In the thread about things we refuse to do out of principle, one Doper said this:
This sentiment seems very odd and cold to me. While I agree that some aspects of the death industry are simply a callous exploiting of the vulnerable state that survivors are in, I don’t think that the basic idea of a funeral is itself bad; it seems a useful and often vital ritual for people going through the grieving process.
But that’s just me. I’d be interested in seeing what y’all think. A poll will be up shortly.
I’ll go to any funeral I can make it to, provided I think the grieving family will even notice my presence. I mean, if they don’t know I’m there, and I’m not grieving, why show up at all?
Anyway, the general rule is “funerals are for the living.”
I go to funerals for people I care about/respect or in support of people I care about/respect. I think it’s an important show of respect for the family and the memory of the deceased. Time and distance don’t make a difference to me. I’ve traveled great distances to be at the funeral of my friend’s father, for example. And for my sister’s FIL’s service. But that’s my feelings on the matter, and I think everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I don’t/wouldn’t go to a funeral simply because it’s “what’s done”, though. I don’t like false displays of compassion/concern. I don’t like people who go to funerals because it’s more important to be seen at the funeral than out of any genuine love for the deceased or their family.
For myself, I’ve made it clear that when I die that my family should have the kind of service they feel they need to have for them (not for me, as I will be dead!). I’ll try to have money to pay for it, but have made it clear that if I get to choose, then I choose cheap cheap cheap. There’s no need to pay big bucks for a casket. Don’t pay to have me embalmed before you cremate me unless the law requires it, for example. Frankly, if I could be wrapped in cloth and placed under a tree, that’s what I’d want. But if the family needs to have a marker, then they need to do what they feel is best for them. Funerals and gravesites aren’t for the dead, in my opinion. I’ve also told them that, even though I’m an athiest, if a Christian or religious service would provide them comfort (or vindication, I guess. Ha!), then by all means go ahead.
Time and money permitting, I’ll go to any funeral or memorial that I believe my presence would be a comfort to the survivors.
I’ll be dead, so I won’t have much say, but I’ll be happy for my family to have whatever ritual they find comforting. There’s an envelope in my desk with instructions about what I’d like, and an injunction to spend as little money as possible.
I don’t want a funeral but I want one hell of wake with a line of people to piss on my coffin and insure that I’m truly dead. As far as attending others I’ve passed on several for people I knew simply because I didn’t care they were dead or care about the people they left behind. I think the point is to do at least one of those if I can do it without wasting any more of my time then I have to that’s what I’ll do so I try to avoid funerals.
So** Skald**, have you made arrangements for your requiem Dopefest? That would be interesting, as all these pallid strangers appear in your town and raise their glasses to this ‘Skald’ character.
I’d go to a funeral of someone I knew, sure. It’s an important ritual of love, respect, and grief IMO.
Funeral services in my church are generally pretty low-key and not terribly fancy, so I’d go with that. When it comes to burial I’d prefer to be wrapped in a shroud and buried in one of those foresty places–I don’t really approve of the whole embalming/fancy coffin/concrete bunker in graveyard thing.
Funerals are a waste of time to me. I don’t find comfort or closure or whathaveyou. I didn’t have a funeral for my husband, have no desire for there to be one when I die, and generally I find the whole idea silly.
But, I will still go. I will do my best to comfort others. That I get nothing from it isn’t the point.
I will attend the funeral, memorial service or just the wake for anyone that I know and like whenever possible. From personal experience, it provided some comfort to me when my SO passed away and even more comfort to his dad.
My memorial “wake” is already outlined. My body won’t be present (donated for research), but hopefully, getting together with others to sing and play music, laugh, cry and tell stories will comfort those who survive me.
Funerals are for the living, not the dead. If my family wants/needs a service to remember me and/or to mark my passing…that’s great. I’m not going to be there.
I personally have asked my wife to have my remains cremated and the ashes spread in a couple of place I want and anywhere she wants. I absolutely abhor gravesites. The only graves I have visited are my grandparents, and only when the subsequent one passed away. Not very many people go and visit graves. I find cemetaries depressing.
The funerals for my mom and grandparents helped me. Having people come by and hug me (I am not usually the hugging type) and whisper to me how wonderful my family was and how loved they were helped me get through their deaths.
