I love church funerals. They’re very joyful, in a somber way. The music and liturgy is usually great.
I went to funerals for both my grandparents recently, and they were pretty good but I was disappointed that they were held in a funeral home, with recorded music and an ad-hoc collection of eulogies and prayers. I want a big Episcopal funeral with everyone singing all eight stanzas of “For All the Saints.”
I just hope it’s cheap for the survivors when I go.
As far as attending funerals, I find them interesting and I prefer open caskets.
In the first cluster of questions, I said I’d want a low-key one, but that’s just what I’d suggest. If my survivors want to go all out for me, that’s their prerogative.
My family tends to view funerals much the same way as we do weddings: Sure, there’s someone specific that it’s for, but it’s mostly an excuse to get as much of the family as possible together to have a big party. And yes, we do party at funerals. We’re Irish.
I find the whole business to be macabre. The closest I’ve ever been to a funeral was when my deputy’s brother was killed in an avalanche. I showed up at the church, made sure he saw me, then got the hell out. I was overseas when both of my parents died and did not return for the services. I guess it’s up to whomever is left to do as they wish when I go, but it’s not coming out of my estate and I’ll make damn sure of that. Since you can’t just be left out on the back porch, I guess cremation is the least fuss and bother, but even that annoys me.
Since I’m the one quoted in the first post, I should explain why I said that.
I come from a large extended family, where people die young. By the time I was 13, I had attended 67 funerals of family and friends. I once asked why we don’t do family reunions, and the response was that we have several each year, we just call them funerals. If you ever find yourself in Auburn, GA, you can visit a graveyard that contains nothing but my relatives.
Needless to say, I’ve see the effect funerals have on people, and I’ve come to realize it isn’t the funeral per say that helps people, nor is it viewing the body. I’ve been to open casket funerals, closed casket funerals, funerals where there is no body, funerals where the body has been cremated. What does help is the gathering together as a family to remember the good times and bad that helps people. That can be accomplished at anyone’s house, or a park, or a church, or wherever.
It’d be much easier on the survivors if they only had to fork out $200 on food and drinks for a party remembering a person’s life with the body being donated to science, than it is to spend thousands, maybe even tens of thousands on a funeral where no one is ever comfortable.
There have been funerals since the last one I attended, and I didn’t go to them. Those I have missed include my father’s, 2 grandfathers, a grandmother, and a great great aunt. It has caused arguments with other family members, but I don’t feel the least bit guilty about it.
I didn’t read the thread, but I voted “holy hel…”
Your poll was poorly worded–choices were too biased relative to your descriptor in the title.
They’re a valid ritual. Not for me, I’ll be cremated. Might supply the funds for a raucus wake, but valid ritual for many. Why deny them something that comforts them in their time of grief.
If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know that seeing her body would have helped. I spent a very long time with my mom’s body, not to mention the many weeks watching her die, so her death was pretty damned concrete for me. And yet I still have dreams where she’s not really dead. The same is true of lots of people I knew who died, including my grandparents, who all died well over 20 years ago, and even my cats. I don’t think it necessarily means you haven’t come to terms with the reality of the person’s death, but simply that your sleeping brain still wants to visit with them now and then.
Personally, I’m in total agreement with this. I’ve made clear to my husband that my body should be donated, and beyond that, he can do whatever he needs to do. Knowing him, it will likely be a simple gathering at home like Mr. Accident describes. That said, I know that what many people “need to do” is spend thousands of dollars in order to feel that they are honoring the deceased appropriately.
I mean, I certainly wish people didn’t feel this way, that they have to spend heaps of money to convey love and respect. But it’s their money, and I’m not going to avoid the gathering together just because I feel it’s too lavish. I’ve been to a few ridiculously over-the-top weddings, too, but again, if it’s not my money, I can’t really complain. What’s important to me, in either case, is being present to show my support and share my feelings with those involved. That’s why I think it’s important to go to most funerals, including coworkers’. Even if the family doesn’t know me, it may mean something to them to see how many people cared about their loved one. And several comments in this thread have reinforced that idea for me.
I have, and will in the future, make great efforts to attend the funerals of those close to me. I also attend funerals of coworkers, their relatives, and professional contacts/immediate famliy members thereof. When a local judge’s son died a couple of years ago, every lawyer, judge, courthouse worker, etc. showed up at either the funeral or the wake.
I attend funerals of relatives, people I know well and even relatives of people I care about. I feel it’s important to pay one’s respects, even though I hate hate hate the whole ‘pickling and viewing’ ritual. If nothing else, it’s often a chance to see people I know from back in the day, but don’t regularly keep in touch with.
For myself, I don’t want any sort of fancy service, but I don’t think I’m in much danger of having one because I have only a few living relatives and not that many other people actually know me very well.
Put my ashes in a Folger’s can and scatter me by the railroad tracks; that’ll do fine.
I don’t believe in any kind of afterlife. In general, I consider funerals to be a “rite of passage” for friends and family. A semi-public way of dealing with the loss of a loved one. I think that there’s a lot of value in that kind of ritual.
This is why I’d want my funeral to be relatively cheap (since I don’t want my relations to get in debt).
As far as attending goes: I’ll attend if the deceased was a friend or if a good friend was very close to the deceased and would appreciate my being there.
ETA: I’d love to have a big drunken brawl the night before, and then set me on fire.
