Atheist / secular humanist funeral.

Factual Questions
1

What are my options for getting one? For myself, that is.

I’ve been thinking about death a bit lately. Now, the thought of dying doesn’t bother me a lot. That part is easy. I’m fully expecting to just disappear and never have to worry about this consciousness crap ever again. No afterlife, nothing. Doesn’t really sound so bad. However, the real problem, as all connoisseurs of detective stories know, is disposing of the body.

I know, I know, I shouldn’t really care what happens to me after I’m gone - it’s not like I’ll be around to be annoyed by it. Even so, I still do, a bit. The thing is, I’m a firmly convinced atheist and a secular humanist. It doesn’t seem honest or right to me that, when I kick the bucket, the final garbage disposal ceremony should be full of religious mumbo-jumbo, nonsense about God and suchlike. In fact, just the thought of it makes me cringe. However, if I don’t do something about it in advance, I suspect that’s what will happen by default - in my case, I suppose the mumbo-jumbo will be the average Protestant Christian crap.

Anyway, I suppose I’m not the first person who has felt this way, and surely secular humanist funerals must be a fairly common practice. Even so, I really wouldn’t know how to go about having one arranged for myself in advance. Who do I talk to about it? Are there government offices that deal with this? How about private organizations? Do I leave instructions in my last will and testament? I really want to do it properly, and make sure it’s all taken care of - if I just leave it to my family, they’ll ignore all my wishes and do the whole religious route, no matter how I feel about it. Are there such things as atheist graveyards, anyway? How about cremations? The ideal thing would be to just have the body disposed of at the local garbage dump, like any other old sack of meat, but I suspect that is pushing it a bit.

One more thing I should mention is that I’m European, living in a tiny Northern European backwater, so experiences from you American dopers might not apply specifically to my circumstances. Even so, all helpful hints are appreciated. And if there are any Euro-Dopers out there who can chip in, please do so.

Oh, and by the way, I’m probably not dying any time real soon… I just want to have these things sorted out.

2

Well, for starters I can tell you with complete certainty that there are definitely secular graveyards since there is one about 500 feet from my house. Cremations are not necessarily religious either. No one prays over you when they slide the body into the furnace. I am only going on my very limited experience here though. My second uncle runs a funeral home and I had the pleasure of spending a summer with him.

Your last wishes and requests should be left with an Estate Lawyer. Still, I am fairly certain that if your family wants a religious ceremony then nothing will stop them from holding one without your body there.

What do you want a funeral for anyway?

3

I can only tell you what my sister-in-law did when my brother died. He, like me, was an atheist of Jewish origin (though I rather suspect that our parents were too, although it was never discussed, but neither god nor the bible were part of our lives). When he was in the hospital, a rabbi visited him and they got along well (ignoring religion). His wife is a rather devout Catholic. I never inquired, but I assume that religious discussions between them were off limits. After he died (of a brain tumor–it was inevitable) she had him cremated immediately. Then she asked that same rabbi to conduct a memorial service. Since he had talked to my brother a bit, he was able to put together a nearly non-religious service (he did insist of reciting the kaddish) in which various friends, relatives, and business colleagues just talked informally about him. Now I don’t know what, if any, arrangement had been made beforehand, but when I go, I would like to think that there will be a similar service. Trouble is there is unlikely to be any rabbi who knows me.

4

I have always looked at funerals as being for the ones left behind, not the one that no longer exists. My father-in-law stated he didn’t want any kind of anything. Just cremated and spread around a garden he enjoyed.

When he died, it became apparent that following his wishes would cause his wife much more grief. She needed to go through the process of planning something, going through it, then it being over. So we weighed his desire for nothing to happen, and his wife of over 50 years desire to have something take place. We supported his widow, as she was the one who had to live through this tough time, not him.

So we had a visitation, relatives and friends came to comfort her and talk about her husband’s life. The atmosphere was light and much laughter could be heard, people retelling his famous one-liners they recalled after many years.

No prayers, no service, just a gathering to mark his passage. He wouldn’t have wanted even that, but we still thought her wishes should trump his, as he was gone and she wasn’t.

I would suggest you let your loved ones know of your wishes, but if they have a need to do something different, well like you said, you won’t be around for it to make you cringe or bother you.

I am glad my father-in-law didn’t go to great lengths to make sure someone honored his wishes. If he had insisted, my husband would have tried to force his wishes, but that would have come at the expense of causing even more friction between the rest of the family. My husband would have ultimately lost the battle, and been upset with those who forced the issue. The others would have been upset with my husband for trying to deny something that was important to his mother.

I don’t know if it is different where you are, but here, the family makes the final decision about what is to happen anyway. You can see a lawyer, write out what you want, but if they want to have a service and pray over you, you can’t stop them. You are dead, they are not, they decide what is next.

My wishes for disposal of my body are for my husband to do whatever he wants that will make things easier on him. If he would prefer to cremate my body and have no service, fine. If he wants to bury me in a cemetary, and have mumbo-jumbo said when they put me in the ground, whatever. It won’t affect me either way, but could make a big difference to him getting on with his life, and that is all that matters to me.

5

What our family has done is to have an immediate cremation, followed by a memorial service at the funeral parlor. Prior to the memorial, someone assembles a collection of photos and memorabilia to display. We have sometimes had a local pastor say a few words, but the important part was the chance for friends, family, etc. to gather in shared grief and to say words as they wished in memory of the one lost. In place of a coffin, urn, etc., we display a picture of the deceased on a small table.

After the memorial we have also generally arranged an array of some sort of light refreshment afterward. In some cases this was at the home of the deceased since it was nearby, large enough and comfortable enough for the purpose. In the most recent case the deceased worked in a luxury resort, and his employer provided space for everything so we didn’t need a funeral parlor at all.

6

Find someone who will recite the Agnostic’s Prayer over your remains.

7

For a reliable answer you’ll need to be a bit more specific about which Tiny Backwater you expect to die in, 'cause laws on these matters, as well as things like the availability of secular graveyards, vary from place to place.

In any jurisdiction that I’m familiar with, what happens to your body is controlled by what your personal representatives (executors or next-of-kin) decide at the time, and not by what you decided before the time. Sure, you can put any funeral instructions you like in your will, but they are unenforceable as against your personal representatives. (Practical question: who would enforce them?)

So if you have strong feelings on this subject, talk to your family, make sure they know your wishes and - if you can - get them to promise to observe them. You still can’t be certain that they will observe them, but they are more likely to if they have given that promise.

8

A few years ago, someone on the Internet was circulating sample titles of hymns to be sung at atheist services:

“Cold, Cold Empty Void”
“Grandma’s Food for Worms Now”