Do you benefit from a funeral?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’ve heard so many people claim that funerals are for the people still living, not the dead. But from my experience with the funeral/burial of my father, I found that nothing in the experience was to my benefit. It was the worst couple of days of my life, compounded by social responsibilities that seemed designed to make sure I felt the horror as much as possible.

So, who is the funeral really for? It wasn’t for my family. It wasn’t for my dead father. No one benefited as far as I know. But they are the tradition, so someone must be seeing a value.

So, is it you?

2

Well, a dead person is dead, so obviously, they’re not for them.

Are they for the living? I don’t know. I’ve only lost grandparents, and the funerals just seem to be a going away party. It’s a corny word, but they’re just “closure”. "OK, grandma’s finally gone. "

Like when someone moves out of the neighborhood.

Not to be too blunt, but what would you have done otherwise? Just written a check to a funeral home director and then not thought about it again?

3

I think maybe they’re more for the extended circle of the deceased than the immediate family. They can bring closure for some, and for others it’s a formal and non-intrusive way to express support and sympathy to the immediate family. As a society, I think we’re really weird about death. A funeral is the one time we’re allowed not to pretend it doesn’t and didn’t happen.

4

I see no benefit to the living or the dead, except that it allows the living to one last time, pay their respects to the lost loved one. Well, that and in most cultures, to give them the appropriate send-off to the afterlife, complete with prayers, etc.

5

I would have done what I intend to do if my husband dies. I will have him cremated and will not be attending any parties for people to stand around and tell me how sorry they are when I really really REALLY don’t care how sorry they are. However sorry they are, I’m sorrier.

It seems most people think that I owed something to people for whom my father was an acquaintance or a relative they saw a couple of times a year. Why isn’t the death a time for letting the mourners mourn in their own ways, instead of forcing them to put strangers and acquaintances first? If there’s one time that people shouldn’t have to put other people first, it’s when they’re devastated.

6

Well, who had say over the arrangements?

7

Someone other than me. What does this have to do with anything?

We all did the expected thing. We did the done thing. Why is it the done thing? Who benefits from the done thing?
Edited to add: If someone just wants to comment on my father’s funeral arrangements, they are not getting the point of my question. A coworker’s father just died, and he’s going through the same torture I did and he’s miserable. This isn’t just supposed to be about my experiences, but the experiences of everyone I’ve ever talked to have been that funerals are an imposition and a misery for the people who are grieving. It’s a party for the lookie loos.

8

Because you’re griping about the way the funeral arrangements worked, and I assumed you put the thing together.

At my grandmother’s funeral, it was a “good” time. that’s not exactly the right word, but lots of family was back in town. We got to see relatives we hadn’t seen in a long time.

People bring food by. We ate and drank and reminisced.

If you don’t want it done that way, it doesn’t have to be.

9

While the dead may not benefit directly from their own funeral, I think we all benefit while alive, taking some comfort in the knowledge that when we do die, we will be remembered by our friends, and our bodies will not be tossed in the trash bin with the dirty diapers and banana peels.

10

That’s a really cynical thing to say.

Do you feel like a “lookie loo” when you go to someone else’s funeral?

11

Of course it’s a cynical thing to say. This whole thread is about my cynicism about the worth of funerals.

12

Actually, my father’s funeral was lovely. He’d had a long terminal ilness (lung cancer) and the preparations were made prior to his death, so there was no mad scramble to get everything done. Pretty much everyone came (I have a very large family), including former co-workers flying in. Not only did it bring home how really beloved my father was, it provided closure and something to do in those first days without him. I guess without the funeral everyone would’ve sat at their homes feeling blue. There was a sense of community. And when my grandmothers each died, it was an opportunity to get together with family, to have a good time and celebrate the full lives of two very different women. My cousin died of liver failure after a transplant rejection, when there wasn’t another liver available for transplant. He left behind two teenaged sons who planned the part at the funeral home (he, like the rest, had a traditional Catholic funeral). The boys played the rock music their dad loved and althought there was sadness to lose a young, funny, smart and artistic man, there was also the joy that he lived well, that he loved and was loved.

StG

13

I find them generally beneficial.

I’ve learned things about people I’m close to at their funeral.

I find it comforting to hear other people talk about my loved one and share stories about them.

That said, there can be a lot of damage from them. Like my brother, ‘letting me sleep in’ rather than waking me up to go to the funeral home to plan out my mother’s funeral.
“We didn’t make any choices you wouldn’t approve of” The point is that I wanted to be there and in case you haven’t noticed, although I am the youngest I am 42 years old and I should be treated like a grown up you putz.

At my brother’s funeral, his friends had the idea to actually bury him. That is, they brought shovels and put the dirt into the grave. I participated. That really gave me a sense of closure. And I was pleased to know that I did the job properly, as Tom would have done it.

14

Well, an alternative is to hold the funeral with just a few people and only afterwards put an announcement in the paper. The wording then is (I’m translating from Dutch"): “On <date, location>) Mr John Smith passed away. The funeral has already taken place in private. Signed <location> <relatives>”

Many people take this route, so they probably feel the same way about organizing and attending a funeral as jsgoddess does.

15

I am in agreement with you jsgoddess. I really need to get something written up because I would prefer to not have a funeral. I want to be cremated and for it to be over and done with. No service, no wake or the like. If friends choose to get together and talk about how fabulous a person I was, of course I can’t stop them. But I really don’t want my near and dear to have to go through the agony of the traditional scene.

