I am Hindu and end-of-life rites (called antyeshti karma) are considered critically important, both for the passed soul and the relatives that continue to live. To the relatives it provides a sense of closure, and to the departed soul it is said to provide peace and a fund of good karma for a higher rebirth.
Hindu end-of-life karmas are religious (not social) events and are super-detailed and complex. They have to be done exactly right. A team of priests will be involved and the cost is often high. When my mother passed away recently, we had 13 days of rituals with strict restrictions about food and drink.
Hindus would even pay for the funeral of an unknown person, because it is considered a great merit to be able to do so. Does not happen very often, though.
So yes, I would expect my kin to provide me a proper, by-the-book funeral.
Closure, schmosure. But at the receptions after my grandparents’ funerals, I had fascinating conversations with people who had vastly different windows into the lives of the deceased than I did, heard great stories I’d have never heard otherwise…not to mention, after two of those funerals, being in their longtime homes that I’d been in so often, for one last time before they were sold off.
Funerals of people who’ve lived a long and full life are, IME, surprisingly lively and happy occasions, despite the sorrow. The tough ones are the funerals of people who died too young - and in those cases, that’s when those closest to the deceased really need the moral support of everyone else who knew them.
Either way, when people who matter to me die, I go to the funerals.
I go to what seems to me to be quite a bit of funerals. Mostly for people who lived long and happy lives. They aren’t awful, but I don’t care for them. The reminiscing afterwards is often more honest and enjoyable. The people I would go to a funeral for I enjoyed as much for their supposed “faults” as their virtues.
I’ve attended a couple of memorials/funerals for women cut down in the prime of life by illness and leaving pre-teen girls. The only reason to attend an event like this is if it in some way helps those young children bear their loss, and I honestly have no idea if paying respects makes it better or worse, but sympathetic pain I feel from these events is intense and lasting.
Since I want my remains to go to a med school after any usable parts are distributed, there won’t be a body in a casket, so a traditional funeral won’t work. If those I leave behind want to have a service or a party or just remember me in their own ways, that’s fine. I’ll be dead - they’ll be the ones who might want or need closure.
From previous threads my definition of funeral doesn’t seem to match that of some of the people here, my apologies for any lack of clarity. Theirs appears to require the body to be present and get buried, mine doesn’t.
I expect that there will be a funeral service, followed by the traditional triduo (representatives from the family attend High Mass for the three days following a funeral to make themselves available to people who weren’t able to present their respects at the funeral), with or without interment depending on the circumstances. If I die in Spain I expect that any reusable parts will be donated and the rest buried in the family grave; if abroad, instructions are to donate the body.
Doesn’t matter to me. My parents recently told me that they have arranged for their bodies to go to the local university. We just have to contact the relevant funeral director and away they go. They both insist on no ceremonies. I’ll probably wait until they die before contacting the funeral director though.
None for me. When I check out, they can harvest any parts the doctors deem usable then cremate the rest. The missus and/or Miss DrumBum are welcome to party as much as they want.
Two funeral experiences turned me off, permanently, from ever wanting any sort of visitation or formal memorial service.
The first was the death of a cousin. Not unexpected; she had been sick a long time. After the service in the old catholic church in the tiny town, my mother and I were waiting for the procession to leave to go to the graveyard. Mother could barely walk, and getting up and down the stairs of the old church was a trial, so we passed on the whole cemetery part of the service. While we waited, the local funeral director who was a friend of my father and is in the process of turning his mortuary business over to his sons, came and chatted with us. Sitting with us in the church pews, he went on and on about how heavy my cousin was and how he hoped nobody had been injured carrying her and her casket up and down those stairs. She probably weighed 180 lbs when she died. I was horrified that he talked so casually about how heavy my dead relative was to her family. I wondered if he’s always so casually indiscreet about the dead people he cares for.
Another was a woman I worked with, who died of a sudden heart attack. She was an attractive woman, about 50, and always took pride in her grooming. We never saw her without hair and makeup “just so”. At the funeral home where visitation took place, an unskilled or incompetent person had made a mess of her. She was barely recognizable. She looked like The Joker. She was in a bright red dress but had on fluorescent pink lipstick (clash!) and huge caterpillar fake eyelashes. I can’t even describe the hair. It was in a style she never wore, all swept up and around and piled in a huge mass on one shoulder. I shudder at the memory and I’m sure her family does, too.
Your sprinkle party had damn well better not be in front of MY foursome!
