How close a relationship do you generally have before you go to a funeral?
How about the visiting hours at the funeral home?
There are so many permutations to this, I wouldn’t know where to start.
I’ve been to funerals for people I never met, like my boss’s wife and my husband’s ex-wife’s nephew. But I’ve skipped funerals for ex in-laws, even when I knew them fairly well.
I went to my parents’ friend’s funeral. Saw the viewing; wish I hadn’t.
I have also been to the funerals for a friend's father and another friend's mother. For the first, I skipped the viewing but went to the reception afterwards and also to the graveside service, as this was quite a close friend.
For the second one, I did the same except not the graveside bit; I had only met the deceased person once. Or maybe they had not arranged it that way; can’t remember.
I went to my uncle’s church service funeral and then back to his home for the reception.
My dad died last year but, thank goodness, had insisted on cremation and no service. He was very private. My mom said she could not have withstood a service so it was just as well. We had many, many visitors, letters, cards, flowers, etc. in the folks’ home.
In my cultural arena (Chicago Catholic semi-ethnic type), it’s typical to go to the funeral only for very close friends & relatives, or maybe the parent of a very, very close, best friend. The visitation, on the other hand, is often very crowded…I go for any of my friends or coworkers’ parents, or people who are friends of my parents who I knew for a long time, or neighbors who I don’t know well.
Drat. I meant to ask another question:
Under what circumstances would you travel to go to a funeral? (Travel requiring an overnight stay.)
I don’t think there’s a set of hard and fast rules for this question. Like the others, I’ve been to funerals/wakes of people I had never met and not attended family members that I knew fairly well. And traveling is in the same category…it depends. It’s a very personal decision that has a lot of variables.
Immediate family – grandparents, parents, siblings, children, grandchildren. (Damn. I hated even typing that. Jinx! Knock wood! Og forbid! Salt over shoulder!)
Exactly. I’ve been to funerals for close friends and family. I’ve been to those for people whom I’ve never even met. I’ve travelled across the country to attend the funeral of a friend’s mother because I wanted to support my friend.
I’m not sure what you mean by this.
It depends. Sometimes I’ll miss the funeral of a close relative, and make it to the funeral of a casual acquaintance. The deciding factor is how my appearance there will affect the people who were very close to the deceased.
I’ve been to two open casket viewings. Never again. I don’t need to see a dead body. I’m sure it will happen again, but it’s not what I want. If I can comfort the survivors though, I’d go.
Family of my own or in-laws, friends of mine, immediate family of my close friends, close friends of my parents if I also knew them (like people I knew growing up).
For the last two, it mostly depends on if I will have a “role.” I wouldn’t go out of town if it was the kind of relationship where I was traveling to attend the service or visitation, and that’s it. However, I would go if it was a friend who would want me sitting up with her the night before, or doing errands, or watching kids. My mom lost a close childhood friend recently, and I went because I didn’t want my mom to be alone (it gives her something to do if she can boss me around while doing errands).
If I’m not going out of town:
Wake plus funeral: all of the above, plus coworkers
Wake only: family of coworkers I know fairly well, neighbors, former teachers, friends of my parents whom I didn’t know well, extended family of my close friends.
Funerals are big social occasions here. I hate going to them and always avoid them if at all possible. But we’re always being invited to them. I’ve told my wife I do NOT want a funeral myself if I die first, just dispose of me somehow, but she insists that if she doesn’t hold one, that will be a major loss of face for her, so I’m just stuck.
My first indication of how social an occasion it is here came back in the 1980s. I was living up in the North, and this Thai I sort of knew – a friend of a friend, was often present at drinking sessions – told me his sister had just died of liver cancer and would I like to go to the funeral? I didn’t even know he HAD a sister. Didn’t really want to go but felt it would be rude to refuse, so off we went to a local temple where the body was being kept. We walked in, and it was a PARTY, and I mean all caps. Various games of chance were being played in different corners of the room. Alcohol was being imbibed in copious quantities. And there was the closed casket in a prominent place, festooned with Christmas lights. (They often use Christmas lights to decorate caskets, especially upcountry.) I was invited to participate in a weird card game that involved me putting my money down and then the other “mourners” inspecting my hand, declaring I lost and pocketing my money. After two hands, I decided to wander around and mix.
For my in-laws, their funerals lasted several days. Each day, a different one of my wife’s siblings would be the “sponsor,” and their entire workplace would show up. This is quite common. In fact, my mother-in-law’s funeral lasted months, literally. After the standard several-day ceremony, she was stored in a temple building (in a casket), and once a week we all had to go attend a little ceremony in which they would carry her casket out again. This lasted maybe three months before the cremation was finally held; I’m thinking 100 days. This may have been a Chinese practice – she remained a Chinese citizen her whole life – because I’ve never seen this done before or since, not even for my father-in-law.
