I’ve webcast a few funerals. It’s an odd thing to mention, but I feel that in each case, I accomplished something worthy that helped grieving people.
The first was my brother-in-law. He died after a battle with ALS. He was very close to one of his nieces, but she was serving in the Army in Germany, and the military doesn’t consider that a close enough relationship to let her attend the funeral. So I set a camera up at the back of the chapel and streamed the whole thing via Ustream.
The interesting thing is that Ustream saves webcasts by default, and the archived copy of the stream has been watched nearly 200 times. I suspect my sister was responsible for most of those viewings, and who can blame her? This is a recording of their family and friends talking about what a great guy the man she loved had been.
Another time was when a friend’s husband died of a stroke while he was back east working on a lobster boat. My friend and his family was here in the Midwest, and his mother was far too frail to travel to the big funeral here - so his mom and some of the rest of his family watched the webcast.
I wouldn’t mind. My family and friends are really scattered around and I’ve already told them no heroics in trying to get to it so --------- it makes a lot of sense. I know with some people I’ve lost and not made it to/seen the funeral/visitation there is this bit of unreality. Like “Hey - if I didn’t see it am I sure he’s gone” sort of thing.
I didn’t mention it, but as of yet, none of the services I’ve webcast have been open casket. I honestly don’t know if it will come up. So it’s not as if anyone was squicked by seeing a dead body. They have all been exclusively footage of people talking about the deceased, although in the case of my brother-in-law, I did shoot footage of the motorcycle funeral procession.
Two of the four that I’ve done are searchable via “person’s name memorial”, the other two are more private. And there is nothing on any of them that would prove embarrassing to anyone - unless you’re just one of those people who doesn’t want anyone to see them weeping.
I don’t have a problem. Personally, I’d just as soon avoid any fanfare or funeral, but I know that the people around me will want one. If a webcast helps them deal with the event, then I have nothing against.
It ought to be protected, like with a password though. It’s a fairly private event in my mind… even if it’s held in public, it’s meant to be a select group of family and friends. I would not want it available for just anyone who’s searching on my name.
Why do people always give this facile answer when the subject is funerals? Yes, we know you won’t care then. That’s obvious and universal and irrelevant. Would you say the same if the question was, “would you like your family put through a wood chipper, after you’re dead?” You won’t care any more about that, then, will you? But the question is not supposed to be about whether the dead care after they’re dead, because that is a stupid question.
Well… actually… I have said (since second grade) that dead people should be ground up and used as fertilizer, and I’m happy to be first.
My relations have always been horrified by that suggestion, so I tell them to do whatever they’d like, keeping in mind that fertilizer is still just fine for me. The funeral is for them.
My only real preference is that I don’t want a gravestone because I think they’re wasteful (both of money and of real estate). Even if they insisted on a giant mausoleum, I’m not really bothered by that, I’ll just be shaking my head and thinking of the houses, cars, college educations, etc. that the same money could have been used for.
Anyway, I do realize that this is not a mainstream opinion. Most people do care how they’re buried or how they’re honored. It might be a religious belief or just personal feelings. I think the SDMB is home to a higher percentage of people who don’t care… in a normal crowd of folks, we’re kind of rare.
It’s fine to not care what happens to your body after your death. Perfectly reasonable position.
My point is, it’s nonsense to say you don’t care because you will be dead. No shit: nobody cares about anything when they’re dead. But virtually everybody cares (now) about things that may happen after their deaths. It’s nihilistically selfish not to.
All of the ones I’ve done so far have been for family and friends. If I were to do this as a business, it definitely would be password protected, unless they chose otherwise.
There are funerals I wish I had webcast and recorded. One friend was bipolar and had committed suicide. I got there half an hour before it started, and was in the overflow room - the main room was completely packed. She was so popular that by the time it started, they literally could not allow one more person into the funeral home, not just fire code, but the door would not open to allow any more people in. If I had been set up to webcast and record the service, many more hundreds of people could have shared their grief.
I can’t answer for the others, but they might be seeing it from a perspective similar to the one I have. In other words, they don’t care now because they know that what happens after their death won’t really affect them anymore, it only affects the people around them. Answering that you don’t care because you’ll be dead is just a shorthand.
I wouldn’t mind, as long as whoever was doing the “filming” didn’t get in the way, and as long as there was a good reason for it.
In our congregation there is generally a ban on taking any kind of pictures during an actual service. But once in a great while, for special reasons, this is lifted.