No. It simply won’t sink in with me that she’s dead. It seems flat-out irrational that she’s dead because there was no real cause of death, and she was never ill, and I never saw her body. I won’t go into detail on this, but the circumstances are that the one sister who saw her body doesn’t have this problem, but the rest of us do. Awake or asleep, there is part of me (and many of our other relatives) who cannot accept that it’s real.
My parents didn’t realize they were doing us all such a disservice when they had her cremated ASAP, but almost everyone agrees it was a huge mistake. We needed to see her to make it real.
I think it is very hard to convey what this is like to people who have never had a young, healthy, vibrant family member die for no discernible reason. It feels fake.
How timely. Tomorrow I will attend a funeral of a man I only met a few times. My best friend’s wife’s father. I am going out of respect and support for best friend, wife, and their child. I do know he was a good man.
I recall when I was maybe 15, an uncle died. We weren’t particularly close, but it was my dad’s brother, so I figured perhaps I should go out of a sense of familial responsibility. I asked my dad whether or not I should go to the funeral with him and y mom, and he told me “No. You don’t need to go. If you’re lucky, the only funeral you’ll need to attend is your own.”
I’m now 43. I still haven’t attended a ‘funeral’. There was a memorial service for another uncle, and a ‘celebration of life’ for an aunt and another for my father (one held at a local restaurant, the other at my brother’s house. There haven’t been any services of any sort for my wife’s father or grandmother yet; if there are I will attend whatever those may be.
I have no problem with the idea of funerals, and I understand how they may comfort many people. I just don’t personally have any desire to be part of them. I would attend a funeral for a relative or close friend if I thought it would be comforting to the friends and family of the deceased, though; as my mom says “funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living”.
As for me, I really don’t care what is done with my body after I die, as I’ll be completely finished with it. If my family wants to hold a funeral, then that’s up to them, but if it were up to me I’d rather they have a gathering to celebrate my life, rather than to mourn my death.
The point of a funeral is to remember and show respect for someone who has gone, as part of the grieving process. When they are shaped around this concept, I find them cathartic and beneficial.
But when they’re some irritating over-religious drudge or a hippie-fest of pseudo-mystical bullshit, they can fuck off.
The traditional funeral, of hymns, wearing black, and watching a coffin disappear into the ground or into a furnace, should be eliminated and replaced with a low key memorial event.
For me, they’re a waste of time. For some, they’re valid rituals.
I will go to any funeral that I can reasonable attend if my presence would mean something to a grieving family member or friend. Hell, I’ll even hold my tongue and forcefully not roll my eyes as the usual glurge is spewed forth.
That said, I refuse to make any “final requests” that would make any of my survivors feel bound to any particular set of actions. You wanna throw me a funeral? Sure, go for it. You wanna cremate me and dump the ashes somewhere? Cool. You wanna chop me into reasonably-sized pieces and toss me in a landfill? I don’t have a problem. You wanna give away every last piece of me that is useful to someone else? Actually, that’s about the only thing that I actually do want to happen.
So, let me re-phrase the last. My only “last requests” are: Make use of whatever you can, and don’t go to too much trouble or expense for whatever else you’d like to do.
**Waste of money, not time. **
I like the idea of a memorial service and have been to a few like like that. The rest of it is nothing more than expensive reverential garbage disposal. I’m not entirely certain what I’d like done with my body yet, but it won’t be expensive, that’s for certain.
I think American funeral customs are downright ghastly. Particularly loathsome is the expectation that the grieving widow will stand by the still-fresh body and receive all manner of visitors who form a line to come offer condolences to her and then view the body.
Gah. I’m having none of it.
When I die, I will be cremated. Immediately. There will be no viewing of my body. There will be no burial, graveside memorial, etc. In terms of an event so my friends & family can come grieve, there will be a very simple memorial service at my church. On a table will be some photographs of me and some mementos from my life (Cubs paraphernalia, a copy of my book, etc.). Anyone who has anything to say will be free to step up behind the podium and say it. I have these three songs picked out; I may have to narrow down the list to two for time’s sake.
After the ceremony, Mrs. Homie will have my ashes. She has strict instructions on where to place them. 1: A little bit at a little grove of trees behind the women’s dorm where I went to college, where I used to go to [del]ditch class[/del] study; 2: A little bit at Wrigley Field; 3: A little bit at Walt Disney World; and 4: The rest in the Atlantic Ocean.
When I kick, I’m hoping the organ will be donated to sick folks, the remainder to science, and the rest of the funeral budget spent on the wildest party my friends and family have ever thrown. Strippers. Jager shots. Weed so thick in the air folks in the next county are getting contact highs - and so on.
That’s why I like the funerals they have here. Just a body wrapped in shrouds, a stretcher and a hole in the ground. No embalming, no viewing, no coffins, no chapels - and the guests fill in the hole.
At my funeral, Elton John is going to sing a rewritten version of one of his classics and Michael Jackson’s Staples Center memorial service will look like a small-town church funeral by comparison.
Well not really, but I’d like to have a nice funeral (hopefully many years from now) if the funds are available to those around me.
I’m 20 now and I’ve attended five so far, and I find them to be a helpful way to work through the death of a loved one. Four out of those five funerals have been for people I wasn’t quite close enough to consider them a proper “loved one”, and in those cases, I’m there to show support for the people that did.