My aunt was alone for the last three years of her live, up to 94 years old. She had almost no visitors, and was not able to go out by herself. I went there about every week, and was always the only visitor.
Then came the funeral, with well over 400 people there, and around 200 people at the coffee table after the funeral. And I was like: Where the hell were you guys the past three years? She was alone (after her husband died) and most of you never visited her since (and no they were not living far away or unable to visit).
^ this. Also, don't allow yourself to be put off by the idea that you don't know what to say or whatever. Just go. If you think it's hard for you it's doubly hard for the person who is dying and noone is visiting them because they don't know what to say.
My cousin was in hospital dying of cancer. I spoke to my mum and she said she wasn't sure what to say etc, so she ended up not going. I went. I said to him "hey this situation really sucks". We had a great conversation. He died. I'm really glad I went.
Fast forward a few years and my uncle (his dad) was in hospital dying of cancer. I spoke to my mum and she said she wasn't sure what to say etc. I said "you remember what happened last time. Just go." She went[1]. It was a good way to bring finality and say goodbye to her brother and she was really glad she went.
[1] I also went separately but that's slightly beside the point
I so heartily agree - when my brother was dying I was at a loss to know what to say - we didn't share a lot of history as he 'joined' the family later in life - but just chatting rubbish helped him hugely.
Later a friend was dying and when she could no longer talk, I'd head out for a walk and just describe what I could see, what my plans were, and great things I remembered from our past - I wasn't able to visit, but her parents said she really enjoyed the voice notes she got - almost as much as the visitors.
But if you can see people, just do it. Not long ago my mum decided to try and visit a whole heap of friends across England, just as she realised after my dad died, that she never knew the last time she'd see these people - and wanted it to be occasions they both enjoyed, before too much time had passed. I loved the idea.
This is something the Lutherans seem to have figured out, and shows up in the culture of Lutheran heavy areas like northern midwestern towns: you don’t even have to talk, and you definitely don’t have to talk about the death, or invite the believed to do so.
Just show up. Help out if you can (bring food).
If they want to talk they’ll talk. If they don’t they still had the option.
I watched Lars and the Real Girl with some people who grew up on the west coast. There’s a scene after a funeral where these two little old ladies come over, bring food, and just knit and occupy space, so he’s not alone. I said that’s the most midwestern thing I’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie. And it still pretty much is.
Yea I think it’s a very Christian thing actually, visiting the sick is one of the works of mercy and all Christians are called to perform them regularly.
I’m a Catholic and admittingly I fall short of it, perhaps I should take a page from our Lutheran brothers.. Thanks for sharing!
You don't need to say anything. Be present: listen; be curious and caring and compassionate and infinitely patient. Watch TV together; listen to music.
This is one of my biggest takeaways from reading Frank Ostaseski's book "The Five Invitations". He runs a hospice center and has lots of experience helping the dying and those around them. He talks about how being present is often what is most needed.
He also has a great talk with Sam Harris that's worth a listen.
Please don't cross into personal attack like this. These are sensitive, emotional topics. I'm sure you have good reason to feel the way you do, but so do the others, and blasting someone else for posting from a different point of view (let alone blasting their mother) is not ok here.
Edit: we've had to ask you this before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41803731. If you can't or don't want to respect the site guidelines, we're going to have to ban you, but I'd rather not do that, so it would be better if you'd please recalibrate.
You have zero context other than what they said. What about withholding judgement about things you know nothing about before saying people are bad? The full story is likely much more complex.
Yes. To start with my mum lives on her own since my dad died not long before this, has macular degeneration so is going blind, and seeing her brother required a trip of 8 hours or do each way. Not a trivial undertaking.
She also wasn’t seriously thinking about not going, just needed a bit of extra encouragement.
She had the same reaction to two different people dying. So either she has a complicated relationship with both the cousin and brother or she’s the problem.
I put my money on the mother because people do weak stuff like that all the time. Can’t get over a little awkwardness to do the right thing because people aren’t self aware and fragile.
I'm not taking the perspective of anyone here because there's hardly any information for me to do that. You're the one that has constructed this whole scenario in your mind based off very little from OP's post.
"Get over it" is rarely helpful in these types of situations because it ignores a lot of what we know about human psychology and how people make decisions. It's like telling someone who's depressed to "get over it"; it's not likely to help and often makes things worse.
>Please visit people when they are still alive. [...] Go to the funeral yes, but don't wait until.
Thank you for bringing this up. To add to that ... sometimes, circumstances (i.e. long distances) dictate that only 1 of those trips can be made and they may have to choose.
I had a family member with a terminal illness and a friend of the family from out of state decided to visit 2 months before the end to say goodbyes. They were elderly and on a fixed income so they could only budget the money for 1 trip. As a result, they had to skip the funeral. From my standpoint, they made the correct choice of prioritizing the conversation with a living person instead of attending a funeral.
One of my best memories of college: I was going to a tech school that was just down the street from the nursing home my grandpa was at. Most family were busy so my mom pressured me to go spend time with him. Initially I thought it would suck but after a few times, both the nursing staff and a few patients near my grandpa knew me, it was like getting a minor, second home right next to school. I would go to my classes, get my homework, then drive a few minutes down the road and spend hours there doing the homework, playing games, what have you.
I got so much time with him just before he passed. It was truly a blessing, even though he was already a huge part of my childhood, to get one last hurrah before I entered adulthood and he... well, took the next step.
I'm not a religious person, I don't honestly think there's an afterlife, and on this point my parents disagree. Maybe they would've made more time to visit him if they weren't sure he was going to a better place and they'd see him again.
I really don't think that's true. It's combination of a couple of things.
1. Life is busy, it's hard to find time, and easy to put off
2. They are anxious about what to say, and it really sucks going to places where people die.
3. There are a lot of people who show up to funerals because they are trying to support the friends and family of the deceased and don't really have any relationship with the deceased. My friends parents for instance. I don't really feel an obligation to visit my friends parent's I barely know, but would want to show up to the funeral to support my friends.
Indeed, anecdotally I think there's an epidemic of uncaring going on in the world right now. I think the hyper-connectivity of always-on internet-based and smartphone-based stuff just overwhelms our capacity to care, but that's purely a theory.
> I think there's an epidemic of uncaring going on in the world right now.
That’s like, your opinion man. You are in control of that. Such a negative view is a choice. You can focus on something positive instead.
Our connected world allows families to stay in touch with almost zero friction. I get multiple updates weekly on my nieces and nephews even though they live hundreds of miles away.
I have hundreds of photos and videos at my fingertips.
I only get two or three in person visits a year. Connectivity is our only way to maintain… connection.
> I think the hyper-connectivity of always-on internet-based and smartphone-based stuff just overwhelms our capacity to care, but that's purely a theory.
GP stated explicitly they have a theory about something that is causing people to behave differently. You can call that an opinion if you'd like. You can not believe the theory and instead blame that person's "choice," which is also "your opinion man." Your anecdote isn't very relevant to the theory in a thread full of people talking to the contrary.
Of course there are positives for being hyper connected. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be any negatives. Furthermore, choosing to ignore them won't make them magically go away.
There are big positives about having an abundance of food, but along with that we get type 2 diabetes and plenty of other health problems. Trying to understand the cause of these health problems does not mean one wishes to return to an era of widespread starvation and malnutrition. I suppose you have the same criticism for the doctors who began theorizing that an excess of carbs/sugar was causing problems? After all, plenty of people enjoy sugary desserts and lots of families get quality time together eating them around the dinner table. I don't see why those doctors had to choose to have such a negative view. Ignoring the problem would have been better, no?
> Of course there are positives for being hyper connected. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be any negatives. Furthermore, choosing to ignore them won't make them magically go away.
I agree with you that always on communication can be overwhelming. When that communication is negative it affects our emotions negatively. So why continue to add negativity? That’s the choice.
As a corollary, if a person you're responsible for "goes dark" socially (due to dementia, unable to go out anymore, moved to nursing home etc), do let their friendly social circle know (friends, neighbors) that the person would still be happy about visitors.
I've seen this with a relative with dementia - many people just weren't aware that she had no contact with them anymore due to this.
Reading the whole thing, I think the author would agree.
"Go to the funeral" isn't just about the funeral. It's a specific example of "if you have a chance to show up for someone, show up for them: even if (maybe _especially_ if) it's awkward or inconvenient".
1000x this. I was fortunate & got to spend the terminal 3mo of my father's life staying with him. He didn't want a funeral at all. His perspective, "If you can't visit me while I'm still alive & have time, then don't bother." Seeing his friends & family visit was touching.
> Where the hell were you guys the past three years?
Maybe they were there when you weren't there and they're asking the same question about you? Maybe your aunt never really thought to bring up that so-and-so had come to visit while you were there, so then as far as you know, nobody came to visit? Maybe they called, sure it's not the same as visiting but it's something.
It's true though, as humans we tend to not think about things and other people until they are gone. Don't be angry and upset, if anything, pity them for not having the time that you had.
Maybe the aunt was in a care facility where a record of visitors is kept, and so they know for sure how many visitors there were. Anyway regardless of the specifics of this situation, there are many others where far more people turn up for the funeral than did for the person in their later years.
Funerals are for the living, it's strengthening your friendships and relationships.
This is the point the article is trying to make. Parties and gatherings matter, don't confuse your birthday, Brit Milah or funeral being about you. It's selfish not have these ceremonies, they are about community and others.
It's a long road getting society more community focused again.
I had a friend who died young, I was young as well. I went to his funeral and there was an opportunity to speak about him and our memories of him. No one stood up to speak.
It was awful. I wanted to stand up and say he was a good friend, and to say I would miss him, but I didn't.
I've regretted that ever since - 30 years now, and I think about it frequently.
When my best friend from high school took his own life, necessitating that I travel to a county I hadn't been to in over a decade, when we gathered to remember him, I started things off by introducing myself as I would have liked to have thought he would have introduced me to everyone else present --- that seemed to afford a structure which bridged the gap between people I hadn't seen in decades (including his eldest niece whom I had not seen since she was a babe in arms) --- we went around the room with everyone declaring their connection and sharing some memories.
Funerals are an "odd custom"? What an entirely odd thing to say, I cannot imagine what you mean. Why is meditating on the passing of a friend, remembering their life and being present with the grief of their family "odd"??
As they are observed in the U.S., I'd argue they _are_ an odd custom, because it's so free-form.
I'm old enough that I've been to a number of funerals -- ranging from distant, much older family members when I was a kid, to funerals for an aunt not quite out of her 30s, a cousin not yet 20, and some friends or for family of my spouse.
A lot of the time the customs are _unclear_. The services vary a lot. There's a great deal of uncertainty around "what should I do?" Because we don't have a coherent funerary custom here. We have plenty of conflicting ideas and expectations around funerals.
So, on top of grief, you have the fear of "doing it wrong" and compounding someone's else's grief when you attend the funeral of a friend or family member. People have hurt feelings because friends and family members don't live up to their assumptions about what someone else should (or shouldn't) do at a funeral.
In some ways, it'd be comforting if it were more scripted and you knew exactly what you were expected to do, say, and so forth.
Note that custom for funerals comes from the local culture and customs of how previous funerals are run. So that it isn't to you is just a reflection on your culture, other people come from different cultures where such a thing is not normal and because it is not normal- for their culture - it harms their meditations which would be done in the way they have grown up doing.
As such I'm not making a statement of right and wrong for your culture, only that in OPs culture it is wrong and so asking for someone to speak like that was in fact wrong on the part of whoever asked. Whoever asked may well have come from a different culture where this behavior is normal and so made a mistake by not recognizing that they were in a different culture!
I guess we drew different conclusions. To me lack of optional participation doesn’t imply the offer was inappropriate. Calling this cultural requires a much narrower definition of culture than I would use.
I initially interpreted it to mean that expecting people to give impromptu speeches at funerals was an odd custom (that certainly doesn't happen where I live), but now I'm not so sure.
I have studied funeral design. One of the most inspiring funeral directors I interviewed (https://www.zenithvirago.com/) had a particular specialty for suicides. She was keen on ensuring the parents had a healthy and complete mourning process. This almost always involved insisting that they get up to speak at the funeral, to the point where she lends her body to help them stay standing through the process. At least by her own accounting, it has a profoundly positive effect on how the parents get through this grief that I can hardly imagine. It's an opportunity that doesn't return.
She teaches that when it comes to death and dying and supporting other going through the process, be present, neutral, kind, and courageous. It is hard and awkward to get up to speak. And no shame in not doing it, especially as a more distant connection. But also a lot of good can come from it as well.
It's okay to give yourself some reprieve. People are often not in their right mind when grieving.
It's that time of year when It's a Wonderful Life shows up on TV. Have you ever seen the scene in the boardroom just after Jimmy Stewart's character's father died and left him the Building & Loan business? If you look closely, he's wearing a black arm band. That used to be customary as a way to signaling to people "I'm grieving, so please forgive me if I'm not in my right mind. Take what I say and do with a grain of salt."
When I die, I would not want my friends to feel worse by regretting something they did or didn't do. I'm willing to bet your friend loved you enough to feel the same way.
From one stranger to another, this is such a nice comment. And I love this film, but never knew this arm band fact. Now I can't wait to notice it this year when we inevitably watch it. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
I get it. I didn't say anything at my grandfather's funeral, although I was this close. I just... didn't. Easier in that moment to stay seated for a few extra seconds, but it bothered me. Years later, at my grandmother's funeral, I spoke. Not long, but I said some of the things I'd wanted to say years earlier, though with the benefit of a bit more hindsight and perspective. But not speaking all those years earlier had bothered me. FWIW, it still does, but a little less than before.
I have a phobia of these type of scenarios. During my career I've never had a problem presenting or doing demos for large groups. I've presented to high ranking military officials, company zooms, etc. No problem.
Ask me to give a speech on the spot at my father's birthday party? I cower in fear. Same when my mother passed away. I wanted to say so many things, but I couldn't get over the anxiety. You're not alone.
I see it as a strong example of what happens often. We have an impulse from what I will call our authenticity and we decline and suppress it because of some sort of fear.
As I've learned to pay attention to this, I've found that it always leads to slight disconnection, and following instead tends to lead to more connection and aliveness.
