Perhaps some people feel that way. But quite obviously not everyone.
I don’t. My husband doesn’t. So we will not be having funerals for one another.
Well, with respect, if it wasn’t you and it wasn’t your family, why did your father have a funeral? If you agree that this rite of passage is largely BS and onerous on the grieving to boot, why sign up for it? Lots of people don’t have funerals because they don’t feel they are necessary or beneficial.
But apparently your father did have one. Why? Was it something other members of your family wanted? Is so, why don’t you ask them what they see the benefits of a funeral to be?
Funerals function as an occasion for people to pay their last respects to the dead, to take note of the life lived and to affirm that it had value. It allows those who are grieving to come together and comfort each other. It lessens the stark and painful reality of “one minute he was here, the next he was gone forever” by interposing a ritual that appears to ease the person from the world in stages (first he dies, then he goes to the church, then he goes the the graveyard), which may be psychologically easier for the grieving. It provides a time to fully and finally say goodbye, a sense of finality, after which the person can be left behind (as he must be) without the living feeling they have simply abondoned him. For the religious, it serves the sacred function of consecrating the soul of the dead back into the hands of God. A funeral allows us to honor the dead, to remember the dead, and then to say goodbye to the dead.
I didn’t mean to imply everyone felt that way. But I’m sure some people do, and in those cases, the funeral is (at least in part) for the dead person.
As I said, it’s the done thing, so they did the done thing. My family is very big on doing the done thing. When asked why, they will reply, “Because it’s what’s we do.”
They suffered through it because it’s what they felt they had to do. I suffered through it because I knew that refusing would cause more strife.
I am one of six and my mother is living, so it’s not as if my wishes are paramount.
Dang, meant to reply to this.
It’s almost unheard of amongst my family and acquaintances not to have a funeral. My father-in-law donated his body to the university in Louisville, and my family was completely flabbergasted that there wasn’t a funeral.
And it was truly lovely. We all got to grieve at our own pace, with others or in private as we chose. All the gatherings were very informal. Being absent wasn’t a problem.
It solidified my attitude against funerals. My husband’s attitude didn’t need solidified.
You sound like my late dad. He wanted no service, so we did not have one. My mom says she could not have gone through it anyway, and I don’t think I could have either. He was cremated per his wishes and a nice marker was put down; all of this had been arranged years ago.
We did receive many, many nice cards, flowers, phone calls, visits, etc. We also paid for an obituary to be placed in the local paper, and they put up on online guestbook which stays there for a whole year, unless someone wants to sponsor it indefinitely. People wrote many wonderful things and poems in the guestbook and then we printed it all out. That’s how they paid their respects.
This is exactly how I felt about the funeral arrangements and to a large extent about the service, following the death of my father last spring. It was a combination of the macabre and ridiculous, seasoned with commercial exploitation enabled by my siblings.
The one part that was good was being together with friends and family to remember him. We could have done that nicely in a memorial service that omitted the funeral home as well as the presiding semi-dwarf religious bozo who did not know my father but extolled his virtues while (rather comically) suggesting that the rest of us (or at least the world at large) were worthless slobs.
As long as “custom” and fear of unconventionality rule, people who’d rather dispense with the nonsense will be slaves to it.
jsgoddess, you have my sympathies, both for the death of your father and the unpleasant aspects afterward. I hope you can put that part of it out of your mind and remember the good things from his life.
It makes me feel better to learn from you and others in this thread that at least someone is benefiting somewhere. Maybe I can eventually look at funerals the way I look at giant weddings–not for me, but also not my business if someone else wants to do it.
Bu that doesn’t really tell you why, does it? I mean, best case scenario “because it’s what we do” means they just aren’t comfortatble or able to articulate why they feel a funeral should take place. Worst case scenario, “because it’s what we do” means they mindlessly follow social conventions they don’t even believe in, and in fact are harmed by.
Regardless of why your family does what it does, and regardless of whether you personally respect their decisions, there are lots of reasons other people find funerals useful and meaningful. many of which have already been listed. You may not agree to the value for yourself personally, but ISTM you should recognize they do in fact have value to many – which is why humans have been holding them for thousands of years, if not tens of thousands of years. Frankly, a lot of people, myself included, would not find it “truly lovely” to not be able to have a funeral for a close loved one.
Respectfully, I honestly can’t see what would be preventing you from looking at funerals that way now.
I think that sounds lovely.
I guess one of the reasons I started this thread was out of a sense of befuddlement that people were following a custom that didn’t benefit them. But I see from some of the replies that the custom at least benefits some people. That doesn’t make me want to partake, but at least I don’t feel as annoyed.
I have put most of the bad stuff about the funeral out of my mind. The only reason it really came up today was the coworker’s loss and despair. He commented that he feels like he’s in a parade and has to smile and wave and throw candies while people come stare at him. I thought that was such a good description that it brought back my frustration at having gone through that.