16

Funerals seem to work pretty well for my family. I personally find having all the family gathered together very comforting. I also liked having mindless things to do, it felt like a good alternative to being miserable by myself with nothing to do. So yes, I guess I am one of those people who finds them a value.

The acquaintances are one of the best parts, I’ve always thought. It can be interesting and even uplifting to learn about other aspects of the deceased person’s life. I had no idea what my grandmother was like at work, and I thought it was neat to hear stories about her from the other ladies who had worked with her – she was the secretary at City Hall, and they had great stories, and I felt like I really learned things about her that I didn’t know before.

I guess a lot of it is personality. When I am upset, I seek out other people … if I was the kind of person who coped better being by myself, I can see how a funeral (and wake and the whole business) would be dreadful.

17

It’s a cynical thing to say about the people who have attended.

To call the people who took time out of their lives to pay your family respect “lookie loos” implies that they are there to gawk at your misery.

I’d try to separate your scorn for funerals from scorn for your guests.

18

Different experiences, I suppose. When my Dad died, the funeral home had to borrow chairs from other places to jam into the room where he was laid out for the prayer service and the next day the (moderately large) church was about half filled.

When my FIL died, there was a similar crush of people and the (rather smaller) church was filled. (The comment was made that if the roof of the church had fallen in, no one in Southern Michigan or Northwest Ohio would have been able to get their horses shod for months since pretty much every farrier in that area had either been trained by, worked with, or competed against my FIL.)

I really did not hear a lot of “I’m so sorry” expressions at either of those funerals. What I recall were a lot of people expressing how much they had enjoyed knowing either of those gentlemen, how much they had respected them, and any number of (often uproariously funny) anecdotes about their lives.

I know that both my Mom and my MIL were comforted to know that each of them would, indeed, be remembered well and missed. Yeah, it was a bit wearying at the funeral home to have to thank hundreds of people for their expressions of sympathy, but since most of those expressions were accompanied by nice comments about how they had made the world better around them, it was tolerable.

I’ve never been to a mournful wake or funeral in my family and I don’t recall attending one in Deb’s. The house was a bit crowded with visiting family, but they all pitched in to help, with visitors acting as hosts to other visitors. I don’t think I would have wanted to go through those periods mournfully trying to not think about the future or trying to console my nuclear family by ourselves.
In fact, as my co-workers and former classmates have lost parents or siblings or spouses, I have tended to see the same thing. Once or twice I have been to the funeral of a young spouse or a child that was very hard to take, but that has been rare, with even those events tending to be more in line with my general experiences.

As I began this, experiences are different, so I would never try to tell anyone that they have something wrong with their views if their experiences were less uplifting or more depressing. However, the funerals I’ve attended have, indeed, been for the living.

19

Why not? Don’t you think the person, when alive, took comfort in the knowledge that there would be a funeral?

20

You don’t say what “social responsibilities” were put on you, but anyone who makes social demands of a grieving family needs to have their head examined. Friends and family should have stepped forward immediately to insulate you from the need to do anything except get yourselves ready for the funeral. When your father dies, you should have no immediate responsibility beyond planning the funeral, and there should already be significant pre-planning done (my funeral is already planned, to the last detail – my survivors have only to hand the instructions to a funeral director.)

Although I hate going to funerals, I do find that the “gathering of the clan,” the ritual and ceremony, and usually the feasting and communion that come afterward makes us cognizant of the importance to us of the person whom we are remembering. The end of a human life should be accompanied by an observance of the preciousness of life and the impact that life had on our own. And, to use the old cliche, it really is good to have a time to say good-bye, a time to get closure. When my grandfather died, it was good to see people I hadn’t seen for many years show up and pay homage to the old man. I personally thanked every one of them I could reach.

Of course, in the case of sudden or untimely death (which is what it sounds like you are describing) the decedent’s loved ones usually are still stunned and emotionally fragile during the funeral. And while people who knew and respected your father should be allowed to pay their respects, their presence shouldn’t ever be allowed to intrude on your own grief.

If what you really wanted to do was go away by yourself and not talk to anyone at all and not attend any kind of service or funeral, your feelings are certainly understandable, but probably not what you really needed, no matter how much you wanted it. Sometimes, what you need the most is the thing you want the least. The pain of attending your father’s funeral wasn’t added to the pain of losing him, it was a necessary and concluding part of that pain.

I’ll conclude by saying that several years ago a woman with whom I had been great friends many years ago (she was my older sister’s best friend) died of cancer. Most of us who knew her didn’t even know she was sick because her husband – one of the most bizarre characters I’ve ever known – didn’t even tell their children about it until she died. Her body was cremated and her ashes sit in an urn in the widower’s living room. There was no funeral, no memorial service, absolutely nothing. Now, this woman, when we were teen-agers together, taught me how to dance so I could take a girl to Homecoming. She gave me tips on how girls wanted to be treated. I was a freshman in high school the year she was a senior, and she helped me avoid the worst of the social landmines of that year. For a time, I had a terrible crush on her, and she knew it, and she handled the situation with grace and humor. She was as much a sister to me as my own Sis. And when she died in pain, tended only by her husband and a hospice nurse, we who knew and loved her never got to say good-bye. I think it was inconsiderate and self-pitying and boorish of her husband to ignore the loss that the rest of us felt.

But that’s just me.