My grandfather died recently and I’ve been asked to do a reading at his funeral. He wasn’t a religious man, and requested a secular ceremony. My father is giving a personal eulogy, and I have been asked to give something more generic. I had initially thought of On Death from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, but I have a few misgivings - it’s a little long, a little deity-oriented, and a little portentous, so I’m looking for an alternative.
Does anyone know of anything that isn’t tremendously religious that might be appropriate? It needn’t be rabidly atheist - e.g. it may be derived from a religious text - but shouldn’t be overtly religious.
Ah yes, that’s my wife’s favourite poem - we have it framed on the wall.
He lived a very long life, and at 95 and very ill, it was properly time for him to shuffle off this coil, so I don’t think the tragedy of Funeral Blues is necessarily appropriate in this case. Thanks though!
Maybe just something about enjoying lilfe? Does it have to be a poem or a speech? Couldn’t you just tell a story about something you did with him, or something he enjoyed, or something he said?
Second, here’s Kurt Vonnegut (famous atheist) discussing his eulogy for (famous atheist) Isaac Asimov:
If you don’t want to do that, I would say just give a eulogy about things you’ll remember, miss, loved, liked, etc., about him, and don’t mention religion one way or the other.
I agree with this; your grandfather’s religion, or lack thereof, doesn’t need to be the centerpiece of the day. Focus on the other 95% of what made him unique, whatever that may have been.
I ain’t picking on you, Sampiro, but it seems that my OP isn’t conveying what I’m looking for - as in the following fragment is 180 degrees from what I’m looking for:
That’s the whole point: I’m asking for help with not mentioning religion while making a general, hopefully thought-provoking reading about dying.
See if I were a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim, they’ve all got big set texts to choose from. We atheists don’t have such a ready store of appropriate verses, and the catchment area is a little larger - I’m looking for some pointers in the right direction. The Auden would have been good if appropriate to the situation, or maybe something from Shakespeare, or some other poet, etc. Something that talks wisely about death but doesn’t bang on about heaven or god and so on.
Then perhaps a discussion of the history and mystery of the afterlife.
Here I’d seg into the preciousness of life, the cherishing of the non supernatural memories and essence fo the beloved. Perhaps close with a particularly poetic notion of the afterlife that you’d like to see filled. For my mother I used the following in a very rough draft of a eulogy I never delievered (or something like it, for I don’t have the original handy):
and would have closed with a playing of They Live in You from THE LION KING (which I played instead at her vistitation, sort of- imbeciles started the CD too early).
Anyway, all of the above is off the cuff (save for where I looked up exact quotes) and with no knowledge of your grandfather so feel free to totally disregard, but just a suggestion.
Couldn’t the eulogist simply relate what sort of person his grandfather was, including some of the family’s lore and funny stories?
But if you want something more formal and staid and yet poetic and life-affirming, I’d turn first to the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Somewhere – perhaps in the tomes of the Stoics, the Hedonists, or the humanist odes and epistles of Horace, or the contemplations of Marcus Aurelius – is a passage you can use.
I’ll do a bit of searching later this evening and post back, how’s that?
It’s always a nice thing for a eulogist to encourage the assembled to appreciate the beauty of their own lives, and the people around them. That needn’t be religious in nature, but it is not necessarily atheist, either. We all have our earthly lives in common.
I’ve never tracked down Bowles’ work for the source, but the following always resonated with me. From the Wikipedia page for Brandon Lee:
I heard this on NPR, and loved it so much, I ordered the transcript, so it could be used at my funeral (or non-funeral remembrance gathering, if my wishes reign).
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.
Perhaps not appropriate for the funeral of a 95 year old man, but I’ll mention it just because I like it: a scene from ZORBA THE GREEK.
If you’ve never seen the movie: Zorba (Anthony Quinn) has gone from being morose to a near frantic dancing, Greek folk and dirvish in one, finally collapsing exhausted and smiling onto the beach. His unnamed Boss has watched this, concerned for the old peasant’s sanity and health, and when Zorba gets his wind back he speaks for the first time of a personal tragedy (Boss knows almost nothing of Zorba’s life).