Every time we avoid the alive impulse is a failure of sorts, but usually we don't notice it like in this story above.
This idea is also explored in The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute. Reading it was truly transformative for me. It makes a strong point that we experience self-betrayal whenever we choose to ignore our moral compass and how this can harm our relationships.
Interesting. Do you think this other thing might be related?
I usually supress emotions in order to perform, solve problems. I ignore all frustration, sadness, boredom and just focus or executing the steps to solve the current problem. Convinced that good performance is what leads to good quality of life.
It's like the kid who jumps and cries around the father saying "I want to play". The father ignores him and says "go away, don't bother me please, I'm working", thinking "what he really needs is a nice house, food and clothes, that's why I work".
But this has lead me to a pervasive state of unsatisfaction, even though I now have many shiny things to enjoy.
I think it’s related, but not in the way you’re implying:
He seems to view it as a personal failing that he didnt ignore the awkwardness to “solve the problem” of no one memorializing his friend and thinks about that inability to perform in the moment often, because he wants to be someone who can “rise to the occasion” in such moments.
You seem to have a different problem, eg a bad work-life balance or lack of meaningful duties to perform.
Authenticity is not a great guide for living. Psychopaths are authentic, but no one of sound mind would praise them for it. Our motives are not always pure and good, and our culture's feels-before-reals elevation of "authenticity" into a supreme virtue has been a source of much grief.
Now, having the courage to act according to what you know by prudence is the right and just thing to do is something else. Here, you are acting according to what is objectively good, and not only that, but what you know is objectively good. And yes, you could say that acting out of genuine courage does make a person feel more alive, as he isn't shrinking out of fear and cowardice. He is acting against the comfort of mediocrity, and as we all know, a little danger and risk does get the blood moving.
I have a 3.5 year old son and the thought HAS occurred to me- "if we never learned to 'behave' (i.e., conform to societal norms), would we all just continue to be little selfish dopamine monsters?" lol
You might say the foundation of polite society itself rests heavily on the shoulders of millions of weary parents with varying amounts of care and effort expended
It is difficult to explain nuance to little kids, so when they grow up, they need to review the rules. Hopefully not from the perspective of "rules are inconvenient", but rather "what was this rule actually trying to achieve, and how much that applies to this situation?".
In another thread, the_snooze wisely pointed out that "your actions are a reflection of your values"[1].
If you want to be a person who is part of a community, who cares for the people around them, and doesn't look at everything as a transaction, then you maybe go to a funeral even if you can't measure some benefit for yourself.
According to a Jerry Seinfeld bit, the fear of public speaking is the #1 fear. #2? Death. At a funeral, most people would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy!
You have nothing to regret. Eulogies are kind of a modern thing. It's one thing to have fond memories of someone, or to share them with others during a conversation at the wake or whatever, but a public speech that sums up a person is something like passing judgement on a person, and I would dread putting myself in that position as no one really has the authority to do that. (That's why Catholics do not traditionally eulogize at a funeral mass or a wake, as passing judgement on a person, as opposed to, say, judging certain facets of their actions, is something reserved for God alone, as only God could know the heart of a person. A proper Catholic funeral mass is, in fact, entirely focused on making a sacrificial offering for the soul of the departed; there is no presumption made about the fate of the deceased.)
My grandfather died a few years ago. By all accounts, he was opinionated, mean, and yelled at people a lot -- until a stroke humbled him.
When it was time to speak, nobody got up to say anything, until I did. I mentioned so many of us had negative feelings about him, and then recalled what good things he did for us. That ice broken, several of my cousins also stood up and spoke.
My uncle, who had arranged the funeral, closed it off by saying to everyone in the audience that if you wanted your own funeral to have more good stories, it was a good idea to patch relationships while still alive.
I think I would have regretted not standing up to speak. My grandfather did good and bad -- he invented the type of artificial voicebox given to people with throat cancer. He performed lifesaving surgeries on hundreds of people. He also yelled at his grandchildren during every dinner. He leered at my mother and aunts.
And yet, I would have regretted not going to his funeral, and not speaking.
I wanted to say that at my mom's funeral. "Her good parts deserved better than her bad parts". But I was crying a lot, and trying to act normal around extended family who hadn't seen me for several years and at least one gender ago, so I didn't want to say anything vaguely negative.
We must have gone to the same funeral and had the same friend. I regret not speaking up either to share a story I think about often which highlighted my friends better qualities. Maybe I'll make a post about him after thinking about it for a few more years.
You might want to call up his parents or siblings and tell them the story. I had a friend die young and whenever I remembered a story about him, I would make a note and call his dad next time the guy’s birthday came around. Actually I forgot his birthday so I just did his birth month but it really seemed to encourage his dad.
In my experience losing those close to me, you don’t regret the things you said instead you really regret the things you didn’t say. So don’t beat yourself up too bad it happens to all of us.
As a kid, I went to so many funerals, I remember I started somewhat liking it.
I grew up in Eastern Europe. My grandmother was a devoted christian with a lot of community work around church events. As a kid my parents would leave me often with her for the holidays. She took me with her to pretty much every funeral that was happening in the town, since she had to attend.
It sounds crazy but these events were large social gatherings, people bringing food, chatting. Often other kids would be there as well. Someone had died, but it wasn't necessarily a sad event. It was people being there for the deceased one and their relatives. There was also something like the "crying group" - that would be old ladies crying for the deceased one as an act of support of the relatives rather than expressing genuine feelings. The coffin would sometimes be placed on a trailer towed by a tractor to the graveyard. The "crying group" would hop onto the trailer and they would cry around the coffin. They were really good. I realize how strange this may sound, but it was just the way it was back then.
None of these funerals could prepare me for the loss of my 2 grandmothers. Still, without meaning it in a disrespectful way, death is an important part of our life-experience, and even as a kid, I'm thankful to have had seen it that often and in a non-violent way.
As I understand it, there are a number of cultures where funerals are somewhat celebrations, rather than sad moments. Of course, everyone is sad to lose a friend, but you can change your perspective a bit, you can make a big difference in how things feel
> In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
Wow. This part really resonated with me. I will try to keep this in mind.
I literally just copied and pasted that exact part into my notes. Something about "versus doing nothing" really hits hard. I can do more than nothing! And also, sometimes, I need grace and time.
This is a very Irish thing. Funerals in Ireland are always well-attended and going to a funeral - even of someone you don't know - is important in the community (see this recent news article, for example[0]). I notice the author's surname is Sullivan.
As my grandmother liked to repeat: "If you don't go to someone's funeral, they won't come to yours."
I was raised like this and find it heart warming to see funerals filled with wider community.
I did misjudge it once: I was living in a different country with two fellow Irish people and the relative of a good friend died. In Ireland it would have been expected that we attend the funeral, in this case we showed up and there were only six closest relatives there, and our presence just felt inappropriate. I now know your place at a funeral is about your place in a wider community. That often overlaps with being a connection-of-a-connection, but not always.
I refuse to believe for a second that your attendance was considered inappropriate; the person being burried at least would have surely been happy for you to be there and think of him or her.
Also, your intentions are to be commended regardless of what the relatives thought (it's not the relative's funeral, so they are not the yardstick).
No, different culture. That are many different cultures and OP made the common mistake of not understanding until it was too late that he was intruding on a different culture. Even though OP was in the wrong I cannot fault him for the mistake, there often is no way to know if you are not very close to the family what the correct culture is.
We had a similar issue. We ended up at a funeral for our daughter’s teacher (we brought the kids as she knew all of them), and somehow ended up in the family greeting line intended for close friends and family. It felt so intrusive and they were like “why are you here”.
The cherry on top was our youngest started getting restless during service and we had to leave early and we didn’t sit in the back.
I had only been to my parents funerals at this point, and never experienced a more formal religious service, but we were the worst in so many ways. I still regret it 10 years later.
Also it's weird as an Irish person to see people saying "the time came to speak, and nobody did". I've never been to a funeral that didn't have a eulogy. Someone always prepares a speech and delivers it
As I've said a couple different time, culture matters. There are many different cultures and they handle this differently. I've been to funerals where only the preacher talks, I've been to funerals where someone prepares a speech beforehand. I've been to funerals where opportunity is given for anyone to speak. This is just in my small area of life, as you go around the world cultures have many many different customs around death.
I can agree with this. Growing up in the UK, with an Irish mother, I was taken to funerals as a child that I really did not want to attend. Like the author I now always go the funeral, and have found it strange this attitude is not more pervasive.
About 25 years ago, a friend offered 'Prioritize things that only happen once in life' as an idea for helping me decide whether to go to my friend's wedding or an important work event. The wedding was great, and the idea has been useful in many other situations, none more so that funerals.
That's bad advice to always go to social events. I tried to follow it in order to expand my social circle, but I ended up staying in places that sucked, with people I didn't like. I try to dedicate some effort to tell whether I actually want to attend or not, and then follow through. I follow my gut, but never change my mind after making the decision.
Of course if the only offer you get is places who suck and people you don't like, it's a bummer. Although I don't think the OP meant that - going for going's sake. In a hypothetical situation when the place would be just okay and the people too, some people's brains (mine too) tend to say "meh don't bother, nothing stellar gonna happen anyway". That is the impulse we ought to fight: don't save yourself for exceptional events, but be surprised by the small pleasures in regular ones. And still avoid the bad ones, that goes without saying.
Conversely I went to one high school reunion I was feeling iffy about, had an okay time but was also completely happy just never going to anymore (and haven't).
But there's definitely some other effects in play there: revisiting people from your past who you've lost touch with is a pretty fraught experience, at least for me because ultimately the relationship is at best frozen in time from whenever you last talked: high school is particularly bad IMO, because it tends to feel like just trying not to be who you were a decade ago as everyone remembers you, rather then getting to be who you are now.
I've never been to a high school reunion, and I don't intend to go to any future ones.
But I went to a high school friend's 40th, and caught up with the people who were my good friends - and still are - and it was worth every penny just to hear their voices face to face for a few days.
My 10th reunion was kind of poorly put together and poorly attended. I almost didn't go to my 25th based on that experience.
But it was the complete opposite. There was a committee of four students that planned it, they set up a tour of the building with the new principal in the morning, they rented out a venue that had an almost prom-like feel to it, there was a memorial to four students that had died (three of which I wasn't even aware of, one of which was my friend that shot and killed himself while we were still in high school, so it was nice to see him remembered).
Tons of people were there (like at least 60 people), and I talked to people I barely talked to in high school because I was so shy (and realized my reputation seemed to be a bit higher than I had anticipated, I just thought I was the quiet weird kid), and I was able to remember and reconnect to some friendships I had mostly forgotten about in the years since, and see how these people had changed since up close instead of just some random posts on Facebook.
It was really great for the most part. Only downer was seeing how many people had kids and how old those children were (a few people were nearly empty nesters already), since I still don't have children yet.
The only regret I have in life (I'm in my mid-50s) is not attending the funeral of my friend's Mom. I didn't know her, so I figured I didn't have to go (I was in my early 20's, not that my age excuses anything). Another friend made me realize that I should've been there for my friend. After that, my friend moved away and things were never the same, no matter how hard I tried to keep in touch. Ever since, I always go to the wake/funeral.
Similar here. Good friend of many years - his mother passed a few years back, then his dad earlier this year. In both cases it was relatively sudden, but the compounding factor is I live 800 miles away. In both cases, I debated whether to go up for the funeral, but one case scheduling was near impossible. In the other... I rationalized that... he'd just be too busy with other family issues, and that was the case. I feel like I still should have gone, but we did catch up in person a couple months later, and he'd had time to process and reflect a bit more. Lots of drama was going on (and still is a bit) so being there in the moment might have been more about me trying to feel like I was doing something ("being there") instead of actually being of any real benefit for his family.
I've only got a couple of other friends that close that I would consider attending their parents' funeral. One parent passed away during covid and there was no service. When that other parent passes, I think I will go, even though we've not seen each other in years. Several states away, again, but I will plan on going.
I was going to add a top-level comment adding that there's a bit of nuance here between _the wake_ (calling hours, as the author puts it) and _the funeral_.
I actually have a similar regret about not attending the _funeral_ for a friend's mother, although I did attend the wake. In retrospect, I absolutely should have gone to the funeral but, at least in the US, the expectations around who should attend _the funeral_ vary between religions/backgrounds/etc. and it can sometimes be hard to tell what the most appropriate move is. This is especially true if you're no longer/not very close to the family in question. Some families want _the funeral_ to be a more intimate, private affair and will sometimes even mention that it will be in the announcement.
But, to your and the author's point, I think as a general rule, _going_ is the better bet.
You should go to the funeral if you think the right thing is to go to the funeral
You should do it for yourself, out of respect for the person who died and respect for the loved ones remaining. Not out of societal obligation
The corollary to that is there are plenty of times where the right thing is to not go to the funeral. If you lack those things.
There have been times I don’t go the funeral. Because the dead person was a horrible person. When people asked, I said exactly that and many times the response I got was “man I wish I had not gone”
>You should go to the funeral if you think the right thing is to go to the funeral. You should do it for yourself, out of respect for the person who died and respect for the loved ones remaining. Not out of societal obligation
In 2024 it would be quite better if we did more things out of societal obligation, instead of each individual placing themselves (and their whims) as the moral authority.
A world where people only do what they want or feel like doing is indeed a pretty depressing world, I know because that's exactly the world I am living in. The world I grew up on was very different, and I absolutely miss it - Christmas parties, lots of birthday parties, church events, school events, local neighbourhood events... you name it, there were lots of things to do and go to and you were expected to. I think half of the time I didn't really want to, but it didn't cross my mind to say I didn't want to go, and I think that was much, much better - today I barely go anywhere, but I know people also won't come if I call them :( it's just such a sad world.
These things still exist, but they sometimes take time to discover and even longer to gain a sense of belonging. I like to call them "tribes" but really it's just a community. Sometimes the intersection of your { interests + location } may not have a vibrant community which happens to contain members who readily welcome new people, and so it requires a bit more effort.
