Also, in the old days you were more likely to have someone close to you die. Child deaths weren’t as rare, and lots of people stayed in the same area, so people knew most of their older relatives. Nowadays, people grow up and leave their extended families. How many young people have close relationships with their grandparents’ siblings? Great Aunt Gertrude dying probably isn’t going to do much to prepare you for death because you barely know her.
Ferret Herder also has a point. The only person worse off than me and my teenaged sister at my mother’s funeral was her mother, our grandmother.
I’m old enough to remember a time when the body was brought from the undertaker back to the family home; the casket was usually put on a gurney supplied by the undertaker. Family and friends would gather, someone would make coffee and there would be those who brought casseroles, pies, cakes and what have you. Some people would even go so far as take photographs of the body, which was an older ritual that was on its way out when I was a kid. While the body was on display in the home, life went on around it; there were cows to be milked, chickens to be fed, and so on. Usually those chores were taken over by a friend or relative. I suppose it was as good a way as any to say farewell and I suppose it taught others that death was a part of life. It didn’t do much to relieve the sorrow, though.
I’m 32 and I’ve never been to a “proper” funeral, mostly because my parents’ extended families live far away and airfare would have been difficult.
I have attended a wake for the child of a friend (I was also in the waiting room when the child died).
My grandparents regularly talk quite seriously about how they’re getting up there in years, they will be dead soon, and they don’t want any heroics. This sends my sister into near-hysterics but they seem very ok with it. Even when my grandparents talk about their siblings who have died, they seem very calm. Maybe I just missed the stronger outpourings of grief, but I think they get sad but realize it’s inevitable. When they were snowbirds, I remember hearing stories about the band they were in (where they were the youngest in the band) - “Oh, well, the drummer had a heart attack…and then Charlie who played saxophone died…and then the guitarist died…”
I wonder if it’s also caused by declining functionality, as well as having new generations. It seems like my grandparents realize they’re not getting around so well any more, and there’s great-grandbabies, so what the hell.
My mother’s brother died on Christmas Eve, and she’s grieving but not weeping. Again, since I couldn’t be there on that day, I may have missed it.
My Dad is 87 and sort of proud that he has outlived brothers and workfriends etc. Death is no big deal to him.
Before my grandfather died (he was 89) he told me a few months beforehand that he was ready to go- it wasn’t his world anymore. I guess he did live from before flight to see a man land on the moon though.