Me, I just do not like funerals and always decline. I’m pretty old enough now that I can get away with this without showing disrespect. But my wife is constantly going to one funeral or another, usually some obscure relative of some friend or colleague, even ones she hasn’t seen for years.
I don’t see why it would be a loss of face for her. Surely honouring your wishes is paramount. I agree with you totally, Siam Sam.
I hate funerals and only go if I will cause hurt by staying away. I don’t like seeing children at funerals ever. For any reason. I would never go to an open casket. Ever. I was horrified by the exploitative methods used on the grieving family by the funeral parlour for my father-in-law with lines like “you want the best for him, don’t you?” and “surely he’s worth the extra for the brass handles?” and so on.
My father felt strongly that he should be remembered for living not dying, so there was to be no funeral and no grave. His death was a huge loss to me. All the family have made the same vow and ensured it is well known that is how we feel. I am not to have a funeral and my daughter has promised to honour that wish and do something nice for herself with the money it would have cost. Maybe buy something significant to remind her of what a fantastic mother I was!
I have never worked out this ‘closure’ bit I keep getting told about. I don’t want closure on my father’s life. He was such an inspirational influence, I want to go on being conscious of that every day forever.
Get the impression I don’t like funerals nor see any purpose for them other than the profits of funeral parlours?
I will go to a funeral under either of two circumstances: (1) where the person who died was important to me, or (2) where the family of the person who died is important to me. I will go to the visitation more for the family than for me. I will travel for any of the above.
I was once called by a former neighbor and asked to attend her ex-husband’s visiting hours in order to support her son, who was one of my circle of friends in high school 30 years ago. Now I barely knew her husband when we all lived on the same street, but she goes to my church, and even though her son and I haven’t kept in touch, I still consider him a friend, so I was glad to oblige. She also wanted to prepare me for seeing her daughter again for the first time in years…she’s anorexic, and was then at the “furry” stage of the disorder, where the body produces excess hair in an attempt to help maintain body temperature. It was a good thing to be prepared with that knowledge. So I called other old friends from the neighborhood, and we all showed up at the viewing to support our old friend, but none of us attended the funeral itself.
I think for many of us, the viewing/visitation/wake seems more of a way to support the grieving family, because that is your opportunity to actually spend time talking to them. The funeral is too structured to allow that personal time, but the reception afterwards is time enough for that. And you can’t always get time off work to attend the funeral of an aquaintance, but time allowances are built into most employment plans for the funerals of relatives.
If I feel a connection to the person or the family, I will make an effort to at least attend the viewing. If I personally feel grief for the deceased, I will make every effort to attend the funeral as well, because I need that for my grieving. I have attended funeral services for people I didn’t particularly like (for example, a mentally ill member of our church choir who used to single me out for a few of her ravings) because our minister asked us to attend. Without the attendance of the choir members, there would have been almost no one at the funeral, and that is just too depressing a thought, even for someone I didn’t care for.
family- cousins or closer.
colleagues at work- if I knew them well enough
If I knew the deceased well enough, visitation and funeral. If not, one or the other.
I guess I’ll go to one, when I die.
I tend to agree. I go only because it might distress the relatives of the deceased if I didn’t. I hate every minute of it. I will reiterate that I’m glad my dad wanted things handled privately.
This minus the traveling. Almost all of my relatives and close friends are local. Plus, most people find it acceptable to go to only the viewing of those they don’t know well, as a show of support to the family. Frequently people can’t get away from work easily for the funeral, so the viewing is more expected than the funeral in those cases.
If anyone wants or expects me to go, I’ll be there. I really don’t mind the event itself and always find them interesting. I furthermore prefer open caskets.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not glad someone’s died or that everyone is in pain. I cry. But I think they’re important and meaningful and I’m not afraid of them.
Did I ever tell you guys I want to be a mortician when I grow up?
The first funeral I ever went to was for my great-grandmother. I was four years old when she died. It was open casket (just like every funeral I’ve been to since then). My mother took me up to the casket to “say goodbye” and then made me give her a “goodbye kiss” :eek: :eek: :eek: !!! I’ve hated funerals ever since then. I was four and can still remember exactly what it felt like to kiss a dead woman on her forehead. Yet, to this day my mother doesn’t think there’s anything odd about what she did or why it would still bother me.