Some examples of communities I've been a part of over the years:
- Family
- Church groups
- Bar buddies (overlapping with the previous category :))
- Biker community
- Startup community
- Technology groups
- Queer communities
- Neighbor groups
It was a lot harder to get into groups when I used to be introverted, I distinctly remember how afraid I was. My startup was the thing that forced me way out of my comfort zone and led me to learn how to overcome my fears of joining groups full of unknown people. The "ah-ha" moment was when I realized many others had the same fears and insecurities as I did, and yet that's ok.
I recently had the occasion to visit the deathbed of a relative who died with much of his family deeply wounded by, and angry at, him. Had you known him, you might have called him a horrible person and not without some backing for that claim.
But I went because I felt a duty to my relatives that isn’t released just because they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain: he had indirectly given me life, even if he had done much ill besides. And moreover I felt an obligation to the office of the head of my family that transcended the particular man.
It would be a grim world in which comfort for the grieving is a service the deceased must have earned in advance, and we the comforters decide whether they have really earned it.
> There have been times I don’t go the funeral. Because the dead person was a horrible person.
The funeral is a ritual for the people who knew and loved the dead person. The question should really be about them, rather than the deceased who is dead and gone.
Slightly disagree, only in that the people who supported the horrible person should hear the terrible acts done.
Otherwise, yes. No comfort to those who comfort/enable abusers.
I hear this argument again and again, that the dead was despised thus the funeral should not be attended. Really folks, if all people you know are to be despised, then maybe the problem is not with them? Sure, there always is the occasional asshole, but it's not always the one in the coffin, so indeed then there might be times when we should just stay home for the better of everybody.
>You should go to the funeral if you think the right thing is to go to the funeral
More broadly, your actions are a reflection of your values. If there's a mismatch, then one of two things must be true: you fell short of your ideals and you should strive to do better in the future, or your stated values really aren't your values.
You aren't punishing the dead person by not going. Just punishing what friends and family he or she had, out of spite. Making enemies. I mean when you say "horrible person" you're not talking about Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot, you're just talking about someone you thought (rightly or wrongly) an asshole.
Now you've made yourself the asshole to other people. Not a great life strategy.
Societal obligation in this case is literally basic minor respect towards the remaining people. And frankly, the loneliness epidemic HN like to talk about is closely related to the ideology where the only thing that matters is yourself.
Assuming that your parents die separately, you being there will make it easier for the other parent still alive. The same goes for their relatives and friends attending the funeral. There's some comfort in seeing that the person was loved.
Remember, though, there are funerals where only one person attends. And publicly acknowledging one's loss - even if it only consists of going to a building with strangers and posting an obituary - can be one of the most important steps in processing grief for some people.
I went to a friends mothers funeral to support him and to pay my respects. However, his brother who had a fractious relationship with his siblings did not. I can't tell you how many relatives viewed his absence negatively.
If you're looking for personal value out of attending funerals, there's good evidence for psychological benefits to doing so. Grieving is hard. Humans are evolved to process negative emotions through complex rituals. Funerals are one of the most important rituals because death is extraordinarily traumatic and universal to all humans.
Funerals aren't about saying goodbye to corpses. They're collective, complex rituals that aid the grieving process.
It's not about looking at the body (in my area at least, funerals usually don't even display the body), it's about grieving and mourning. Or supporting other people who are going through grief and mourning, even if you don't feel it very strongly yourself. My mom died of cancer about a month after lockdown started in 2020 so we couldn't have any kind of service, but we had a "celebration of life" a year later. I'm glad that we did.
A yes, but it's odd to me that other people want me to be at a funeral with them.
If we have a great relationship, I can lend you money, share my house, get you a date, do some errands for you, take you to a party, listen to your thoughts and give you feedback. All valuable things I can do for you regardless of my funeral attendance. But just standing at a funeral? I don't see how is that valuable. Maybe for the chat, but we can have the chat anywhere else, like staring at the stars in a park, a superior setting.
And if we don't have a good relationship, well, then it doesn't matter what you want.
And do most do it because their emotions and values give them this urge, or is it that they want to fit their social circle or comply with their cultural norms? I dont know
Oh, no if someone asks me to come I undertsand that it's important for them. So, I'd go to support my friend, but I'd keep feeling like I'm wasting my time. Just as if a friend asked my be go to their Mormon baptism.
Wholeheartedly agree with both the nominal and underlying advice here.
Doing the right thing all the time is painful, tedious and can cost you. But doing the wrong thing will cost you too. Both compound.
The literal advice about going to the funeral is about showing up for people who meant something to you. There are only a few special times in your life when you get to see a large chunk of other people's important people:
* graduations
* coming of age ceremonies
* weddings
* funerals
Being there gives you a special chance to know the person better. Just do it.
I've tried, man. I'm deeply uncomfortable in social situations, and events with lots of wacky, nonsense traditions and rules that I don't understand makes things exponentially worse. Going to events like weddings and graduations makes me utterly miserable. I feel like shit for days before & afterwards, and I always regret going for months & years afterwards. I guess there's a chance someone there is glad I'm off being miserable in a corner, but I doubt it. So I've mostly stopped going to these things.
I'd love too but a crowd -even mostly loved ones- is for some the hardest way to engage with others. Last weddings I tried to attempt were disasters. Funerals are obviously easier as no/weirdly-interacting is accepted so at least there's less self esteem to loose. I feel the more confortable in one or one to one, three is already to much possible micro-ostracisms to deal with.
To end with a lighter note loosely related, a funny citation of the marshal Foch:
> "An assembly must have an odd number of members in order to make a decision, but three is already too many."
"other people's important people" is a very astute phrase - one has to see the value in that concept in order to understand the deceased's survivors that you think you already know. I've been to a few events where some folks were flabbergasted to discover different fresh aspects of the deceased - "what the...? He/she was tight with that crowd?!"
I wonder how many people have lived a secret side of their life and finally get outed at their funeral, to the shock of the people who only knew one side.
Larger message about doing the thing you really should do aside, ever since my parents dissuaded me from going to my grandfather's funeral (a man that I loved and respected but who's funeral came at an "inconvenient" time in my life) I have greatly regretted it. Not going burned itself into my mind and since that time I have never missed a funeral. Even for someone I only knew a little or hadn't seen in many years. If I had a connection with them, thought fondly of them, I make every effort to go. It just feels like the right thing to do.
Personal opinion: I find funerals to be a waste of time and money.
Especially, coming from a culture where they are a big event. People spend enormous money on funerals —- money that they wouldn’t help you with while you are alive and struggling.
Maybe attending one in a less flamboyant culture will change my mind.
But I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.
I shared your opinion until I attended my first funeral as an adult. They are very important for the grieving process, at least to me.
That doesn't mean much money needs to be spent, I've only been to scaled down funerals where there's a short ceremony and a meal afterwards.
Eh. For children of less than stellar parents, a funeral is:
- A bad person gets celebrated in a way that is not aligned to your understanding
- A bunch of people who don't know about the less than stellar bits offering what feels like performative grief
- Others who enabled the less than stellar bits angry their applecart has been upset, looking to lash out at a scapegoat.
Obviously not everyone has this negative experience, but narcissism is in about 6.2-7.7% of the population; other "dark traits" are also around in a long tail. So it's not unreasonable to expect around 12-15%? of people risk a potential increase to trauma at an already complex time of their lives.
The funeral industry is also very predatory. They know full well they have people in grief making decisions and they end up getting pressured into buying a casket that's just going to be buried in the ground in a few days, but they will be paying for for the next 10 years. That a family can come out of a funeral tens of thousands of dollars in debt is just absurd.
I feel much the same. I hope that when I die, the people around me will remember the many times that I have asked to have my body disposed of as quietly and cheaply as possible, and to not perform a funeral for me, and if they wish to use my death as an excuse to gather, to make the event as joyful as possible and as little about me as they can.
It probably depends on one's culture. In the Philippines, it's customary for funeral visitors to give a small donation to the bereaved family members (typically, around 20-40 USD). And since funerals are considered a big social event, it's not uncommon to hear of fmilies who were able to recoup (or pay off) their funeral expenses through the donations alone.
Big life events are always worth a visit if you get invited, and you always learn something from the mix of people who attend. Whether it's a funeral, wedding, baptism, and so on.
Does this person have friends from childhood? Do his friends come from the same place, or all sorts of places? Do they know each other, or does he have a lot of singletons there?
Who considers themselves close family? Second cousins? Or did their cousins not even come?
How well represented are various social classes?
I always find these things super interesting when I go to one of these.
I like seeing these on HN. Occasionally the hyper focus on tech makes me feel inhuman. Stories like these remind me not to forget how much else there is beyond my narrow world as a web dev.
I feel like the major life events always put our life span into a perspective that otherwise might be missed or overlooked. It makes life feel shorter than it is.
Btw, which post are you referring to? I am curious to read it as well.
A small but important suggested addition: if it's someone who's funeral you would go to, tell that person now what they mean to you. Then they can hear it while they are still alive.
It is not a given that you will have enough time to tell them later.
sometimes, not going to the funeral is the message to be said and saying it to them "now" is considered rude. clearly, the message of not attending is being said to others not to the person, but you get the gist
The person died, what message can you want to send to a dead person. He/She is dead. He can't hear it. But you can forgive and believe me, feel better about whatever happened that made you want to send a message that would never be received.
> what message can you want to send to a dead person
you ask me that after I said "clearly, the message of not attending is being said to others not to the person, but you get the gist"
so clearly, you didn't get the gist. not attending says something to the other friends/family that did attend. the knee jerk reaction is "what an asshole to not attend" typically followed by "I wonder what happened that would make them not attend". then the gossiping begins and the person sending the message smiles a wry smile
why do you keep referring to the dead person like that's the point of the not going? you're sending a message to those that do go by not going. the subject of the message is the deceased not the recipient.
I know several people who expressed a wish not to have a funeral. Sometimes this wish stems from a desire not to be an inconvenience, or a sense of guilt or shame that one's life was not well-lived. Sometimes, simply the view that funerals don't matter, so why bother.
In every case, I think this desire is mistaken. The need to mourn the dead is an instinct older than our species itself, and in dismissing it we wound the people closest to us.
If you're the sort of person to whom the idea of skipping your own funeral sounds tempting, I kindly ask you for the sake of your loved ones that you reconsider.
Yes, agreed. My dad said he didn't want a wake or funeral---I think he didn't want to put anyone out---but we overruled him, because the services weren't for him. Once he thought about that, he agreed (and gave some input on their planning, which was interesting). In the end it brought together a lot of people who hadn't seen each other in a very long time, which I appreciated, and I got to hear some stories I'd never heard before, which I also appreciated, and it made the whole process just feel a lot easier to deal with.
I (politely) disagree. My father did not wish a funeral, and, per his wishes, we did not hold one for him.
And honestly, standing at his gravesite paying my respects, I do not have the painful memories that I had with my mother's funeral, trying to organize, trying to handle everyone and everything, and not being able to grieve in the way that I wanted until long after. Instead, I am able to simply talk to him, and not have such a frustrating coda.
They say that funerals are for the living. Sure. But going to funerals of loved ones has never made me feel better in the long run compared to more private goodbyes, and I am not the only one to feel this way.
I am in this camp. I have been to the funerals of loved ones and once helped arrange one for a close family member. It was a very stressful affair.
But I also recognize that other people got more out of it than did I. They cried and hugged and shared memories. That experience I am assuming was very valuable to them. But not to me. I was stressed the entire time. The lesson I learned was that funerals are valuable to some while not others.
I don't think a significant number of people have ever written a will that actively prevented a funeral. A funeral doesn't require the deceased. It's fine to skip it.
I pretty much always go. The only time I missed a funeral was during the pandemic for one of my teachers, and my wife was due at any moment. His funeral was well attended.
For one particular funeral, it was for a childhood friend who I had lost touch with. One of the photos, in the rotation, was from a bus trip where I said, "hey, give me your camera." It was touching. His brother showed up at my mother's funeral a few years later.
Funerals aren't for the one who passed they're for the ones left behind. Be there for the ones left behind and remember you are one of the ones left behind.
A slight modification for my own philosophy: I always go to the wake/memorial.
The funeral (burial/internment) is usually for close family only. I will go, if it is appropriate, but usually, not. Sometimes, the funeral mass is more open than the actual burial.
I had a friend propose that we hire a woman and a child to stand a hundred yards away from the burial of a [male] friend, and leave before anyone can approach them, to add some mystery to the event.
A corollary of this is “Always visit when a baby is born.”
(In the first few months, if not at the hospital)
I have noticed my love and respect for my friends who never visited after our newborn declined significantly, and it has never been the same. Does anyone have a similar experience?
Well, if you don't see someone for over a span of a year then probably you're not too close anymore?
Then I'd assume that if 1 person had a really good reason not to be physically around for the first few months, you wouldn't think less of them if they make it up afterwards.
How much of this is due to them not visiting and how much is due to the change in dynamics though? Think it's conceivable them not wanting to see the baby early on or in the hospital might suggest a fairly critical divergence of interests
I seriously regret not seeing my aunt when she was dying, though I went to the funeral.
A memory ill never forget though is the time I went to a funeral for a childhood friends sister - it was extremely sad as you would expect, but her brother (my childhood friend) saw a big group of us there and he said "I cant believe it, everyone came out" and I could see he was really happy.
When the article said "do it for the family" it really hit me, and in hindsight its obvious - we were there for them, not the deceased, and it meant A LOT to them to see us there.
In my culture (Berber), each time any of your relatives gets sick, you also must visit him/her and bring something with you for him/her (usually nice food/fruits and/or money).
I declined to attend one of my grandfathers’ funerals. I did not consider him a good man and did not feel love for him while he was alive. I have never regretted it.
I think the naming varies. In the UK for example, the funeral typically indicates a religious thing and the wake is the reception thing you go from the funeral to .It's usually in a pub. There's usually bad food. You have a drink. You have a good conversation with all the people you haven't seen for ages. You remember your friend/family member/colleague whatever who is dead.
Oh interesting! My background is northeast US; the wake (a.k.a. calling hours) precedes the funeral, typically the evening prior. There's no food, it's not religious (held at the funeral home), and well-wishers stop by for the reasons you mentioned. There's a sign-up sheet for those who will be attending the funeral.