I attended a funeral for the father in law of a very good friend Monday. I did not know the man and barely know his wife in passing. During the last 17 years he suffered greatly from Parkinson’s and a good case could be made that his passing was a good thing (NO cynicism intended: he suffered and so did his family.)
The funeral? I was one of 10 people there. Several old friends of his wife, my friend, his wife (the daughter), and my friend’s father. It was very small and quite frankly I was out of place.
At the cemetary it was windy and 15 degrees. Since he was a veteran of WWII he was buried with an honor guard, taps and salute. I am so glad I attended.
For my line of work I attend a lot of funerals as a bystander; I’ve seen big, small, loud and quiet.
I witnessed an event which helped bump my understanding of life up just a bit. For that I am thankful.
This was an issue I thought about during the Gerald Ford Six Day Repeated Funeral And Road Show. Yes, I do think funerals have their place, but I can’t see how any person could find it beneficial to be one of the chief mourners (spouse or child) for a multi-day, mulit-service, multi-church, multi-oration mourning fiesta, as you’re schlepped from painful event to painful event in your uncomfortable black clothes, with all eyes on you. There is a point at which such over the top events go from being a comfort to the grieving to being a burden on the grieving, and there’s no excusing that.
My aunt died a couple of years ago. She and her family lived 800 miles from me, and I didn’t really know her while I was growing up. I’d gotten to know her much better in the last 10 years, and she was a wonderful person. My SO and I flew out to her funeral. During the funeral, the burial, the afterburial meal at the church and at the open house her widower had the next day, I got to meet so many people who had known sides of her that I never did. I heard stories of what she had meant to the communities she lived and worked in and to her friends and family. Those stories will never replace the loss of my aunt, but they did and still do give me a warm glow when I think about her.
Well, I’m not sure what happened to my post but again:
My mom specified no funeral service, no announcement in the paper, nada because she didn’t want me sitting in a funeral home, being sad.
I wouldn’t recommend anyone doing this. People would call, asking why mom wasn’t answering the phone at her place; after she died, we came home from the hospital, answered the telephone then nothing. There were no arrangements to make, nothing really to do. I had to remember everyone to call and I’m sure I forgot some people.
I buried her ashes under a rose bush in my backyard, said my own little thing and that was it.
I wish I had kind of a service anyway. It never seems to be over. I live that day again and again. There were none of her friends or relatives to talk to about her or tell stories or cry with.
It’s hard to describe how it feels.
I have set up a small service for my hubby to attend should anything happen to me. A couple of songs, some words from someone special, nothing major but at least something so he will have an end.
Canadiangirl, that’s how it was with my mom too. I was okay with it, but I don’t think her friends were. I spent a couple of weeks in her house, calling people, visiting with the ones who stopped by, writing notes to friends in other states.
She didn’t want any kind of service, but it would have been a nice way to honor her memory and say goodbye.
I see the benefit of funerals, but I think they’re too pro forma. Sometimes a family isn’t ready for a public ceremony three or four days after a death, particularly when it’s unexpected. I’ve been to funerals where family members were still in shock, barely able to walk and talk, let alone greet mourners and accept sympathy. Have a memorial service later, when family is able to appreciate it.
My mom and dad died young, both in their early 60’s. I am their only child.
And yeah, I did benefit. It helped bring a lot of folks from their lives together back into my life, if even for a bit. And it brought a sense of closure to their lives. For me anyway.
Shared pain was indeed pain lessened, in my case.
jsgoddess are you a religious person?
For me, personally, funerals are the one time that my religious beliefs and stuff come to matter the most.
I can totally see how someone who is not religious having to go through a funeral would find it more hard work and sorrowful than beneficial. Kind of like how Christmas and Easter are a bit of a nag to non-Christians. The pomp and circumstance suck if that’s all you have. If you believe in some higher power and going to a better place and all that jazz then it makes a little more sense.
One of the most valuable things you can do in your entire life is to be responsible for your own death. I don’t mean suicide; I mean make the arrangements in advance, whatever you want them to be.
And if you don’t care, do it anyway. Tell your family and friends what you want, write it down, pay for it, ask them for their participation if that’s what you want. Think about what needs to be done and how to get it taken care of, and take care of it. You’d just as soon be cremated, put in a shoebox and thrown in the trash? Say so in writing, but don’t leave it up to anyone else to decide.
Your alternative is to be a vindictive/inconsiderate jerk.
My father died when I was 3. The profound sadness that attended that loss kept me away from funerals for the next 30 years. Then I saw a documentary about some tribe in the Amazon. When someone in the tribe died, the chief went around to everyone’s hut to flush them out of their retreat, encouraging them to mourn and cry so that they could move on. For me, it was a revelation.
Now I go to funerals and memorial services, not to pay respects, not for the dead, but for me. I don’t enjoy them, but I certainly benefit. And I couldn’t care less about flowers, music, suits, caskets, any of that. Just me and other people who knew the deceased and feel the loss, letting ourselves feel that loss.
I can appreciate the OP’s resentment about doing the done thing. That’s absurd and someone in the family needs to put their foot down. The funeral industry is milking you guys.