May 11th, 2009
I keep writing and scrapping this post because it’s about my family and there’s privacy issues. So, I will keep it super short and non-detailed: this weekend past I attended a funeral where the deceased made it clear (by telling people and making his own arrangements, before his passing, with a funeral home) that he wanted a secular service. Certain family members went against his wishes and we were treated to half an hour of prayers and hymns. Which I wouldn’t care less about if it had been what my great uncle wanted. But it wasn’t. So it would have been meaningless to him, therefore it was meaningless to me, not to mention disrespectful, and I was pissed off.
Sure, funerals are for the survivors. After all, the deceased is, in fact, dead. But there’s a reason we call it paying respects: it’s respectful to give a final goodbye to the person who has gone, and doing it in the manner they would have wished is a part of it. He should have had a secular service in keeping with his wishes. Also, only one family member (the one who pushed through the changes) is religious. He was raised secular. All but one sibling is either an atheist or a totally non-participant theist (or so I assume – none of them ever mentions religion but based on their age I wouldn’t be suprised if there was some sort of unquestioned belief, mainly to do with culture rather than practice). There is no religious family tradition. This was the agenda of one person who said the only “proper” funeral is a religious one. How narrow minded and self absorbed and infuriating!
Husband has been apprised of my wishes and he’s definitely enough of a terrier that should I predecease him I know he’ll make sure I get the sort of service I would approve of: non-religious. After they take as many of my organs and other bits as are useful to other people, they should cremate the rest and after that I don’t care what happens to my remains. My funeral should be called a funeral and not a celebration of life, and there should be no religious talk unless it’s someone I actually personally know who happens to be religious and would like to offer a prayer or something like that – I consider that a very thoughtful and considerate offering of affection and comfort to the living, and am fine with that. But some paint-by-numbers religious ceremony from someone who never met me but feels qualified to speak about my spiritual life? No thanks. I have no doubt that I am going absolutely nowhere after my death – death is the end. Lots of talk about my soul and my afterlife is just silly and I would be scoffing at it if I could be present, which of course I won’t be because if you’re at my funeral it’s because I’m dead. But as long as those cognitive modules to do with me as a living agent are firing, it would be respectful to my memory to give me a secular service.
Aside: what is up with celebrations of life? Why are we not supposed to just face the terrible tragedy of loss and bloody well mourn it? Death is hard and it fucking hurts and that is the truth. We are already very insulated from death in this culture, and the only thing we really have left is the service. It is my firm belief that people need to be given permission to experience that loss and mourn in the presence of other people who loved the one who is gone – and calling it a celebration of life does not help the process. If you want to celebrate someone’s life, spend time with them when they are alive. After death is not the time to celebrate, it is the time to mourn.
Oh man, what a nightmare. Have you considered a letter to the editor or something like that, shaming such a disrespectful act? I’m sure the person acted in the spirit of love and kindness as they see it, but that’s precisely the problem – the casual assumption of universal religiosity. A letter to the editor explaining the insult (anonymously, of course) might help prevent it happening to others, or an obituary setting the record straight might make you feel better about the whole “paying respects” thing.
And yes, a ‘celebration of life’ has a kind of very dark humour about it. Almost ironic, in an Alanis-Morissette-not-at-all-ironic way. Totally about absolving the living of their guilt and regret for not having spent enough time with the deceased. A lesson for us all!
What purpose could possibly be served by doing that? If it is important to you, have a talk with the person who hijacked the ceremony and let them know how you feel about it. But, again, I have to ask what could be gained from doing so?
One of these days, BV, I’m going to have to tell you the story about my father’s ashes, and what a debacle that was. The whole thing made me very angry and frustrated, and for a moment I literally contemplated smacking a couple of heads together. But what would have been the point? Dad didn’t care, he’s dead. Survivors react in all sorts of fucked up and disfunctional ways, and the risk/reward ratio of diving headfirst into that is staggeringly high.
As for celebration of life…. the way I have been experiencing it, grief is kind of like a pendulum. At one end of it, you feel the sadness and loss, at the other end, you think about all of the things that you loved about the person that you’re going to miss. You smille a lot and laugh at the stories, but you do it with tears in your eyes. It’s very healing, in a weird way.
Yeah, I don’t know that publicly harassing my family is really a route I want to take. It was a shitty thing that was done but it can’t be undone, and I have to live with these people. My consolation is that my great uncle is dead and has no idea someone messed up his ceremony.
I am using venting as my strategy. Grouse grouse grouse.
Agreed – mourning is a complex process with a lot of mixed emotions. The warm loving feelings are easy to express though, or at least (so I believe) more often easier than the painful feelings (sadness, anger, etc). So I think there needs to be a special focus on facilitating the passage of at least some of the painful stuff, and if you can do it in a supportive group who feels roughly the same and therefore really *gets* it, I think that’s really healing. Or at least has the potential to be. I worry a lot about how our culture teaches us to suppress painful feelings. dunno, maybe i am getting my knickers in a twist for nothing!
Depending on the particulars, I think “celebrations of life” can be useful to those who are mourning, and respectful to those deceased. I’ve been to a few wakes, where mostly it was sharing memories of the deceased, having a few drinks with family and friends. If the person in question lived a noble life, what’s wrong with celebrating the life, instead of mourning the death? I would suggest that to die, is no great task. To live a good life, that leaves the world better than one found it, is worthy of celebration. Personally, when I go, I want all manner of weeping, wailing, sackcloth and ashes, however I think celebration can be appropriate sometimes.
As to your frustration with the religious hijacking, it certainly seems selfish, however I had a thought which might be useful in understanding the motives behind such a move. If the family member is particularly religious, and the deceased was not, this may be a coping mechanism for dealing with the belief that a beloved member of the family has been lost to the fires of Hell. Perhaps the religious elements are a way of “baptizing” the memory of the loved one. If this is the case, then perhaps a bit of understanding is in order. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be faced with the strong belief (within the bounds of my cosmological paradigm) that a loved one would be burning in Hell forever.
Either way, Condolences.
~I.
Wouldn’t a religious ceremony just emphasize the burning in hellishness? The minister even had to do some verbal soft shoe around the fact that my gret uncle never went to church and never professed belief, etc.
And no, I don’t feel much need to be “understanding” when ONE person made HUGE changes against the wishes of the deceased, pissing off the entire rest of the family. So it’s hard for her that he’s not religious? Tough shit lady. Your massive self absorption is tough for the rest of us. Oh yes and also the fact that our beloved relative is gone. You’re not the only one who’s hurting. It doesn’t give you permission to do whatever you want. Imagine if the rest of us did that! You’d have spent the funeral locked in the trunk of your car.