There is also a reception at a restaurant immediately after the funeral; this is almost strictly for close friends and family though.
Maybe (I was raised Catholic), but I also attended a wake of a teacher of mine who was Jewish (culturally if not religiously). Thinking more now, where I'm from (northeast US), "wake" and "calling hours" are synonymous, whereas they might not be in other parts of the world. So I may be perpetuating some confusion of terms.
Idk. Nobody ever invited me and I don't know anyone closely enough for even knowing if anyone in their family died. I'll be fifty soon, and, I have an impression that the only funeral I'll ever attend will be my own, if there even will be a funeral :|
> "Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
The best arrangement I've witnessed (for family friends from my hometown) was a private funeral for the close family members, followed 6 weeks later by a memorial service in a nice rented space with a slideshow going, drinks, and a general air of a big reunion.
The large amount of time between the two events was better for the family, who didn't feel the same sting of fresh grief. There was no awkwardness, either. Everyone could remember the deceased in a way that she would have appreciated - old memories, laughter, and positivity.
That was a beautiful piece. Well written, concise.
My grandmother was the only relative of that generation that lived in the same city when I was young — the only funeral I went to.
But as an adult, having my mother recently die, it was my turn to more or less head up the funeral. I too was touched by, in this case, relatives of my wife that showed up. They didn't know my mom from Adam but came anyway.
I agree with the article, and I find many of the comments here insightful. Relationships with some of my old school adversaries were healed when they attended my son's funeral.
I'm 30 and haven't been to 5 funerals. Not that many people that I know died, or at least not that I know of (maybe a primary school teacher did in the meantime but I'm not living in the same area anymore). Might going to so many be a village culture thing, where everyone knows everyone and so you know of a lot more deaths?
I think I'm the most sheltered person I've ever known. 1 funeral, mid-30s. I'm expecting 1 more regular one when my dad dies, then a horrible one when my brother dies, and then my cohort will be called.
In my country (the Philippines), it's not uncommon for people to bring their children with them to funerals. I've been to the wakes of almost every elderly family member. It was also a good opportunity, however morbid the circumstances, to connect with the rest of the extended family, even those people who I didn't realize---until then---were my relatives after all.
People don’t think about death enough. Be ready to go at any moment. Are you at work? Take a moment, and pretend your partner, mom, dad, or child’s last time speaking to you forever was the last time you chatted.
What comes to mind? Do you wish you had said/done something? Take action before it’s too late.
In my opinion, matters of respect and kindness are given more than due consideration at death and perhaps only then for most people. Sure, go to the funeral and pay your respect, show how much they meant to you, but perhaps, do it much before. Do it way before death is even a thing.
Coincidentally there is literally the novel "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton - published in 1905, it's an excellent late-Victorian/Gilded-Age period novel about the slow downfall of Lily Bart, a woman who was in New York's high society, then through a series of unfortunate events and social reproaches, descended into lonely poverty. It was quite influential at the time, portraying the materialism and shallowness of the moneyed crowd.
HN has never made me cry before, but here I am crying. This is really a wonderful article and discussion. Makes me appreciate this community even more.
It is crushingly disappointing to me how many of the comments here are about funerals. When the point of the article has nothing to do with funerals.
The thesis is this paragraph and I think it's quite striking and important
> "Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
We don't know for sure, but it is often said that the father wasn't dead in that story. That is the person in question was really saying "I don't want to tell my family what I'm doing, once they are gone I'll follow you". (timelines are not clear, but Jesus likely died a couple years latter so the opportunity to follow Jesus would have ended long before the parents died)
> By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals.
Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low?
They say your social cluster is 150 people, so you should be going to about 2 funerals every year (this ignores age-clustering, but that's counterbalanced by the fact that you often go to funerals slightly outside your cluster and the fact that the cluster changes over time).
My sister and I were talking about this recently (at a funeral in our family). We're in our 40s, and people older than us had largely been to a dozen funerals or more by their teenage years, while people younger than us often went to their first in their 20s or later (or perhaps when their own parents or grandparents died and to no others). We have not-entirely-negative memories of growing up going to funerals, because that's where we saw and caught up with extended family, so funerals are... well, not exactly easy, but they're not traumatic in their own right. For some of our slightly younger friends, though, even attending the wake and funeral in our family, they were having a harder time than we were. And almost none of our cousins brought their kids. For the author, six by 16 probably was a lot more than any of her friends, yes.
I was forbidden from going to my great-grandmother's funeral with my parents even though I was 11 and an extremely well-disciplined child. "We want you to remember her as she lived, not as she died" was the reason given at the time, but leaving me out of the event where people were remembering her as she lived didn't make sense to me.
When my grandfather died when I was 15, not only wasn't I allowed to go, but I had to stay home and watch my siblings as my parents traveled a thousand miles away for a week. We more than had the money for plane tickets. They just didn't want to bring us (youngest was 10, and also not troublesome).
For my other older relatives, they've all insisted on not having services, and I can't help but feel it's both an effect and a cause of the fact that my extended family is very disconnected and fragmentary.
Generally the number of your friends who have funerals is heavily biased towards the end of your life.
America's average lifespan is 77. When you're 16, your parents are perhaps 46, and their parents are maybe 76.
And a lot of people live for 10+ years after retirement, so your teachers might all be alive too.
If you've got a big extended family, or you're part of an organisation like a church where 16 year olds come are getting to know 70+ year olds, you might have gone to more than 6 funerals.
But generally? At 16 your parents, their friends, your aunts and uncles, your 16 year old friends, their parents? Good chance they're all still alive. Your grandparents - maybe, maybe not.
Your grandparents also have siblings, and your parents would drag you to those funerals. You should also have people of many different ages in your social group and some of them will die of old age (and once in a while someone young).
I was going to write this at the top level because I hadn't seen anyone make this point yet:
The thing that made me sad about this article is that it made me realize how lacking I am in community. My eldest child is six, and I can't think of more than a couple people who are likely to pass from natural causes by the time she is sixteen, who we are close enough with to definitely know about their funeral. And I have no idea how we would find out about the funerals of people we aren't so close to. It's not like there is a local paper with obituaries that we read...
Of course the elephant in the room is that when I was a kid, the coordinating organization for this was my family's church. Without having that community fixture, I find myself unsure how this sort of thing actually works.
I’m in my 40s and I’ve been to four, for each of my grandparents. That age clustering thing seems very important to me. For most of my life, my grandparents were the only people I knew well who were around that age.
Even now, there aren’t anywhere near 150 people whose funeral I’d attend.
Sounds within the right range to me. By that time I think I'd have been to five that I remember (a great-grandparent, a grandparent, an uncle, a great aunt, a school friend who was skittled on his morning paper-round). There may have been others that I was too young at the time to remember now.
For me, funerals and similar services are more for family and close (or at least close-ish) friends. My social cluster might number 150, but there are many in it for whom I'll pass on my regards & regrets from afar rather than attending a funeral or wake.
Are you attending 2 funerals every year, even averaged over a couple of decades to allow for clustering? I can think of one year when there were three, but that nowhere near makes up for the years when there were none or just one.
I'm not sure I'm quite hitting 2, but it's pretty close. I just sat down and made a list purely from memory, and got 1 per year since I started persisting memories. And I have to be forgetting some.
In fact, the actual number includes a significant decrease due to excluding "funerals I would've gone to if I didn't have a more important funeral to go to" and "people who moved away before they died". Thankfully in recent years remote recording is usually a thing in some form (live or not, video or just audio; the quality depends significantly on the funeral home).
Seems high to me. Similar to another commenter, I'm in my 30s and I think I've only been to 3 - both grandmothers and maybe a cousin. But I only remember one, and I don't remember which of them it was for.
For us it was only normal to go to funerals for family members, and my parents' generation is getting up there but still alive. So only your four grandparents are what you'd usually expect by that age.
I never even heard about deaths in friends' families unless it was a reason they were missing school.
>> By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals.
> Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low?
Not for someone who's young and mostly disconnected from their grandparents' generation. In my case, my family lived far away from pretty much all my relatives, which meant I'm not very close to any of them and going to a funeral meant lots of short-notice plane tickets.
I think I've only gone to two funerals in my life: one grandparent who died geographically close to use when I was a kid, and the father (who I never met) of a friend of mine.
I think it would have been better if it had been different, and I had gone to more funerals, because now my lack of exposure adds a whole extra layer of awkwardness onto dealing with death.
Even if I was close to my grandparents' generation, I only have four of them and that number doesn't increase over time. I don't think I know 16 * 2 = 32 people of my grandparents' generation, especially not now, way past my teenage years.
> Even if I was close to my grandparents' generation, I only have four of them and that number doesn't increase over time.
The scenario I was thinking of to get to more than "five or six" funerals by age 16, was to have "always go to the funeral" parents who took you to the funerals of grandparents and great aunts/uncles living nearby.
Honestly that seemed really high to me. I went to my first funeral at 41. I did go to a couple of viewings/wakes before that. I’m not religious, and I guess I just don’t know enough people who would invite me to a funeral.
I'm almost 60 and have only been to a handful of funerals. One or two as a kid for my grandparents who I don't even really remember, one in high school for a friend, and a few other relatives and friends on my wife's side of the family.
> I don’t want my last act on Earth to be inconveniencing people.
There’s no way around that. Death inconveniences the living. Your death will probably make a mess of some kind. Your dead body will have to be buried or cremated, or it will be an even bigger inconvenience. Your effects will have to be split up among the living in some way.
And if you find funerals to be an inconvenience, don’t go. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that everyone will be happier if you insist on no funeral. Many of us want to gather with everyone else who cared about the person who died, and it feels strange and wrong to be denied the opportunity. Funerals are for the living anyway. Let the living make their own decisions about what events they want to hold and attend.
> But that could be minimized. For example, by not taking precious square meters of Earth surface from the living.
I understand and even agree with the sentiment here, but to me “I don’t want to be buried” or “I don’t want a funeral” is micromanaging. I’ve expressed a preference for as little inconvenience to the people I love and as little damage to the Earth as possible. My children or whoever else survives me can make whatever decisions work for them. I don’t want my last act to be ordering them around. My dad, for example, had always planned to be buried, but when he was nearing death he suddenly said he wanted to be cremated, which was distressing to some of the family and was going to mean redoing a bunch of plans. When we asked him what was behind this sudden change of mind, it turned out he didn’t actually care one way or the other, he’d just recently found out cremation was less expensive and he was trying to save us money. Turns out it’s important to say what you really mean—“I love you and want to save you inconvenience and grief”—rather than “I don’t want a funeral” or “I don’t want to be buried” or whatever.
> That’s not inconvenience :)
Heh. You must not have been executor of anyone’s estate. It’s pretty inconvenient. All I can hope for is to have enough money that it’ll be worth it to whichever kid ends up doing it.
As part of my plan of not inconveniencing anyone, I already doled out kids' inheritance in cash and real estate, and will donate the rest. I also rented 100-years storage at forever.com, so nobody has to deal with my old photos, memorabilia etc. Everything else is a matter of 2 hours' work by a garbage disposal team. Executors can walk.
It frequently is. In fact, it tends to be a more difficult form of grieving in my opinion because now they are forced to throw away things that were yours because they know nobody else wants them. Your bedding, your old spice cabinet, the magazines you never threw out. All of those are more for your heirs to deal with emotionally and physically.
Why do you think it is an inconvenience for people to meet other people they know and/or like? You could see it as a last gift from you to bring them together.
It's not for you, and it's not for other people. It's just a thing. It's not an analogy about doing the right thing. It's just going to the funeral. That's what you should do, for lots of reasons. When you do it, you'll know why; maybe later, but you'll know.
Do the right thing even when you really don't want to is a valuable lesson, but I'm not sure I believe that the right thing to do is attend funerals for people who you were not actually close to. It feels extremely insincere.
It's not just whether you were close to the deceased; it's do you know the survivors. I've attended funerals where I never met the deceased but knew a survivor.
I've gone to the funeral of a community leader who I only met a couple of times, but the stories of their life and seeing how they had touched the people around them was inspiring and I hold those stories dearly and feel the loss of the community. Hardly insincere.
I have a few folks who I felt wronged me significantly in my life's travels, and they take a bit of rent-free space in my head every once in awhile.
I don't actively search for their obits or anything, but if I learned about a funeral, I'd make the time to visit, stand quietly, and reflect.
Probably not the healthiest thing, but not my unhealthiest quality either. At the moment it is only theoretical. But I can think of 3 or 4 I'm now likely to google up and see what they're up to and assess who is closer to the pine box. :)
> I have a few folks who I felt wronged me significantly in my life's travels, and they take a bit of rent-free space in my head every once in awhile.
Do you have grudge against those people, such that put effort into trying to undermine or defeat them? I feel the word "enemy" has connotations of a kind of direct, sustained opposition that just seems like it'd be really unusual (and unhealthy) in real life.
Reminded me of the famous quote by Twain:
"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
Losing relationships to death feels strangely not bad to me.
Losing relationships for other reasons that shouldn't happen, like fights, feels bad.
It's like eating a cake. You eat and at some point there will be no more cake, and you can rest content. But if the cake falls to the floor while you are eating, it's sad.
This sounds like you're only thinking of people who die very old.
When my 99yo grandmother died, it felt natural, like it was the time for such things. She'd eaten all her cake.
When my 29yo sister died, it was completely different, even though her death was also natural and did not involve suffering (sudden cardiac death, because invariably someone will ask). Sure, she'd had some cake, but it seemed like most of it was ahead of her, and the cake didn't fall to the floor, it just sat there, uneaten and uneatable, which feels both sad and wrong.
At least if there had been a fight, there would be hope for reconciliation, or even if that weren't possible, we could still be glad to hear good news about each other's life. (Rarely does so much hatred endure forever that you can't ever be glad when good things happen to somebody.)
I felt nothing, I different. I had a great relationship with him.
Seeing my non-reaction, my mum said : "you can cry".
So I thought: "oh, so I should cry now, that's the appropiate thing to do in these situations", then I started crying.
Sure, there's nothing special about that. Many people are too young to understand the finality of death when they first encounter it. Death becomes harder the older you get. When my grandmother died this year I felt a much heavy series of emotions than just sadness. It's the finality of it that gets you.