I remember one point during the visitation for my mama I was so amazed at how many friends she had. She was a quiet shy woman but she was loved by so many people I never even knew.
I would have preferred closed caskets though. I wish I didn’t have that vision as my last memory of my mom. They had so much make-up painted on her she looked like a clown. My mother hated make-up. I kept apologizing to people for how she looked. I was mostly out of my head at the time of course.
I will go to a funeral for family or family of a friend, but luckily I’ve only had to go to a half dozen in my life. They are sad but I do think they help many of us. It’s a bit of a waste of money but it’s no worse than the ridiculous weddings I’ve been to!
I thought funerals were stupid until my sister died. It was hard to have people telling me they were sorry, and hearing them share their memories of her, but in the end, I am glad I got to have that experience. It’s meaningful to me to know what kind of person she was, in parts of her life I was not privy to. I had no idea she was so giving to her friends and co-workers until after she died. Nobody talked about it before that.
I also used to think embalming/seeing the body was the height of gross. But I didn’t get to see my sister at all after she died, and now I understand why people need to see the dead body (though I still think embalming and makeup are gross). I live with the feeling that my sister is not really dead, because I didn’t see her. I just saw the box with her cremains. The last time I saw her, she was happy and healthy and alive. Even now, I have dreams that she isn’t really dead. My sister who saw her body is not plagued with these weird thoughts. A lot of people need to see the body to come to terms with the reality of the situation.
My late husband’s funeral was a comfort to me. I don’t like open caskets or embalming, so I didn’t have those, but since I was with him when he died, it felt plenty real to me.
I felt very loved, and that he was loved. I will always be grateful for that.
A lot of people get the wrong impression about what the purpose of a funeral is. We don’t have them for the dead person, we have them for their survivors. If you’re religious, they’re (hopefully) in a better place; if you’re not, then it doesn’t matter anyway. So the point is to get closure for yourself and to help those close to that person get the closure they need as well.
To that end, I will attend a funeral if I feel like I need closure, but that pretty much limits the funerals I would attend to extended family (grand parents, aunts/uncles, cousins) and friends. It might possibly extend to family of friends, if I felt somewhat close to them or I felt my presence would help them cope. I don’t really see the need for a relative I don’t really know well or a coworker or someone else I barely know.
I’ve only ever been to one funeral, which was my grandfather’s, as my other grandparents died either before I was born or when I was young enough that I didn’t attend them. Of course, the whole situation for me was compounded with my ex-fiancee having broken up with me in a most unpleasant way just a day before he died, so it was quite an overwhelming sequence of events. However, I felt like the funeral helped a lot because I had support there that helped me grieve my grandfather and get that mostly out of the way and done so that I could grieve that relationship on it’s own. I think if I hadn’t attended, recovering from that would have been much more difficult.
So, for what I’m going to vote, I don’t really care about my own service. Hopefully, my life insurance would cover it, but since it’s for my survivors, they can make it as extravagant or as low key as they think they need, so I guess the second option there. And, also, that I’d attend them for family and friends but not coworkers.
When my dad died, my mom wanted to see him before he was cremated. He was not embalmed and he was covered except for his face. So we got to see him.
Funerals definitely provide closure and the people who handled his cremation were not gold-diggers at all. They were quite respectful and weren’t trying to push mom into anything she didn’t want.
We didn’t do a big hoop-de-doo for him. Family spent time w/mom the day he was cremated and it was again, just family when his ashes were taken to the cemetery. It was really about closure for us, not anything for him.
We don’t have funerals in my family. Straight to the crematorium and done. Burial in a plot is optional to spreading on a favorite lake or ground. I just attended one that was probably moderate at $12K by current standards. It’s a generational, cultural, personal decision. Some family measure the funeral response and equate that with the person’s value and the friendship. I’m OK with a private party or church ceremony in memory with no remains. I attended a full military ceremony at a church and it was truly interesting with the bugle playing and flag folding in honor of a WWII vet.
PS. I just hope to go peacefully and have my friend spread my ashes in the park where I have run for pushing 50 years now. My instructions: Have fun with it and don’t shed a tear.