As for me, I want my family and friends to do whatever makes them comfortable. The wife knows that I personally don’t want any more money spent to dispose of me than absolutely necessary, but IMHO that ain’t my call. My wife feels the same, but if she goes first I’ll do whatever the family needs to help them grieve.
When my grandmother died in the early seventies, the funeral home didn’t even have a hair dresser. My mother went down to the funeral home the night before the funeral and shampooed and put up her mother’s hair for the last time.
I have to disagree with you. When my wife died, the funeral, though exhausting, was a good experience for me. People showing me that they cared mattered. Me getting up and telling everybody there, once again (like a wedding in reverse) that I loved her and why, mattered. Remembering that although her life was too short, at least it was filled with these people that created memories with her, mattered.
I’m an introvert, but it helped. It may be different from your experience (well, duh, it was) because after her first stroke two years ago, my wife withdrew quite a bit - she was very self-conscious - and I was afraid maybe she’d already become a footnote to many people. That people showed their love mattered.
Maybe people don’t get full ‘closure,’ if I understand what you mean by the term, but move asymptotically closer to it for the rest of their lives.
I am in my mid-40s and I have never been to a funeral. My grandparents all died when I was young, and they all lived across the country, so I was not a part of whatever was done for them when they passed away.
After my mother died, dad had an informal get-together with some of their friends, and we (I) spread her ashes into the ocean. When dad died, I had a friend ask me about ‘people coming from out of town for the funeral’. I said there was not going to be one (friend was shocked). I decided to spread his ashes at the same place where mom is. I suppose deciding not to do a funeral for him was partially because I had no clue how to organize one, or even what would occur at one. He never mentioned what he wanted done, anyway.
I do not want one for myself, either. I’d like my surviving family to have me cremated, and they can spread me someplace nice. If I can keep from going to a funeral for the duration, no need to make the first one I go to my own.
I didn’t say that you can’t appreciate a funeral. I’m saying that attempts to shame and cow people into having a funeral because otherwise their friends and relations are doomed to suffering a lack of closure is an inappropriate tactic with no scientific basis.
Choose a funeral or not because it what suits you and/or your culture. Don’t sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of a funeral with some idea that to do otherwise is some cruel deprivation for yourself or others or that it will lead to psychological trauma.
People heal, or get closer to it for the rest of their lives. Nothing closes. And the healing is definitely not an event.
That said, I sure hope there would be people who would want to gather and pay respects. It would be rather sad if there were not - though I guess I wouldn’t know.
ETA: As far as the body’s concerned, burn that damn thing! Proper embalming and a nice casket cost several thousand dollars more than anyone should spend. A nice memorial service is one thing, but do it cheap as you can.
That is not exactly true, the concept of closure has been studied extensively by psychologists. There is even a “closure scale”:
For those high on the scale a lack of closure could cause psychological trauma. For those low on the scale, not so much. I’ll bet I can guess where you fall
The need for cognitive closure is not the same thing. That need is tied to how much information you need when attempting to make decisions, or how uncomfortable you are in situations of ambiguity.
Whatever the people I leave behind need, though I’d like to think they’d limit it fairly strictly to what they actually* need*. I very much don’t want them to spend a bunch of time, energy, and money on stuff that isn’t actually going to make any of them feel any better just to keep nosy, pushy assholes from butting in to announce that they’re doing it wrong.
I’d like to donated to a medical school, but that’s something I don’t think my parents and grandparents could cope with, so it’s not going to be an option for a really long time. Barring that, I’d like to donate whatever’s usable and have the rest mulched or composted, or at least put into one of those “green” graveyards where they just wrap your unembalmed carcass in a sheet and chuck you straight into the ground. Again, I don’t think the older family could cope with that, so it’s not really a viable option right now. So if I die tomorrow, the plan is to donate whatever’s usable and have the rest cremated and scattered someplace.
I urge you to make your wishes known to family and friends. Don’t assume that they know if you have not told them or written down your wishes for a funeral, disposal of you body or organ donation. Especially organ donation. If you carry an organ donor card in your wallet or it is on your DL it will do no good if next of kin do not know about that. When you are unable to speak and dying in the hospital the staff needs to know about your desire to have your organs used by others in need before you die. The doctor will ask your family and they must give permission for organs to be used. Speak up and help others. My SO has a new heart because of a kind person and family.
This is so true for this issue, and so many others. Let people know what you want to happen to you after you die, explain to those getting inheritance why you divided things the way you did, etc. Don’t leave these things to the living to learn and explain without you there to help sort it out.