Be careful, or they'll lock you up. The appropriate reaction to death has been determined, and deviations are considered at best a form of mental illness, and at worst a form of terrorism.
The appropriate reaction is the wailing and gnashing of teeth, an enormous amount of discussion, imitating as closely as possible the dress and decor of previous death gatherings that you have references to, varnishing, buttressing, and putting makeup on the corpse so that it looks alive, then looking at it longingly. If you don't do this you're a psychopath.
I will not attend any more funerals, unless I get the church to stay out of it. The priests at the last events I attended to did not know the diseased. Even the wedding speeches I heard took place with nothing concrete on the people in questions.
As for mostly church funerals in my significant others or my family:
- Boring while overwhelming,
- a farce since everyone planning it is either fighting or not caring enough to start a fight,
- and not at all about dealing with death in a good way (grief, laughter, moving on. Something cultural should happen, but no one at the events ever found it. Only jealousy and nepotism were present if you heard any discussion about real values of having those funerals. And those came up behind closed doors.)
Please visit people when they are still alive.
My aunt was alone for the last three years of her live, up to 94 years old. She had almost no visitors, and was not able to go out by herself. I went there about every week, and was always the only visitor.
Then came the funeral, with well over 400 people there, and around 200 people at the coffee table after the funeral. And I was like: Where the hell were you guys the past three years? She was alone (after her husband died) and most of you never visited her since (and no they were not living far away or unable to visit).
Go to the funeral yes, but don't wait until.
^ this. Also, don't allow yourself to be put off by the idea that you don't know what to say or whatever. Just go. If you think it's hard for you it's doubly hard for the person who is dying and noone is visiting them because they don't know what to say.
My cousin was in hospital dying of cancer. I spoke to my mum and she said she wasn't sure what to say etc, so she ended up not going. I went. I said to him "hey this situation really sucks". We had a great conversation. He died. I'm really glad I went.
Fast forward a few years and my uncle (his dad) was in hospital dying of cancer. I spoke to my mum and she said she wasn't sure what to say etc. I said "you remember what happened last time. Just go." She went[1]. It was a good way to bring finality and say goodbye to her brother and she was really glad she went.
[1] I also went separately but that's slightly beside the point
I so heartily agree - when my brother was dying I was at a loss to know what to say - we didn't share a lot of history as he 'joined' the family later in life - but just chatting rubbish helped him hugely.
Later a friend was dying and when she could no longer talk, I'd head out for a walk and just describe what I could see, what my plans were, and great things I remembered from our past - I wasn't able to visit, but her parents said she really enjoyed the voice notes she got - almost as much as the visitors.
But if you can see people, just do it. Not long ago my mum decided to try and visit a whole heap of friends across England, just as she realised after my dad died, that she never knew the last time she'd see these people - and wanted it to be occasions they both enjoyed, before too much time had passed. I loved the idea.
This is something the Lutherans seem to have figured out, and shows up in the culture of Lutheran heavy areas like northern midwestern towns: you don’t even have to talk, and you definitely don’t have to talk about the death, or invite the believed to do so.
Just show up. Help out if you can (bring food).
If they want to talk they’ll talk. If they don’t they still had the option.
I watched Lars and the Real Girl with some people who grew up on the west coast. There’s a scene after a funeral where these two little old ladies come over, bring food, and just knit and occupy space, so he’s not alone. I said that’s the most midwestern thing I’ve ever seen in a Hollywood movie. And it still pretty much is.
Yea I think it’s a very Christian thing actually, visiting the sick is one of the works of mercy and all Christians are called to perform them regularly.
I’m a Catholic and admittingly I fall short of it, perhaps I should take a page from our Lutheran brothers.. Thanks for sharing!
I was thinking of that scene in Lars and the Real Girl as I was reading the first part of your comment. Such a phenomenal movie.
Reminds me of a few scenes from Reservation Dogs, which is a pretty good show if you’re ever looking for something to watch!
So much humanity in this. Thank you for sharing and for advocating.
You don't need to say anything. Be present: listen; be curious and caring and compassionate and infinitely patient. Watch TV together; listen to music.
This is one of my biggest takeaways from reading Frank Ostaseski's book "The Five Invitations". He runs a hospice center and has lots of experience helping the dying and those around them. He talks about how being present is often what is most needed.
He also has a great talk with Sam Harris that's worth a listen.
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Please don't cross into personal attack like this. These are sensitive, emotional topics. I'm sure you have good reason to feel the way you do, but so do the others, and blasting someone else for posting from a different point of view (let alone blasting their mother) is not ok here.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Edit: we've had to ask you this before - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41803731. If you can't or don't want to respect the site guidelines, we're going to have to ban you, but I'd rather not do that, so it would be better if you'd please recalibrate.
You have zero context other than what they said. What about withholding judgement about things you know nothing about before saying people are bad? The full story is likely much more complex.
Yes. To start with my mum lives on her own since my dad died not long before this, has macular degeneration so is going blind, and seeing her brother required a trip of 8 hours or do each way. Not a trivial undertaking.
She also wasn’t seriously thinking about not going, just needed a bit of extra encouragement.
She had the same reaction to two different people dying. So either she has a complicated relationship with both the cousin and brother or she’s the problem.
I put my money on the mother because people do weak stuff like that all the time. Can’t get over a little awkwardness to do the right thing because people aren’t self aware and fragile.
I think you could use a little more generosity in your very cold, uninformed interpretation of this person.
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I'm not taking the perspective of anyone here because there's hardly any information for me to do that. You're the one that has constructed this whole scenario in your mind based off very little from OP's post.
That's really harsh. Grief affects people in different ways. It can be overwhelming.
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"Get over it" is rarely helpful in these types of situations because it ignores a lot of what we know about human psychology and how people make decisions. It's like telling someone who's depressed to "get over it"; it's not likely to help and often makes things worse.
>Please visit people when they are still alive. [...] Go to the funeral yes, but don't wait until.
Thank you for bringing this up. To add to that ... sometimes, circumstances (i.e. long distances) dictate that only 1 of those trips can be made and they may have to choose.
I had a family member with a terminal illness and a friend of the family from out of state decided to visit 2 months before the end to say goodbyes. They were elderly and on a fixed income so they could only budget the money for 1 trip. As a result, they had to skip the funeral. From my standpoint, they made the correct choice of prioritizing the conversation with a living person instead of attending a funeral.
One of my best memories of college: I was going to a tech school that was just down the street from the nursing home my grandpa was at. Most family were busy so my mom pressured me to go spend time with him. Initially I thought it would suck but after a few times, both the nursing staff and a few patients near my grandpa knew me, it was like getting a minor, second home right next to school. I would go to my classes, get my homework, then drive a few minutes down the road and spend hours there doing the homework, playing games, what have you.
I got so much time with him just before he passed. It was truly a blessing, even though he was already a huge part of my childhood, to get one last hurrah before I entered adulthood and he... well, took the next step.
I'm not a religious person, I don't honestly think there's an afterlife, and on this point my parents disagree. Maybe they would've made more time to visit him if they weren't sure he was going to a better place and they'd see him again.
People didn't go to visit her while being alive because they genuinely didn't care about her, or didn't care enough to bother to visit.
They showed up in a funeral not because of her, but because they were afraid of what others would say about them if they didn't show up.
This is the sad reality of human behaviour in this day and age.
I really don't think that's true. It's combination of a couple of things.
1. Life is busy, it's hard to find time, and easy to put off 2. They are anxious about what to say, and it really sucks going to places where people die. 3. There are a lot of people who show up to funerals because they are trying to support the friends and family of the deceased and don't really have any relationship with the deceased. My friends parents for instance. I don't really feel an obligation to visit my friends parent's I barely know, but would want to show up to the funeral to support my friends.
Also 4. Visiting someone who is going to die soon reminds one of one's own vulnerability, so it's easier to put that off.
Indeed, anecdotally I think there's an epidemic of uncaring going on in the world right now. I think the hyper-connectivity of always-on internet-based and smartphone-based stuff just overwhelms our capacity to care, but that's purely a theory.
> I think there's an epidemic of uncaring going on in the world right now.
That’s like, your opinion man. You are in control of that. Such a negative view is a choice. You can focus on something positive instead.
Our connected world allows families to stay in touch with almost zero friction. I get multiple updates weekly on my nieces and nephews even though they live hundreds of miles away.
I have hundreds of photos and videos at my fingertips.
I only get two or three in person visits a year. Connectivity is our only way to maintain… connection.
> I think the hyper-connectivity of always-on internet-based and smartphone-based stuff just overwhelms our capacity to care, but that's purely a theory.
GP stated explicitly they have a theory about something that is causing people to behave differently. You can call that an opinion if you'd like. You can not believe the theory and instead blame that person's "choice," which is also "your opinion man." Your anecdote isn't very relevant to the theory in a thread full of people talking to the contrary.
> GP stated explicitly they have a theory about something that is causing people to behave differently.
Yes and I disagree that connectivity is inherently negative or even overwhelming.
> You can call that an opinion if you'd like.
This “theory” is totally unsubstantiated so is no more than an opinion.
> You can not believe the theory and instead blame that person's "choice," which is also "your opinion man."
Yes. That’s exactly what I did.
> Your anecdote isn't very relevant to the theory in a thread full of people talking to the contrary.
I don’t find the volume of an argument compelling.
Of course there are positives for being hyper connected. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be any negatives. Furthermore, choosing to ignore them won't make them magically go away.
There are big positives about having an abundance of food, but along with that we get type 2 diabetes and plenty of other health problems. Trying to understand the cause of these health problems does not mean one wishes to return to an era of widespread starvation and malnutrition. I suppose you have the same criticism for the doctors who began theorizing that an excess of carbs/sugar was causing problems? After all, plenty of people enjoy sugary desserts and lots of families get quality time together eating them around the dinner table. I don't see why those doctors had to choose to have such a negative view. Ignoring the problem would have been better, no?
> Of course there are positives for being hyper connected. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be any negatives. Furthermore, choosing to ignore them won't make them magically go away.
I agree with you that always on communication can be overwhelming. When that communication is negative it affects our emotions negatively. So why continue to add negativity? That’s the choice.
What is that based on? You don't know these people, many individuals with their own stories and needs and troubles and drives.
As a corollary, if a person you're responsible for "goes dark" socially (due to dementia, unable to go out anymore, moved to nursing home etc), do let their friendly social circle know (friends, neighbors) that the person would still be happy about visitors.
I've seen this with a relative with dementia - many people just weren't aware that she had no contact with them anymore due to this.
Reading the whole thing, I think the author would agree.
"Go to the funeral" isn't just about the funeral. It's a specific example of "if you have a chance to show up for someone, show up for them: even if (maybe _especially_ if) it's awkward or inconvenient".
> Reading the whole thing, I think the author would agree
Yes, I think so too.
1000x this. I was fortunate & got to spend the terminal 3mo of my father's life staying with him. He didn't want a funeral at all. His perspective, "If you can't visit me while I'm still alive & have time, then don't bother." Seeing his friends & family visit was touching.
> Where the hell were you guys the past three years?
Maybe they were there when you weren't there and they're asking the same question about you? Maybe your aunt never really thought to bring up that so-and-so had come to visit while you were there, so then as far as you know, nobody came to visit? Maybe they called, sure it's not the same as visiting but it's something.
It's true though, as humans we tend to not think about things and other people until they are gone. Don't be angry and upset, if anything, pity them for not having the time that you had.
> Maybe they were there when you weren't there and they're asking the same question about you?
No.
She complained about not seeing anyone. She had a clear mind and we talked a lot about her friends and family.
Maybe the aunt was in a care facility where a record of visitors is kept, and so they know for sure how many visitors there were. Anyway regardless of the specifics of this situation, there are many others where far more people turn up for the funeral than did for the person in their later years.
> Please visit people when they are still alive.
Funerals are for the living, it's strengthening your friendships and relationships.
This is the point the article is trying to make. Parties and gatherings matter, don't confuse your birthday, Brit Milah or funeral being about you. It's selfish not have these ceremonies, they are about community and others.
It's a long road getting society more community focused again.
Yes. I just found out that my favourite teacher from school passed away today.
I've been meaning to visit her for the past five years, but never got around to it - and now never will.
Also don't leave for later things you can do today.
I lost family members the day after having phone calls, or planning stuff to do together the upcoming weekend.
Leaving something to do later instead of now, that later might be too late.
I had a friend who died young, I was young as well. I went to his funeral and there was an opportunity to speak about him and our memories of him. No one stood up to speak.
It was awful. I wanted to stand up and say he was a good friend, and to say I would miss him, but I didn't.
I've regretted that ever since - 30 years now, and I think about it frequently.
When my best friend from high school took his own life, necessitating that I travel to a county I hadn't been to in over a decade, when we gathered to remember him, I started things off by introducing myself as I would have liked to have thought he would have introduced me to everyone else present --- that seemed to afford a structure which bridged the gap between people I hadn't seen in decades (including his eldest niece whom I had not seen since she was a babe in arms) --- we went around the room with everyone declaring their connection and sharing some memories.
But it's a somewhat odd custom no? Funerals. Probably no one stood up to talk because it felt awkward, as it is.
It's not like you hurt your friends feelings for not speaking up.
Funerals are an "odd custom"? What an entirely odd thing to say, I cannot imagine what you mean. Why is meditating on the passing of a friend, remembering their life and being present with the grief of their family "odd"??
As they are observed in the U.S., I'd argue they _are_ an odd custom, because it's so free-form.
I'm old enough that I've been to a number of funerals -- ranging from distant, much older family members when I was a kid, to funerals for an aunt not quite out of her 30s, a cousin not yet 20, and some friends or for family of my spouse.
A lot of the time the customs are _unclear_. The services vary a lot. There's a great deal of uncertainty around "what should I do?" Because we don't have a coherent funerary custom here. We have plenty of conflicting ideas and expectations around funerals.
So, on top of grief, you have the fear of "doing it wrong" and compounding someone's else's grief when you attend the funeral of a friend or family member. People have hurt feelings because friends and family members don't live up to their assumptions about what someone else should (or shouldn't) do at a funeral.
