Yes, and thre’s a picture of me attending linked elsewhere: it was the funeral of Sammy Davis Jr’s Grandmother, I was 8, it was 1966 and the picture was in Jet magazine.
I don’t know that my family did either. I remember sitting by grandma’s bed and holding her hand as she lay dying (I was 18) but I don’t remember a funeral. Grandma and grandpa were poor and they weren’t churchgoers, so maybe there was a cremation.
The first funeral I have any memory of is a nephew’s, who died suddenly at 19 of a virus. “Mom, I feel sick.” He passed out, the ambulance was called, and he died on the way to the hospital.
I must have been about four or five. It was my godfather’s funeral.
One of my first clear memories is watching my dad cry while clutching the phone in the kitchen, after being told that his best friend of thirty years had died suddenly and unexpectedly while in the best of health.
My first was my great grandmother who died when I was 12-13ish. I don’t remember the service itself, but the party after when the whole family talked about our favorite memories of her was wonderful. Not a lot of tears - she was in her mid 90’s and had been independant right to the end.
The next two were on the same day - my cousin and my boyfriend died in a motorcycle accident when I was 19. There wasn’t a lot of happy memory sharing at either, she was 20 and he was 21. Terribly day, probably the saddest and most guilt ridden in my life. I kept thinking that if I’d gone home that weekend it wouldn’t have happened or it would have been me instead of her.
Yes. I was about six, and it was my great-aunt. I didn’t really get the whole funeral thing, but I begged and begged and begged my mom to let me go because I wanted to see my grandparents and other family members (we lived several hundred miles away and had to fly). Mom relented and I went.
I’ve only ever been to one other funeral, that of my grandpa when I was about sixteen. There was a funeral mass - one of two masses I’ve ever attended. (My grandparents, for all of their serious Catholicism, did not succeed is passing down th faith to successive generations very well.) There was a part where people were praying the Hail Mary or Our Father (or something) repetitively. My youngest cousin was five or six at the time and at one point he turned to my aunt and said loudly, “Mama, they’re just saying the same thing over and over again!”
Everyone cracked up. My grandpa would have loved it.
My paternal grandmother. She died when I was 8. I was bored shitless during the funeral.
My maternal grandfather in an open casket service (1968, I was 13). It was the first time I ever saw him, which was pretty weird.
First funeral I went to was my fathers, I was 11. It was an interesting experience, as everything happened so fast. He just dropped dead, then the next thing I knew I got to fly on an airplane to the funeral. The whole process was so quick that it took me quite the while to absorb it all.
It amazes me that I know people into their 30s who have never been to a funeral at all
I think my great-uncle’s funeral when I was 8. I didn’t know, still don’t know, the deceased relationship to me. Just that my dad knew him. I remember walking into the church and seeing the priest and asking my dad what the rope tied around the priest’s waist was for and my dad said, “To beat the bad children with.”
Just couldn’t help himself from being a dick. To an eight-year-old girl. Who was just asking a question.
First one was when I was about 16, a high school friend killed (like far too many young people) by a drunk driver. George (the deceased) was a Catholic, and the funeral was my first experience with a Catholic mass. All those people standing, kneeling and reciting in response to cues that I didn’t know. There was an open casket, and I recall thinking how darned old George looked lying there. It was as if in death he had suddenly grown up from the pudgy cheerful youth I’d known to a somber and dignified man in his 20’s or 30’s.
There is a small postscript to the story. George and I both played saxaphone in the school band, he had a lot of talent and was the star woodwind player. When he died, we were in the final stages of preparation for our semi-annual band concert in which George had a difficult baritone sax solo in the final piece. For some reason the band teacher tapped me to take over the bari sax for this last song. I played 2nd alto, and had never touched a baritone sax, but of course the fingerings are the same. I practiced like crazy for the last few days and at the concert managed to get through the solo…not perfectly but not too badly. George’s mother attended the concert, and afterwards made the incredibly generous gesture of seeking me out and complimenting me on how well I had taken over her son’s part on short notice. I was literally struck speechless and don’t recall what, if anything I said to her in return. I still recall this as one of the nicest things anyone ever did.
SS
I was about 3 or 4 years old when my paternal grandfather died. I had a bad sunburn all over because my mother let us run around naked on the beach. My Parents dressed me up in my Easter dress which was covered in stiff scratchy lace that burned everywhere it touched. My father picked me up to look into the casket; it was agony! Then he refused to put me down until I patted grandpas head. His hair was all stiff like his skin. For a long time I thought that when people died, their hair got as stiff as therir muscles. I guess it must have had hair spray on it
Yep. Great Aunt Ruth. I was seven. Most exciting thing to my young self was listening to the 20-somethings in the church after the service. They were pretty irreverent. It was enlightening. I cherish the memory.
My own mother’s when I was 25. I went to a few visitations in homes or churches but that was my first open casket funeral. I don’t mean to wish death on anyone but I do wish I’d had some practice before. It was horrifying for me.
I was in my mid-30’s when my step-brother blew his head off with a handgun. My step-dad’s kids grew up halfway across the country from me so I didn’t know them hardly at all as a kid and was just starting to get to know him as an adult. I went to support my mom and step-dad. Step-dad asked me to give a eulogy which I did.
The whole thing was absolutely horrible. I felt like his friends resented me for being one of the speakers because I barely knew him and the circumstances behind all of that. My poor step-dad being a complete wreck. So much more. I don’t even like to think about it. What a fucking waste.
There was this high school age kid that got killed in a car accident. My friends and I, all 8-10ish, stood across from the church and gawked during his funeral. We were just curious I guess. Big black hearse parked outside, we were waiting to see what happened. My dad drove by on his lunch break and told us it wasn’t really cool to be standing there like that, so we left.
Cripes, I dunno why someone would do that to their own kid. Terrible.
My first funeral was for one of my mom’s friends. Not a close friend, just someone a congregation she was once with. I was under ten years old. I don’t remember much except that one of the other kids there said that if you stared at the corpse’s chest long enough, it looked like it was breathing. I tried it, and yes it did seem to move. Delightfully creepy, I thought.
Still haven’t been to one yet. Not really looking forward to it either.
I’m 43 and have never been to a funeral. I went to a ‘Memorial Service’ for one of my uncles, but that’s the closest I have come. When my father died, we just had a reception at my brother’s house for friends, family, and anyone else who wanted to come by.
I recall when I was in my early teens, one of my dad’s sisters died. I asked if he wanted me to go to the funeral with him and my mom, and he told me “No, you don’t need to go. If you’re lucky, the only funeral you’ll have to attend will be your own”.
My dad’s, when I was 17.
It sucked hard.
Even though I’m the daughter of a funeral director, and we lived above a funeral home for about the first four years of my life, I never actually went to any funerals. Yes, I saw bodies all the time, and used to sit in the viewing rooms and such, I never thought of the bodies as “real”. Four-year-olds don’t really understand death like that, and I had never known anyone who died until I was seven. That was my grandfather, but I didn’t actually go to the funeral – just the viewing.
My first funeral – I was 11, it was my aunt’s funeral. She was my godmother and my favorite aunt as well.
The biggest impression is seeing my grandmother standing over the casket before they closed it, and she just sort of reached for my aunt and started sobbing. I think the only two people not crying were my cousins. (Her kids) They just looked sort of numb, like zombies.