There are basically no ‘estrangements’ in my family, close or extended, not that relate to me anyway. In the handful of cases where I haven’t seen fairly distant relatives, who I ever knew, in a long time, it’s for ‘no reason’. I’d still expect to hear about their passing and attend their funeral.
With non-related acquaintances there are cases of people I felt I had to get along with professionally and where it might be expected I’d attend a funeral, probably attended by other such people, but I’d really rather not. No ill feeling, just didn’t have anything in common with these people outside our work ‘alliance’ and that’s the reason I’ve had no contact with them in years. I hope not to be contacted when they pass with some expectation I’d attend. If there’s no expectation I’d attend (like I read about it passively rather than get told) then it’s a non event.
As people age, many times they lose contact with various relatives and friends, not because of purposeful decisions to no longer have contact, but because life causes you to drift apart. In those cases I believe it is important to make some effort to let people know when a person passes. Those loved ones and friends that remain grieve in many different ways, and by not letting them know, you are being selfish, and not permitting them to pay their last respects, etc.
Now for people that the deceased purposefully cut off contact or cut the deceased out of their lives, you have no duty to let them know.
I was… glad, I guess, that my dad’s second wife bothered to look me up and contact me the day after my father passed. Hadn’t spoken to him for nearly twenty years — my choice — but it did give me the opportunity to break the news to my sister, which in retrospect is how I would have preferred it. But in the years beforehand I wondered whether I’d want to know or not. I’m OK with it, all things considered, but YMMV.
I have a friend who keeps track of stuff like this. She’ll say, “hey, remember Cindy Smith? She worked at Johnson Pharmacy twenty years ago before it became a RiteAid?”
“Oh yeah. Redhead. I remember her”.
“She died”.
Heh. I do not attend funerals. What possible benefit is it to me to know this information?
I would absolutely want to know. Though there’s probably no reason to tell people with advanced dementia. It’s my understanding that it’s one of the hardest things for them to remember, and they just wind up grieving again every time they are informed.
I’m in my fifties, and there are quite a few people who I haven’t seen in 20-30 years but whom I nonetheless care about. I would be heart broken to learn that they had died, but would certainly want the chance to attend their funeral. To my generation, an empty funeral is the saddest possible sign of a wasted life. We show up for each other.
Even more than that though, I would hope someone would let me know if they were sick, so that I could see them before it happened. I don’t understand why we don’t do that in our culture.
I suspect that it has less to do with age than “family culture”. For example, you say that because of the gap in age between you and some of your cousins, you don’t know their children. I not only know my cousins’ and their children but am in contact with all of my first cousins ( some more than others). I am even in contact with many of my second cousins. So yes, I expect to be notified when my one of my mother’s cousins or one of my second cousins passes - I may not be able to go to the funeral depending on where it is held, but I would certainly go to a local one. Because although may not have had much contact with them for the last 20-30 years, I saw them all.the.time when I was a kid. The reason I know my second cousins is because of holidays and Sunday dinners - when I was a kid, all of my great-grandparents children , grandchildren and gg grandchildren ( me and my second cousins) would gather at ggp house one Sunday or so a month, plus July 4 plus Christmas Eve.
I get this less now that I’m older, but because I was in my early 30’s when my Dad passed, I hated it people I hadn’t seen in a long time asked how my parents where and I’d have to say my Dad was long gone. I can only imagine how bad it must be for someone who lost a parent or sibling even earlier.
The same holds true if you knew that person as vibrant and always cheerful, only to hear that they’re mentally and physically incapacitated because of some medical condition. My sister-in-law’s father was hospitalized during his last days because of cancer and I didn’t visit him because I wanted to remember his as I last saw him. I did visit one of my favorite uncles in the hospital (cancer) and he didn’t even recognize me and looked terrible. I regret visiting him. :mad:
Different things. I’m in a far country: I have little contact with the extended family: they have little contact with me and care less. We don’t attend all funerals: when we attend nobody cares what we think: they are all expected deaths: I’m not particularly sorry about the loss, neither are they.
But we do want to be told. Being told is not the same as doing something about it.
It actually happened to me just a couple weeks. A friend called to tell us that a man I used to know had died. I had been sort of friendly with him, mostly because his wife and mine were close friends. Then he got involved in a Nigerian scam (mail, pre-internet) and lost all his money, his house, eventually his wife and I lost all respect for him. So when he died, I didn’t want to know about it. They took him for several hundred thousand.
I found this out on face book first when my cousin asked my aunt if it was real and she called her sister the girls grandma …… (It was originally part of an MMP post)
"well yesterday was meh because a hot mess of a distant cousin/niece managed to finally get her self killed on the back of a stolen motorcycle at 100 mph as they were being chased by the police and hit a guard rail on a free way intersection a lot of people think they had probably went and did a drug deal
I think I met her all of 3 times when she was a kid …. left 3 kids behind who have issues of their own
The grimly amusing part is everyone who (rightly or wrongly) disowned her in the past 5 or more years for her sex and drugs lifestyle… wouldn’t take her kids when they were basically homeless ect is acting like she was preparing for sainthood and how she was their bests relative buddy ……
Family be crazy…… "
but if my aunt wasn’t close with that particular sister only way id of known about it is facebook….