In some ways, it'd be comforting if it were more scripted and you knew exactly what you were expected to do, say, and so forth.
Speaking at a funeral like that is an odd custom.
Note that custom for funerals comes from the local culture and customs of how previous funerals are run. So that it isn't to you is just a reflection on your culture, other people come from different cultures where such a thing is not normal and because it is not normal- for their culture - it harms their meditations which would be done in the way they have grown up doing.
As such I'm not making a statement of right and wrong for your culture, only that in OPs culture it is wrong and so asking for someone to speak like that was in fact wrong on the part of whoever asked. Whoever asked may well have come from a different culture where this behavior is normal and so made a mistake by not recognizing that they were in a different culture!
> Speaking at a funeral like that is an odd custom.
According to you. I’d be surprised if such an opportunity wasn’t presented.
> As such I'm not making a statement of right and wrong for your culture,
Except to call it odd.
> only that in OPs culture it is wrong and so asking for someone to speak like that was in fact wrong on the part of whoever asked.
You brought up culture.
This was clearly a case of an open mic. Nobody was asking anyone to do anything. It’s an opportunity to do so if you wish.
> According to you
No, according to what happened in that instance. If this was normal in the culture of that family someone would have gone to the mic.
Do not confuse my culture with the culture in question.
> I’d be surprised if such an opportunity wasn’t presented.
Which is a reflection on your culture.
> Except to call it odd
Again, odd in terms of that one particular culture.
> This was clearly a case of an open mic
A case of open mic in a cultural situation where an open mic was not supposed to happen.
I guess we drew different conclusions. To me lack of optional participation doesn’t imply the offer was inappropriate. Calling this cultural requires a much narrower definition of culture than I would use.
I initially interpreted it to mean that expecting people to give impromptu speeches at funerals was an odd custom (that certainly doesn't happen where I live), but now I'm not so sure.
It is odd to only offer 5 seconds for people who are crying to organize their thoughts and speak
I have studied funeral design. One of the most inspiring funeral directors I interviewed (https://www.zenithvirago.com/) had a particular specialty for suicides. She was keen on ensuring the parents had a healthy and complete mourning process. This almost always involved insisting that they get up to speak at the funeral, to the point where she lends her body to help them stay standing through the process. At least by her own accounting, it has a profoundly positive effect on how the parents get through this grief that I can hardly imagine. It's an opportunity that doesn't return.
She teaches that when it comes to death and dying and supporting other going through the process, be present, neutral, kind, and courageous. It is hard and awkward to get up to speak. And no shame in not doing it, especially as a more distant connection. But also a lot of good can come from it as well.
It was my failure that hurt me, I think.
It's okay to give yourself some reprieve. People are often not in their right mind when grieving.
It's that time of year when It's a Wonderful Life shows up on TV. Have you ever seen the scene in the boardroom just after Jimmy Stewart's character's father died and left him the Building & Loan business? If you look closely, he's wearing a black arm band. That used to be customary as a way to signaling to people "I'm grieving, so please forgive me if I'm not in my right mind. Take what I say and do with a grain of salt."
When I die, I would not want my friends to feel worse by regretting something they did or didn't do. I'm willing to bet your friend loved you enough to feel the same way.
From one stranger to another, this is such a nice comment. And I love this film, but never knew this arm band fact. Now I can't wait to notice it this year when we inevitably watch it. Merry Christmas to you and your family.
I get it. I didn't say anything at my grandfather's funeral, although I was this close. I just... didn't. Easier in that moment to stay seated for a few extra seconds, but it bothered me. Years later, at my grandmother's funeral, I spoke. Not long, but I said some of the things I'd wanted to say years earlier, though with the benefit of a bit more hindsight and perspective. But not speaking all those years earlier had bothered me. FWIW, it still does, but a little less than before.
I have a phobia of these type of scenarios. During my career I've never had a problem presenting or doing demos for large groups. I've presented to high ranking military officials, company zooms, etc. No problem.
Ask me to give a speech on the spot at my father's birthday party? I cower in fear. Same when my mother passed away. I wanted to say so many things, but I couldn't get over the anxiety. You're not alone.
I don't get why it is a failure.
I see it as a strong example of what happens often. We have an impulse from what I will call our authenticity and we decline and suppress it because of some sort of fear. As I've learned to pay attention to this, I've found that it always leads to slight disconnection, and following instead tends to lead to more connection and aliveness.
Every time we avoid the alive impulse is a failure of sorts, but usually we don't notice it like in this story above.
This idea is also explored in The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute. Reading it was truly transformative for me. It makes a strong point that we experience self-betrayal whenever we choose to ignore our moral compass and how this can harm our relationships.
Interesting. Do you think this other thing might be related?
I usually supress emotions in order to perform, solve problems. I ignore all frustration, sadness, boredom and just focus or executing the steps to solve the current problem. Convinced that good performance is what leads to good quality of life.
It's like the kid who jumps and cries around the father saying "I want to play". The father ignores him and says "go away, don't bother me please, I'm working", thinking "what he really needs is a nice house, food and clothes, that's why I work".
But this has lead me to a pervasive state of unsatisfaction, even though I now have many shiny things to enjoy.
I think it’s related, but not in the way you’re implying:
He seems to view it as a personal failing that he didnt ignore the awkwardness to “solve the problem” of no one memorializing his friend and thinks about that inability to perform in the moment often, because he wants to be someone who can “rise to the occasion” in such moments.
You seem to have a different problem, eg a bad work-life balance or lack of meaningful duties to perform.
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Authenticity is not a great guide for living. Psychopaths are authentic, but no one of sound mind would praise them for it. Our motives are not always pure and good, and our culture's feels-before-reals elevation of "authenticity" into a supreme virtue has been a source of much grief.
Now, having the courage to act according to what you know by prudence is the right and just thing to do is something else. Here, you are acting according to what is objectively good, and not only that, but what you know is objectively good. And yes, you could say that acting out of genuine courage does make a person feel more alive, as he isn't shrinking out of fear and cowardice. He is acting against the comfort of mediocrity, and as we all know, a little danger and risk does get the blood moving.
"Fear-repressed authenticity" is something to gnaw on.
Like 80% of your authentic urges have to be repressed to, erm, live in a society. It's then hard to find a good point to stop doing that.
I have a 3.5 year old son and the thought HAS occurred to me- "if we never learned to 'behave' (i.e., conform to societal norms), would we all just continue to be little selfish dopamine monsters?" lol
You might say the foundation of polite society itself rests heavily on the shoulders of millions of weary parents with varying amounts of care and effort expended
It is difficult to explain nuance to little kids, so when they grow up, they need to review the rules. Hopefully not from the perspective of "rules are inconvenient", but rather "what was this rule actually trying to achieve, and how much that applies to this situation?".
In another thread, the_snooze wisely pointed out that "your actions are a reflection of your values"[1].
If you want to be a person who is part of a community, who cares for the people around them, and doesn't look at everything as a transaction, then you maybe go to a funeral even if you can't measure some benefit for yourself.
[1]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42436832
According to a Jerry Seinfeld bit, the fear of public speaking is the #1 fear. #2? Death. At a funeral, most people would rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy!
He delivers it better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6giVKp9ec
You have nothing to regret. Eulogies are kind of a modern thing. It's one thing to have fond memories of someone, or to share them with others during a conversation at the wake or whatever, but a public speech that sums up a person is something like passing judgement on a person, and I would dread putting myself in that position as no one really has the authority to do that. (That's why Catholics do not traditionally eulogize at a funeral mass or a wake, as passing judgement on a person, as opposed to, say, judging certain facets of their actions, is something reserved for God alone, as only God could know the heart of a person. A proper Catholic funeral mass is, in fact, entirely focused on making a sacrificial offering for the soul of the departed; there is no presumption made about the fate of the deceased.)
My grandfather died a few years ago. By all accounts, he was opinionated, mean, and yelled at people a lot -- until a stroke humbled him.
When it was time to speak, nobody got up to say anything, until I did. I mentioned so many of us had negative feelings about him, and then recalled what good things he did for us. That ice broken, several of my cousins also stood up and spoke.
My uncle, who had arranged the funeral, closed it off by saying to everyone in the audience that if you wanted your own funeral to have more good stories, it was a good idea to patch relationships while still alive.
I think I would have regretted not standing up to speak. My grandfather did good and bad -- he invented the type of artificial voicebox given to people with throat cancer. He performed lifesaving surgeries on hundreds of people. He also yelled at his grandchildren during every dinner. He leered at my mother and aunts.
And yet, I would have regretted not going to his funeral, and not speaking.
I wanted to say that at my mom's funeral. "Her good parts deserved better than her bad parts". But I was crying a lot, and trying to act normal around extended family who hadn't seen me for several years and at least one gender ago, so I didn't want to say anything vaguely negative.
Public speaking isn't for everyone. Especially at such a sensitive occasion.
We must have gone to the same funeral and had the same friend. I regret not speaking up either to share a story I think about often which highlighted my friends better qualities. Maybe I'll make a post about him after thinking about it for a few more years.
You might want to call up his parents or siblings and tell them the story. I had a friend die young and whenever I remembered a story about him, I would make a note and call his dad next time the guy’s birthday came around. Actually I forgot his birthday so I just did his birth month but it really seemed to encourage his dad.
In my experience losing those close to me, you don’t regret the things you said instead you really regret the things you didn’t say. So don’t beat yourself up too bad it happens to all of us.
Saying it won’t matter, it’s in your heart
As a kid, I went to so many funerals, I remember I started somewhat liking it.
I grew up in Eastern Europe. My grandmother was a devoted christian with a lot of community work around church events. As a kid my parents would leave me often with her for the holidays. She took me with her to pretty much every funeral that was happening in the town, since she had to attend.
It sounds crazy but these events were large social gatherings, people bringing food, chatting. Often other kids would be there as well. Someone had died, but it wasn't necessarily a sad event. It was people being there for the deceased one and their relatives. There was also something like the "crying group" - that would be old ladies crying for the deceased one as an act of support of the relatives rather than expressing genuine feelings. The coffin would sometimes be placed on a trailer towed by a tractor to the graveyard. The "crying group" would hop onto the trailer and they would cry around the coffin. They were really good. I realize how strange this may sound, but it was just the way it was back then.
None of these funerals could prepare me for the loss of my 2 grandmothers. Still, without meaning it in a disrespectful way, death is an important part of our life-experience, and even as a kid, I'm thankful to have had seen it that often and in a non-violent way.
As I understand it, there are a number of cultures where funerals are somewhat celebrations, rather than sad moments. Of course, everyone is sad to lose a friend, but you can change your perspective a bit, you can make a big difference in how things feel
> In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
Wow. This part really resonated with me. I will try to keep this in mind.
I literally just copied and pasted that exact part into my notes. Something about "versus doing nothing" really hits hard. I can do more than nothing! And also, sometimes, I need grace and time.
This is a very Irish thing. Funerals in Ireland are always well-attended and going to a funeral - even of someone you don't know - is important in the community (see this recent news article, for example[0]). I notice the author's surname is Sullivan.
As my grandmother liked to repeat: "If you don't go to someone's funeral, they won't come to yours."
[0] https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/crowd-shows-up-to-funera...)
I was raised like this and find it heart warming to see funerals filled with wider community.
I did misjudge it once: I was living in a different country with two fellow Irish people and the relative of a good friend died. In Ireland it would have been expected that we attend the funeral, in this case we showed up and there were only six closest relatives there, and our presence just felt inappropriate. I now know your place at a funeral is about your place in a wider community. That often overlaps with being a connection-of-a-connection, but not always.
I refuse to believe for a second that your attendance was considered inappropriate; the person being burried at least would have surely been happy for you to be there and think of him or her.
Also, your intentions are to be commended regardless of what the relatives thought (it's not the relative's funeral, so they are not the yardstick).
No, different culture. That are many different cultures and OP made the common mistake of not understanding until it was too late that he was intruding on a different culture. Even though OP was in the wrong I cannot fault him for the mistake, there often is no way to know if you are not very close to the family what the correct culture is.
We had a similar issue. We ended up at a funeral for our daughter’s teacher (we brought the kids as she knew all of them), and somehow ended up in the family greeting line intended for close friends and family. It felt so intrusive and they were like “why are you here”.
The cherry on top was our youngest started getting restless during service and we had to leave early and we didn’t sit in the back.
I had only been to my parents funerals at this point, and never experienced a more formal religious service, but we were the worst in so many ways. I still regret it 10 years later.
To ask "why are you here?" suggests these people were poorly raised or just plain rude.
Attendees of a funeral make an effort to pay their respects to the deceased and to express their condolences to the family left behind.
If I understand correctly I think they and ended up in the line of folks being given condolences as if they were close family.
Sounds extremely awkward and like a plot Michael Scott would get himself wrapped into.
There are much gentler ways to point out the mishap and correct it but a funeral is not likely to have people on their best manners.
I mean those weren’t the exact words. They were very gracious, but it was clear we had goofed and intruded.
Also it's weird as an Irish person to see people saying "the time came to speak, and nobody did". I've never been to a funeral that didn't have a eulogy. Someone always prepares a speech and delivers it
A formal eulogy is a different part from when they ask if anyone from the audience wants to get and share a few words about the departed.
As I've said a couple different time, culture matters. There are many different cultures and they handle this differently. I've been to funerals where only the preacher talks, I've been to funerals where someone prepares a speech beforehand. I've been to funerals where opportunity is given for anyone to speak. This is just in my small area of life, as you go around the world cultures have many many different customs around death.
More than once a bar stranger has said “I thought this was a wedding party” at my family Irish Wakes.
I can agree with this. Growing up in the UK, with an Irish mother, I was taken to funerals as a child that I really did not want to attend. Like the author I now always go the funeral, and have found it strange this attitude is not more pervasive.
Ah now I understand why it was a lot of fun at Finnegan's wake!
It’s also a matter of regret minimization.
9+ times out of 10 when I’m on the fence about going to a major life event and go, I’m glad I did. Can’t think of the last thing I regretted going to.
I’ve certainly missed some like graduations I regret not making it to.
Funerals are towards the top of the list of big life events and I’ve never regretted one.
