not prevent this.
I was numb, and I was in denial. So what I am trying to say is this. I have changed my opinion about funerals or memorial services. What these services do is, they allow loved ones to say goodbye, to accept that the loved one is really gone. And while you are accepting this, you are graced with the love of people who loved your loved one.
I have completely changed my opinion of both memorial services/funerals, and of burial plots. People who lose a loved one NEED closure, and they NEED to be able to go somewhere and BE with the person they have lost.
Now, if you had told me four years ago that I would be saying this, I would have laughed in your face.
I was wrong.
Scotti
I go to funerals as a show of respect to the deceased even though I find the whole thing to be very repugnant. I have stated my wish that I do not want a funeral. If you are absolutely opposed to going to a funeral may I suggest that the best thing to do is go to the viewing time, but just wait in the recieving area and be there to comfort the living.
Funerals are for the living, not the dead. If you need to go, then go. If you don’t want or need to go then I don’t think you are morally obliged to go.
We had a funeral for my still born son, Ambrose. If anyone had told me I was morally wrong to celebrate what little time I had with him, I probably would have decked them.
By the same token, I didn’t coerce people into attending. My partner’s father asked why we were having a funeral and said he felt we should just ask the crematorium if we could put our baby’s body into an adult’s coffin and have him, sorry, it, burnt that way. My FIL is no longer a part of my life.
I cannot see what could be morally wrong with a ceremony to commemorate a life. I can see the moral objections to coercing somebody unwilling to attend a funeral.
Funerals are a waste of money. For a tenth of the cost, you could have a “memorial service”, without spending $10000 on a box that nobody gets to use. Some funeral directors take advantage of the grief, guilt & numbness to sell outragous extras.
My feelings are similar to Azargoth’s. I do go to funerals out of respect for the person who died, and to be there for the people left behind, but I really don’t care for funerals. I would rather do the closure thing alone. I don’t want a funeral when I die. Maybe a memorial service if people really want something.
The first funeral I went to was my mothers, on my 6th birthday. The next one was my grandmother (who helped raise me when my mom died) when I was 18. That one was the worst. A church full of people watching me break down. I felt it was barbaric. I just wanted to crawl in a corner somewhere and have my breakdown alone.
I have been to three funerals, my dad’s, my grandma’s and my mom’s.
I went because I loved them and wanted to show them my final respects.
When you look at it, human beings are heart, body and soul, and when someone dies, their heart has given out, so its gone, the soul has gone to a better place, so its gone, now what you have left is the physical body.
So if the person is someone you enjoyed hangin’ with or doin’ stuff with, or having them hold you or you holding them or just having them around, then the funeral is the last chance to be in their presence, to see that face, to see those hands that held you.
Wolfman, I think it depends on who the person is, and what role they may have played in your life. I don’t go to funerals for people I hardly know, they have to be someone special to me.
Grandparents give life to parents, who give life to parents, who give life to children, I think that makes them special.
Personally, I don’t see how one can be “morally” opposed to funerals. If you think it’s a waste of money, fine. If you think it serves no purpose to the dearly departed, fine. If you don’t want any one to hold a funeral for you when you die, fine. But someone went to the trouble to hold a funeral for someone they loved. Support them in their time of grief.
I don’t particularly like funeral’s either. I’ve told my family when the time comes for me, I don’t want some cheesy rite where everybody dresses in their best clothes and gushes over me. I’d rather have something a little more informal.
But I can only reiterate what Primaflora said, funerals are for the living, not the dead.
Gee, what a surprise that no one likes funerals :rolleyes:.
I also believe they are for the living, not for the dead. I go show my respect, to show support to the bereaved, and to be of comfort if I can. Frankly, the viewing of the body at wakes creeps me out a bit, and I stay as far away as possible; a memorial service is my preference. Also, as an atheist, I am often uncomfortable with the religious aspects, but I put up with it for the reasons listed above.
I went to the funeral of the husband of an old family friend to show my support for the widow. When she died a couple of years later, I didn’t go the funeral because I wouldn’t have known a single person there, and I didn’t need to go to get closure myself.
I don’t share your feelings, wolfman, but I can understand them and respect them. My mother’s cousin (to whom I was close) felt the same as you, and never attended funerals. I understood and respected that too. When she died, she didn’t want a funeral, but her widower decided to have one anyway. I respected that decision too, and I attended the funeral. I wouldn’t have felt right if there hadn’t been one, and I wouldn’t have felt right not attending if there was one. I think a funeral or memorial service is valuable in bringing a sense of closure.
I attend funerals for my own benefit first, out of respect for the family of the departed second, and out of respect for the departed himself only third. (Since they’re dead, I doubt whether they care that I attend).
Not ALL funeral directors. My father is a funeral director, and the hardest part of his job is having to help the family through their grief. In fact, he says alot of the families are greedy and selfish and spend time arguing over the inheritance.
I know you weren’t stereotyping, DITWD, but this seems to be a common stereotype-funeral directors use people’s grief to sucker them. Well, frankly, in my father’s case, it isn’t true. He works VERY hard and what he does, and gets screwed over himself alot by other people in the business.
