As can be done without mentioning religion or the lack of religion. If he was such a great guy it shouldn’t be that hard.
I think Amber should have said, “This is what I’m comfortable saying in a eulogy. I won’t hide his atheism and I won’t lie. Do you still want me to give it?”
Again, though, I don’t necessarily think the results of honesty here will be bad in the end. It might be really helpful. And when in doubt, it’s generally better to be honest.
If the OP had made it sound as though the atheism were a less important part of Amber’s relationship to Mitch, I’d probably agree with you. But the OP made it pretty clear that the atheism was important to that relationship, and I don’t think she should have to hide it.
Maybe I’m the one projecting. For me you could go on for hours about me and never mention my lack of religion. And I’m not that interesting. My lack of belief in something is about on the same level as how I can’t speak Farsi. The lack of something isn’t that important. It just wouldn’t come up. Really the only ones I can think of off the top of my head who’s lack of belief was so intertwined with their being that it would have to be mentioned are Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. To most of us there is much more about what we are than what we are not.
Okay. I don’t see how that’s directly in response to what I said, though.
My problem with this approach is that Amber may herself want to eulogize her brother. I know the OP doesn’t say so, and that’s my fault, but certainly that’s what I intended.
When my mother died, it was very important to me to stand up and speak at her funeral. It wasn’t quite the dilemma Amber faced. My mother wasn’t an atheist – she was a lifelong Pentecostal – but I was, and I wasn’t about to get all She’s in the bosom of the lamb eulogizing her. So I found a way to give a tribute to her that was true to me.
It also occurs to me that the other Greys may consider that Mitch WAS saved. I know Pentecostals who don’t believe backsliding is possible–that Mitch’s being saved & sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost was good for life, and that all his profession of non-faith at 18 could do was remove God’s protective shield from him in THIS life, not deny him admittance to Heaven.
The family is Pentecostal.
The funeral is held in a Pentecostal church.
The church that their father is pastor of.
In front of all the congregants that worship there.
All of whom believe that the unfaithful will go to Hell.
So sure, no doubt that telling Mitch’s mother in front not only her family but in front of all of her friend’s and her husband’s flock that by her beliefs Mitch should be going to Hell will go really well. She will look on it as a teachable moment and later thank Amber for coming back into their lives after putting them through hell for years just so she could set them right about how they should feel about their dead son. They may even cheer and carry her out on their shoulders like Rudy.
Because I could easily do a proper and good eulogy for someone like Mitch without ever mentioning that he was an atheist. “Mitch saw the goodness in all people. He saw it in me even when I was at my lowest point.”
No lies. No half truths. Didn’t mention he was a LARPer either even though it took up most of his free time.
Funerals are definitely for the living. That’s the whole point of them.
Different people find different things important, obviously. I would feel that the overt promotion of the religious angle would make my comments, if I said nothing contradictory, as a tacit endorsement of Mitch as a religious person. I would not choose to do that.
On the other hand, I would not choose to turn a funeral into some sort of battle for power or control.
Bringing up Mitch’s atheism explicitly will cause a stir, no doubt. But I wonder how much of a stir Amber never mentioning God or Jesus will cause in this context. Say this act of omission will bother the father - as it might. Should Amber throw in a Jesus or two to avoid trouble, or is that giving in too much?
Sure, I’ll concede there’s potential value there. And I’d certainly concede that it depends: what is Amber’s read on her family, on herself, and the mood in general? Some people are excellent at delivering uncomfortable or contrary claims in a non-confrontational manner (though most are not), just as some people are able to accept challenges to their most cherished values and beliefs with aplomb (though, again, most are not). Etc.
I’d still have issue with the timing. Yes, she has a large and immediate audience, but if she’s going to be in her family’s life for a long time going forward, their are bound to be less combustible moments to bring them around. At the same time, a bad fight at a funeral would likely lead to her not being a part of her family’s lives going forward (we have direct experience of this phenomenon in my family, I must point out).
Yeah, I’m still not comfortable calling the family liars (or bullies, truly), and while being humiliated for genuine misdeeds (or mistakes) has potential value, it also has concurrent harm, and being *publicly *humiliated is a separate beast altogether. There’s a whole bunch of miscellaneous garbage that comes along in such a case, little of it good.
And, sure, I see what you’re saying about rewarding and therefore encouraging bad behavior, but that strikes me as so much less certain, and harder to judge, than possibly causing a row. Ultimately I’m just a lot more impressed by the more immediate danger: angering a lot of people, wrecking several beneficial relationships (mostly mine), and creating a lasting point of bitterness. Not with certainty, of course, but with reasonably (or, rather, unacceptably) high degrees of probability.
It may largely come down to how we imagine this playing out in our heads. It strikes me as quite likely that by choosing *this *moment, Amber would be dropping an ugly problem in her family’s laps (“Did you hear? The reverend raised an atheist son and a bitch daughter!”), and that for this and other reasons it would cause, well, a big hurtful mess. This is really unappealing to me since she has a better option: just wait a while to start the conversation about Mitch’s atheism, because this is literally the worst possible time.
That’s my thought too. I think if I was in her position, I’d just opt out entirely from giving a eulogy, and cherish the real one that I wrote. It’s just as real as if I’d got up and alienated my family for no good reason, and let the family have their own brand of solace, however divorced from reality it may be.
Or do what Quercus suggests, if there’s no way to avoid the eulogy altogether.
Ever been to a funeral when there wasn’t a dead guy? Funerals may be for the living, but they’re about the dead.
Probably speaking only for myself, but: possibly, theoretically, sure – if she had good reason to believe an omission would cause a big problem. That’s certainly not my reading of the situation in the OP, or in most plausible scenarios I can think of. Basically it would have to be an extreme case before I’d even consider it.
YES! Go with honesty, including the whole truth.
There was that one MAS*H episode. Plus that chapter in Tom Sawyer.
Skald, were any of his close friends and acquaintances going to be there, and did they know he was an atheist, or at least know that he wasn’t a devout Christian? If she reads speech A, what might their reaction be?
Not a real situation. If I die in the next year, perhaps my wife or baby sister will come in to comment on what happens at my funeral. (Why is there no black humor smiley.)
That said: Seems to me that only Mitch’s closest friends from New York would be at the funeral. I imagine they’d know, but also that they’d have been so gobsmacked by the funeral being functionally a born-again church service that they be too busy to say anything else.
Honestly, I’ve never heard a single complaint from a dead guy about his funeral. But, I’ve heard many from the living. The dead guys just don’t seem to care what happens there, yet the living apparently do.