About 25 years ago, a friend offered 'Prioritize things that only happen once in life' as an idea for helping me decide whether to go to my friend's wedding or an important work event. The wedding was great, and the idea has been useful in many other situations, none more so that funerals.
Same with social events. All my life, I always get this last second resistance to going, yet I'm always glad I went.
The reasons my brain comes up with for why I shouldn't go are just lies.
Just go. And take what you can get while the opportunities are still coming.
That last-second resistance is so real. It’s like your brain becomes a master negotiator for staying home
That's bad advice to always go to social events. I tried to follow it in order to expand my social circle, but I ended up staying in places that sucked, with people I didn't like. I try to dedicate some effort to tell whether I actually want to attend or not, and then follow through. I follow my gut, but never change my mind after making the decision.
Of course if the only offer you get is places who suck and people you don't like, it's a bummer. Although I don't think the OP meant that - going for going's sake. In a hypothetical situation when the place would be just okay and the people too, some people's brains (mine too) tend to say "meh don't bother, nothing stellar gonna happen anyway". That is the impulse we ought to fight: don't save yourself for exceptional events, but be surprised by the small pleasures in regular ones. And still avoid the bad ones, that goes without saying.
I don’t think that’s a counterpoint. That’s just the reality of taking a chance in life. Just go.
It’s like saying it’s bad advice to approach women because of some bad experiences you had. Meanwhile the next woman you meet might be your wife.
Conversely I went to one high school reunion I was feeling iffy about, had an okay time but was also completely happy just never going to anymore (and haven't).
But there's definitely some other effects in play there: revisiting people from your past who you've lost touch with is a pretty fraught experience, at least for me because ultimately the relationship is at best frozen in time from whenever you last talked: high school is particularly bad IMO, because it tends to feel like just trying not to be who you were a decade ago as everyone remembers you, rather then getting to be who you are now.
I've never been to a high school reunion, and I don't intend to go to any future ones.
But I went to a high school friend's 40th, and caught up with the people who were my good friends - and still are - and it was worth every penny just to hear their voices face to face for a few days.
Agreed, I think a reunion differs in that its an impersonal gathering compared to coming of age, weddings, funerals, etc.
My 10th reunion was kind of poorly put together and poorly attended. I almost didn't go to my 25th based on that experience.
But it was the complete opposite. There was a committee of four students that planned it, they set up a tour of the building with the new principal in the morning, they rented out a venue that had an almost prom-like feel to it, there was a memorial to four students that had died (three of which I wasn't even aware of, one of which was my friend that shot and killed himself while we were still in high school, so it was nice to see him remembered).
Tons of people were there (like at least 60 people), and I talked to people I barely talked to in high school because I was so shy (and realized my reputation seemed to be a bit higher than I had anticipated, I just thought I was the quiet weird kid), and I was able to remember and reconnect to some friendships I had mostly forgotten about in the years since, and see how these people had changed since up close instead of just some random posts on Facebook.
It was really great for the most part. Only downer was seeing how many people had kids and how old those children were (a few people were nearly empty nesters already), since I still don't have children yet.
The cost of showing up is usually small but the cost of not showing up can linger forever.
The only regret I have in life (I'm in my mid-50s) is not attending the funeral of my friend's Mom. I didn't know her, so I figured I didn't have to go (I was in my early 20's, not that my age excuses anything). Another friend made me realize that I should've been there for my friend. After that, my friend moved away and things were never the same, no matter how hard I tried to keep in touch. Ever since, I always go to the wake/funeral.
Similar here. Good friend of many years - his mother passed a few years back, then his dad earlier this year. In both cases it was relatively sudden, but the compounding factor is I live 800 miles away. In both cases, I debated whether to go up for the funeral, but one case scheduling was near impossible. In the other... I rationalized that... he'd just be too busy with other family issues, and that was the case. I feel like I still should have gone, but we did catch up in person a couple months later, and he'd had time to process and reflect a bit more. Lots of drama was going on (and still is a bit) so being there in the moment might have been more about me trying to feel like I was doing something ("being there") instead of actually being of any real benefit for his family.
I've only got a couple of other friends that close that I would consider attending their parents' funeral. One parent passed away during covid and there was no service. When that other parent passes, I think I will go, even though we've not seen each other in years. Several states away, again, but I will plan on going.
> Ever since, I always go to the wake/funeral.
I was going to add a top-level comment adding that there's a bit of nuance here between _the wake_ (calling hours, as the author puts it) and _the funeral_.
I actually have a similar regret about not attending the _funeral_ for a friend's mother, although I did attend the wake. In retrospect, I absolutely should have gone to the funeral but, at least in the US, the expectations around who should attend _the funeral_ vary between religions/backgrounds/etc. and it can sometimes be hard to tell what the most appropriate move is. This is especially true if you're no longer/not very close to the family in question. Some families want _the funeral_ to be a more intimate, private affair and will sometimes even mention that it will be in the announcement.
But, to your and the author's point, I think as a general rule, _going_ is the better bet.
Yeah I'm the same, did it twice unfortunately.
You should go to the funeral if you think the right thing is to go to the funeral
You should do it for yourself, out of respect for the person who died and respect for the loved ones remaining. Not out of societal obligation
The corollary to that is there are plenty of times where the right thing is to not go to the funeral. If you lack those things.
There have been times I don’t go the funeral. Because the dead person was a horrible person. When people asked, I said exactly that and many times the response I got was “man I wish I had not gone”
>You should go to the funeral if you think the right thing is to go to the funeral. You should do it for yourself, out of respect for the person who died and respect for the loved ones remaining. Not out of societal obligation
In 2024 it would be quite better if we did more things out of societal obligation, instead of each individual placing themselves (and their whims) as the moral authority.
A world where people only do what they want or feel like doing is indeed a pretty depressing world, I know because that's exactly the world I am living in. The world I grew up on was very different, and I absolutely miss it - Christmas parties, lots of birthday parties, church events, school events, local neighbourhood events... you name it, there were lots of things to do and go to and you were expected to. I think half of the time I didn't really want to, but it didn't cross my mind to say I didn't want to go, and I think that was much, much better - today I barely go anywhere, but I know people also won't come if I call them :( it's just such a sad world.
These things still exist, but they sometimes take time to discover and even longer to gain a sense of belonging. I like to call them "tribes" but really it's just a community. Sometimes the intersection of your { interests + location } may not have a vibrant community which happens to contain members who readily welcome new people, and so it requires a bit more effort.
Some examples of communities I've been a part of over the years:
- Family
- Church groups
- Bar buddies (overlapping with the previous category :))
- Biker community
- Startup community
- Technology groups
- Queer communities
- Neighbor groups
It was a lot harder to get into groups when I used to be introverted, I distinctly remember how afraid I was. My startup was the thing that forced me way out of my comfort zone and led me to learn how to overcome my fears of joining groups full of unknown people. The "ah-ha" moment was when I realized many others had the same fears and insecurities as I did, and yet that's ok.
I'm tired, boss
You haven't tried...
I recently had the occasion to visit the deathbed of a relative who died with much of his family deeply wounded by, and angry at, him. Had you known him, you might have called him a horrible person and not without some backing for that claim.
But I went because I felt a duty to my relatives that isn’t released just because they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain: he had indirectly given me life, even if he had done much ill besides. And moreover I felt an obligation to the office of the head of my family that transcended the particular man.
It would be a grim world in which comfort for the grieving is a service the deceased must have earned in advance, and we the comforters decide whether they have really earned it.
By being too lenient towards those who have not deserved it, we are being unjust towards those who have.
I guess I've just never felt as though my condolences for a grieving family were a prize to be earned.
> There have been times I don’t go the funeral. Because the dead person was a horrible person.
The funeral is a ritual for the people who knew and loved the dead person. The question should really be about them, rather than the deceased who is dead and gone.
And if those people are going to be talking about how great someone I despised was, it's best for all of us if I stay home.
Slightly disagree, only in that the people who supported the horrible person should hear the terrible acts done. Otherwise, yes. No comfort to those who comfort/enable abusers.
I hear this argument again and again, that the dead was despised thus the funeral should not be attended. Really folks, if all people you know are to be despised, then maybe the problem is not with them? Sure, there always is the occasional asshole, but it's not always the one in the coffin, so indeed then there might be times when we should just stay home for the better of everybody.
>You should go to the funeral if you think the right thing is to go to the funeral
More broadly, your actions are a reflection of your values. If there's a mismatch, then one of two things must be true: you fell short of your ideals and you should strive to do better in the future, or your stated values really aren't your values.
You aren't punishing the dead person by not going. Just punishing what friends and family he or she had, out of spite. Making enemies. I mean when you say "horrible person" you're not talking about Adolf Hitler or Pol Pot, you're just talking about someone you thought (rightly or wrongly) an asshole.
Now you've made yourself the asshole to other people. Not a great life strategy.
You made a lot of assumptions in your post just so you could wag your finger at the GP.
I assumed that the deceased wasn't Pol Pot.
Was there another assumption?
> Not out of societal obligation
Societal obligation in this case is literally basic minor respect towards the remaining people. And frankly, the loneliness epidemic HN like to talk about is closely related to the ideology where the only thing that matters is yourself.
I think I won't go to my parents funeral (when the time comes).
I don't see the value of standing next to their corpses.
I didn't go to my grandma funeral, I don't regret it. I regret not having had deeper relationship with her.
Same with my parents. Will have many regrets, but I believe not saying goobye to their corpses won't be one.
Assuming that your parents die separately, you being there will make it easier for the other parent still alive. The same goes for their relatives and friends attending the funeral. There's some comfort in seeing that the person was loved.
They are dead but the other people who attend aren't
Solidarity with the living is the whole point of the funeral.
Well, you could argue that's most of the point.
Remember, though, there are funerals where only one person attends. And publicly acknowledging one's loss - even if it only consists of going to a building with strangers and posting an obituary - can be one of the most important steps in processing grief for some people.
+1
You're showing the other grieving people that you care about them
It's certainly a large part of it. There was a recent Cantonese movie that featured this as one of the themes, it's well worth a watch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Dance_(2024_film)
I went to a friends mothers funeral to support him and to pay my respects. However, his brother who had a fractious relationship with his siblings did not. I can't tell you how many relatives viewed his absence negatively.
That's a shame, I'd like to think I would not judge someone for their decisions on something like that, having not walked any miles in their shoes.
If you're looking for personal value out of attending funerals, there's good evidence for psychological benefits to doing so. Grieving is hard. Humans are evolved to process negative emotions through complex rituals. Funerals are one of the most important rituals because death is extraordinarily traumatic and universal to all humans.
Funerals aren't about saying goodbye to corpses. They're collective, complex rituals that aid the grieving process.
Fix your points of regret while this is still possible. If you do so, you will find that very likely, you will want to go once successful.
I believe we got to a point where it's them who have the responsibility to do the fixing.
It's not about you.
Neither of my parents had a funeral. They both said they didn't want people coming in and looking at their dead body.
It's not about looking at the body (in my area at least, funerals usually don't even display the body), it's about grieving and mourning. Or supporting other people who are going through grief and mourning, even if you don't feel it very strongly yourself. My mom died of cancer about a month after lockdown started in 2020 so we couldn't have any kind of service, but we had a "celebration of life" a year later. I'm glad that we did.
Well, they both said they didn't want any of that, so we didn't do it.
Can you really not think of the situation beyond your personal immediate material experience?
Think in what specifically, example?
I don't see what else I should think of.
Socially, i.e. about other people?
A yes, but it's odd to me that other people want me to be at a funeral with them.
If we have a great relationship, I can lend you money, share my house, get you a date, do some errands for you, take you to a party, listen to your thoughts and give you feedback. All valuable things I can do for you regardless of my funeral attendance. But just standing at a funeral? I don't see how is that valuable. Maybe for the chat, but we can have the chat anywhere else, like staring at the stars in a park, a superior setting.
And if we don't have a good relationship, well, then it doesn't matter what you want.
Do you have a social disorder of some kind? I feel that to most humans this is just immediately obvious and socially natural
Maybe I do.
Is it most? I don't know.
And do most do it because their emotions and values give them this urge, or is it that they want to fit their social circle or comply with their cultural norms? I dont know
Could you perhaps imagine a reason why a person asking you to come with them to a funeral might feel it is valuable to them that you come?
Maybe they want to remember the deceased with you in a setting that is about remembering the deceased?
Is that less valuable than wanting to go to a party together?
Oh, no if someone asks me to come I undertsand that it's important for them. So, I'd go to support my friend, but I'd keep feeling like I'm wasting my time. Just as if a friend asked my be go to their Mormon baptism.
Why would you feel like you’re wasting your time if you care about the person and it’s important to them?
If being around corpses is your main objection, know that you don't have to have corpses in the room to have a memorial service.
Wholeheartedly agree with both the nominal and underlying advice here.
Doing the right thing all the time is painful, tedious and can cost you. But doing the wrong thing will cost you too. Both compound.
The literal advice about going to the funeral is about showing up for people who meant something to you. There are only a few special times in your life when you get to see a large chunk of other people's important people:
* graduations
* coming of age ceremonies
* weddings
* funerals
Being there gives you a special chance to know the person better. Just do it.
> Just do it.
I've tried, man. I'm deeply uncomfortable in social situations, and events with lots of wacky, nonsense traditions and rules that I don't understand makes things exponentially worse. Going to events like weddings and graduations makes me utterly miserable. I feel like shit for days before & afterwards, and I always regret going for months & years afterwards. I guess there's a chance someone there is glad I'm off being miserable in a corner, but I doubt it. So I've mostly stopped going to these things.
I'd love too but a crowd -even mostly loved ones- is for some the hardest way to engage with others. Last weddings I tried to attempt were disasters. Funerals are obviously easier as no/weirdly-interacting is accepted so at least there's less self esteem to loose. I feel the more confortable in one or one to one, three is already to much possible micro-ostracisms to deal with.
To end with a lighter note loosely related, a funny citation of the marshal Foch:
> "An assembly must have an odd number of members in order to make a decision, but three is already too many."