While I won’t kid you that there are a lot of crooked morticians out there, I will say that please do not go into a funeral home with that assumption.
I don’t know anything about your father in law, so I could be completely off base here, but try to remember that sometimes grief affects people in strange ways, making them say and do things they would never do otherwise. My aunt was so affected by her husband’s death that she slapped my mother and pulled her hair when my mother was placing flowers on the grave. I’ve seen people say awful things to one another at funerals, and families torn apart for years by a cruel comment made by a person whose mind was clouded by grief.
Maby your FIL is a complete ass, and if so, you have my sympathy, but if he’s usually an OK guy who made a stupid comment out of pain and loss, maybe you should try to patch things up.
I’m sincerly sorry for the loss of your child. I can’t imagine the pain that must have caused.
I don’t agree with your use of the the word ‘morally’. I don’t believe it means what you think it means here. But I can understand your stance on funeral attendence completely. I don’t/won’t attend them either.
As has been mentioned numerous times in this thread, funerals and all their trapping are for the living, not the dead. For many it’s a time of closure - proof, if you will that this person is really gone. I personally don’t need this, and many in my famiy are the same. Often we forego funerals entirely in my family, memorials are made, but that isn’t the same thing.
It’s apersonal need/choice and I understand which ever side of the fence folks come down on.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I do LIKE wakes and funerals … I don’t like them more than I would like the person not to be dead, but I like them more than not having any service at all.
I think a lot of this has to do with personal experience, and the culture in which one is raised. In my own upbringing, we were taught to see death as a natural part of life. If someone has a baby, you can go to the shower. If someone gets married, you can go to the wedding. If someone dies, you can go to the funeral. It is a way of celebrating someone’s life in the company of other people who knew and loved the deceased. When my uncle died recently and unexpectedly, the funeral was emotional, draining, and sorrowful, but it was also uplifting. Plus, we’re Irish, which meant there was also a lot of food, booze, music and dancing at the wake.
A coworker of mine recently died while I was out of the country on vacation. There was no way I could get back in time for the funeral. I still feel like I haven’t found closure about this.
All that being said, I would be horrified to learn that someone was forced into attending a funeral if they felt uncomfortable about being there. I think one’s feelings about this extremely personal and the best thing you can do is whatever feels right to you. I would even say don’t go simply out of respect for the living … a sincere note or phone call can show that same sort of respect.
For children, I would try to explain what will happen at a funeral or a wake, and let them make up their own mind about if they would like to attend, and if so, for how long. It seems like only the child would be hurt/scared/terrified by being forced to attend if he/she didn’t want to. On the other hand, the child might see the funeral as an opportunity to say goodbye and feel denied or left out of family things if he/she isn’t allowed to attend.
What bothers me is the custom of putting bodies out on display. My mother once told me about when her grandfather died and she looked at him in the coffin and he had all this makeup on and stuff and looked NOTHING like he’d looked when he was alive. So we have agreed that neither of us will be put out on display. Our opinion is that it’s barbaric.
When my father died a few years ago I was given the chance of going and looking at him, but the very thought was revolting. I know for some people it is helpful, but the thought is STILL enough to make me ill. I’d much rather remember him alive.
Note the word “Some”. Funeral directors do not have the % of 'con-men" that used car salesman do. But some are there, and their cons are all the more repellant because of the circumstances. I would suggest that the family take a non-grief-stricken freind with them when they discuss arrangements.
Many funeral directors are honest, caring individuals. Some are not.
Well, the body doesn’t have to be on display.
You can have a closed casket and then most just put a picture of the person on the lid in a frame. That’s what they do when someone doesn’t…“look so great.”
Back about 100 years ago, they took deathbed photos…I thought that was neat.
In every profession, there are good and wonderful and caring people, and there are jerks. Unfortunately, this is the way of the world. I don’t think that most funeral directors are greedy and callous. But of course, there are bound to be a few.
I agree with the poster who said that viewing the body is not a good thing. I believe that when you die your soul departs from your body, so there is no reason to want to view their mortal remains.
I do believe that a memorial service celebrates the life of the person you are mourning, and this does help the remaining loved ones to deal with their grief. At least, this is what I learned when I lost my mom.
One year after my mom died, I also lost my brother to cancer. He had specifically stated that he did not want any kind of service, so of course we abided by his wishes.
IMHO, my sister-in-law would have been better served if we had held some sort of service. When my uncle died two months ago, she cried uncontrollably throughout the service and post-funeral gathering. She was not close to my uncle. I think that she was reacting to my brother’s death, more than my uncle’s. I don’t think she has been able to gain closure in the death of her husband.
JMHO, but I think that some sort of service helps loved ones to move on.
Scotti
Lissa wrote
"Maby your FIL is a complete ass, and if so, you have my sympathy, but if he’s
usually an OK guy who made a stupid comment out of pain and loss, maybe you
should try to patch things up. "
Nah the man’s a nasty piece of work from start to finish. He made a pass at my mother at my wedding. I am quite happy to have him OUT of my life. If he was an otherwise OK guy, I totally agree with you - certainly other people said some waaaay strange stuff and I hold no grudges at all.