"other people's important people" is a very astute phrase - one has to see the value in that concept in order to understand the deceased's survivors that you think you already know. I've been to a few events where some folks were flabbergasted to discover different fresh aspects of the deceased - "what the...? He/she was tight with that crowd?!"
I wonder how many people have lived a secret side of their life and finally get outed at their funeral, to the shock of the people who only knew one side.
Larger message about doing the thing you really should do aside, ever since my parents dissuaded me from going to my grandfather's funeral (a man that I loved and respected but who's funeral came at an "inconvenient" time in my life) I have greatly regretted it. Not going burned itself into my mind and since that time I have never missed a funeral. Even for someone I only knew a little or hadn't seen in many years. If I had a connection with them, thought fondly of them, I make every effort to go. It just feels like the right thing to do.
Personal opinion: I find funerals to be a waste of time and money.
Especially, coming from a culture where they are a big event. People spend enormous money on funerals —- money that they wouldn’t help you with while you are alive and struggling.
Maybe attending one in a less flamboyant culture will change my mind.
But I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.
I shared your opinion until I attended my first funeral as an adult. They are very important for the grieving process, at least to me. That doesn't mean much money needs to be spent, I've only been to scaled down funerals where there's a short ceremony and a meal afterwards.
Eh. For children of less than stellar parents, a funeral is:
- A bad person gets celebrated in a way that is not aligned to your understanding
- A bunch of people who don't know about the less than stellar bits offering what feels like performative grief
- Others who enabled the less than stellar bits angry their applecart has been upset, looking to lash out at a scapegoat.
Obviously not everyone has this negative experience, but narcissism is in about 6.2-7.7% of the population; other "dark traits" are also around in a long tail. So it's not unreasonable to expect around 12-15%? of people risk a potential increase to trauma at an already complex time of their lives.
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The funeral industry is also very predatory. They know full well they have people in grief making decisions and they end up getting pressured into buying a casket that's just going to be buried in the ground in a few days, but they will be paying for for the next 10 years. That a family can come out of a funeral tens of thousands of dollars in debt is just absurd.
I feel much the same. I hope that when I die, the people around me will remember the many times that I have asked to have my body disposed of as quietly and cheaply as possible, and to not perform a funeral for me, and if they wish to use my death as an excuse to gather, to make the event as joyful as possible and as little about me as they can.
Showing up before the funeral is what makes showing up at the funeral matter more
Memorial rituals are universal to every human culture. It's a need in (almost) all of us.
> ... I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.
I agree, but whatever you did earlier, that's not a reason to not do something now.
It probably depends on one's culture. In the Philippines, it's customary for funeral visitors to give a small donation to the bereaved family members (typically, around 20-40 USD). And since funerals are considered a big social event, it's not uncommon to hear of fmilies who were able to recoup (or pay off) their funeral expenses through the donations alone.
Big life events are always worth a visit if you get invited, and you always learn something from the mix of people who attend. Whether it's a funeral, wedding, baptism, and so on.
Does this person have friends from childhood? Do his friends come from the same place, or all sorts of places? Do they know each other, or does he have a lot of singletons there?
Who considers themselves close family? Second cousins? Or did their cousins not even come?
How well represented are various social classes?
I always find these things super interesting when I go to one of these.
Funerals, especially, tell stories without words
You gotta go to people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours — Yogi Berra
There's been a lot more reflective, humanity stories on HN.
Or maybe I'm just noticing more.
I've been on HN since 2007.
There was that story a few weeks ago with the aging parents and their daughter that took a picture of them waving goodbye, each year she visited.
I like these stories. It gives me pause and to wonder what it's all been for.
Probably for my kids. My second oldest (9) loves creating levels in Geometry Dash. He'll probably be an engineer.
He asks great questions. He can teach himself new tricks from YouTube videos. He asks for critical feedback on his levels. That's a good start.
I'm just rambling.
I like seeing these on HN. Occasionally the hyper focus on tech makes me feel inhuman. Stories like these remind me not to forget how much else there is beyond my narrow world as a web dev.
You kid sounds amazing. Be proud and ramble on.
I feel like the major life events always put our life span into a perspective that otherwise might be missed or overlooked. It makes life feel shorter than it is.
Btw, which post are you referring to? I am curious to read it as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42113113
We're aging. This is becoming more appealing.
There are three groups of people on HN:
- kids who just graduated and realize that they've been told lies and need some life advice
- midlife crisis
- retirees who can see the death slowly approaching and reevaluate their lives in panic
Personally I intend to have as many midlife crises as I can afford
Which group are you in?
First one
I agree with this completely.
A small but important suggested addition: if it's someone who's funeral you would go to, tell that person now what they mean to you. Then they can hear it while they are still alive.
It is not a given that you will have enough time to tell them later.
sometimes, not going to the funeral is the message to be said and saying it to them "now" is considered rude. clearly, the message of not attending is being said to others not to the person, but you get the gist
The person died, what message can you want to send to a dead person. He/She is dead. He can't hear it. But you can forgive and believe me, feel better about whatever happened that made you want to send a message that would never be received.
> what message can you want to send to a dead person
you ask me that after I said "clearly, the message of not attending is being said to others not to the person, but you get the gist"
so clearly, you didn't get the gist. not attending says something to the other friends/family that did attend. the knee jerk reaction is "what an asshole to not attend" typically followed by "I wonder what happened that would make them not attend". then the gossiping begins and the person sending the message smiles a wry smile
Yeah, I got that. It is just that I think it is now pointless. Like, he/she is dead.
why do you keep referring to the dead person like that's the point of the not going? you're sending a message to those that do go by not going. the subject of the message is the deceased not the recipient.
Ah. I thought you had a beef with the dead.
Ok. I can respect that.
It is just that as I was thinking the dead was the target, it would be better to make sure you get whatever retribution while he is alive.
Sound advice. Conversely: always have a funeral.
I know several people who expressed a wish not to have a funeral. Sometimes this wish stems from a desire not to be an inconvenience, or a sense of guilt or shame that one's life was not well-lived. Sometimes, simply the view that funerals don't matter, so why bother.
In every case, I think this desire is mistaken. The need to mourn the dead is an instinct older than our species itself, and in dismissing it we wound the people closest to us.
If you're the sort of person to whom the idea of skipping your own funeral sounds tempting, I kindly ask you for the sake of your loved ones that you reconsider.
Yes, agreed. My dad said he didn't want a wake or funeral---I think he didn't want to put anyone out---but we overruled him, because the services weren't for him. Once he thought about that, he agreed (and gave some input on their planning, which was interesting). In the end it brought together a lot of people who hadn't seen each other in a very long time, which I appreciated, and I got to hear some stories I'd never heard before, which I also appreciated, and it made the whole process just feel a lot easier to deal with.
I (politely) disagree. My father did not wish a funeral, and, per his wishes, we did not hold one for him.
And honestly, standing at his gravesite paying my respects, I do not have the painful memories that I had with my mother's funeral, trying to organize, trying to handle everyone and everything, and not being able to grieve in the way that I wanted until long after. Instead, I am able to simply talk to him, and not have such a frustrating coda.
They say that funerals are for the living. Sure. But going to funerals of loved ones has never made me feel better in the long run compared to more private goodbyes, and I am not the only one to feel this way.
I am in this camp. I have been to the funerals of loved ones and once helped arrange one for a close family member. It was a very stressful affair.
But I also recognize that other people got more out of it than did I. They cried and hugged and shared memories. That experience I am assuming was very valuable to them. But not to me. I was stressed the entire time. The lesson I learned was that funerals are valuable to some while not others.
A memorial service is a very good thing to do, for those left behind.
The body does not need to be present for a memorial, as it is for a funeral. That makes it a somewhat easier event to arrange.
I don't think a significant number of people have ever written a will that actively prevented a funeral. A funeral doesn't require the deceased. It's fine to skip it.
Maybe a more charitable reading is: "make every good faith effort to cooperate with your family's attempts to mourn your death"
I pretty much always go. The only time I missed a funeral was during the pandemic for one of my teachers, and my wife was due at any moment. His funeral was well attended.
For one particular funeral, it was for a childhood friend who I had lost touch with. One of the photos, in the rotation, was from a bus trip where I said, "hey, give me your camera." It was touching. His brother showed up at my mother's funeral a few years later.
Funerals aren't for the one who passed they're for the ones left behind. Be there for the ones left behind and remember you are one of the ones left behind.
A slight modification for my own philosophy: I always go to the wake/memorial.
The funeral (burial/internment) is usually for close family only. I will go, if it is appropriate, but usually, not. Sometimes, the funeral mass is more open than the actual burial.
I had a friend propose that we hire a woman and a child to stand a hundred yards away from the burial of a [male] friend, and leave before anyone can approach them, to add some mystery to the event.
A corollary of this is “Always visit when a baby is born.”
(In the first few months, if not at the hospital)
I have noticed my love and respect for my friends who never visited after our newborn declined significantly, and it has never been the same. Does anyone have a similar experience?
Well, if you don't see someone for over a span of a year then probably you're not too close anymore?
Then I'd assume that if 1 person had a really good reason not to be physically around for the first few months, you wouldn't think less of them if they make it up afterwards.
How much of this is due to them not visiting and how much is due to the change in dynamics though? Think it's conceivable them not wanting to see the baby early on or in the hospital might suggest a fairly critical divergence of interests
Thanks, this teaches me quite a bit. I will be more mindful of this
Every time you go to a funeral you sit a bit closer to the front.
I seriously regret not seeing my aunt when she was dying, though I went to the funeral.
A memory ill never forget though is the time I went to a funeral for a childhood friends sister - it was extremely sad as you would expect, but her brother (my childhood friend) saw a big group of us there and he said "I cant believe it, everyone came out" and I could see he was really happy.
When the article said "do it for the family" it really hit me, and in hindsight its obvious - we were there for them, not the deceased, and it meant A LOT to them to see us there.
As somebody whose dad died last night, this one hits hard.
Sorry for your loss. Hope they lived a great life, and you can make it to the funeral.
That's terrible and I can't imagine how you feel, Sorry for your loss.
Totally agree.
In my culture (Berber), each time any of your relatives gets sick, you also must visit him/her and bring something with you for him/her (usually nice food/fruits and/or money).
I declined to attend one of my grandfathers’ funerals. I did not consider him a good man and did not feel love for him while he was alive. I have never regretted it.
It's not about attending in spite of disdain or contempt. I think you would be advised to skip that one.
I'm surprised in all this discussion not to see the distinction between a wake and a funeral.
The advice I've heard is, go to a wake to support those who are grieving, go to a funeral to grieve yourself.
(For this reason, the wake is held at more "convenient" hours.)
Do others make this distinction? Is the practice of holding a separate wake a regional/cultural thing?
I think the naming varies. In the UK for example, the funeral typically indicates a religious thing and the wake is the reception thing you go from the funeral to .It's usually in a pub. There's usually bad food. You have a drink. You have a good conversation with all the people you haven't seen for ages. You remember your friend/family member/colleague whatever who is dead.
Oh interesting! My background is northeast US; the wake (a.k.a. calling hours) precedes the funeral, typically the evening prior. There's no food, it's not religious (held at the funeral home), and well-wishers stop by for the reasons you mentioned. There's a sign-up sheet for those who will be attending the funeral.
There is also a reception at a restaurant immediately after the funeral; this is almost strictly for close friends and family though.
I think the wake is more of a Catholic thing perhaps?
Maybe (I was raised Catholic), but I also attended a wake of a teacher of mine who was Jewish (culturally if not religiously). Thinking more now, where I'm from (northeast US), "wake" and "calling hours" are synonymous, whereas they might not be in other parts of the world. So I may be perpetuating some confusion of terms.
I think in parts of the US that's certainly true. Northeast US is predominantly Catholic too.
Idk. Nobody ever invited me and I don't know anyone closely enough for even knowing if anyone in their family died. I'll be fifty soon, and, I have an impression that the only funeral I'll ever attend will be my own, if there even will be a funeral :|
> "Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
This hinges on your level of self-importance.
The best arrangement I've witnessed (for family friends from my hometown) was a private funeral for the close family members, followed 6 weeks later by a memorial service in a nice rented space with a slideshow going, drinks, and a general air of a big reunion.
The large amount of time between the two events was better for the family, who didn't feel the same sting of fresh grief. There was no awkwardness, either. Everyone could remember the deceased in a way that she would have appreciated - old memories, laughter, and positivity.
That was a beautiful piece. Well written, concise.
My grandmother was the only relative of that generation that lived in the same city when I was young — the only funeral I went to.
But as an adult, having my mother recently die, it was my turn to more or less head up the funeral. I too was touched by, in this case, relatives of my wife that showed up. They didn't know my mom from Adam but came anyway.
I agree with the article, and I find many of the comments here insightful. Relationships with some of my old school adversaries were healed when they attended my son's funeral.
The movie Charade is sort of about the bad effects of a poorly attended funeral. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8FA5zBHiFA
Funny how we spend so much time optimizing the big things in life while it's often the small, inconvenient gestures that stick with people forever
"By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals"
May be an Irish specific thing but I probably had been to 16 by the time I was five or six.
I'm 30 and haven't been to 5 funerals. Not that many people that I know died, or at least not that I know of (maybe a primary school teacher did in the meantime but I'm not living in the same area anymore). Might going to so many be a village culture thing, where everyone knows everyone and so you know of a lot more deaths?
I think I'm the most sheltered person I've ever known. 1 funeral, mid-30s. I'm expecting 1 more regular one when my dad dies, then a horrible one when my brother dies, and then my cohort will be called.
I'd say it's also likely an Asian thing.
In my country (the Philippines), it's not uncommon for people to bring their children with them to funerals. I've been to the wakes of almost every elderly family member. It was also a good opportunity, however morbid the circumstances, to connect with the rest of the extended family, even those people who I didn't realize---until then---were my relatives after all.
People don’t think about death enough. Be ready to go at any moment. Are you at work? Take a moment, and pretend your partner, mom, dad, or child’s last time speaking to you forever was the last time you chatted.
What comes to mind? Do you wish you had said/done something? Take action before it’s too late.
In my opinion, matters of respect and kindness are given more than due consideration at death and perhaps only then for most people. Sure, go to the funeral and pay your respect, show how much they meant to you, but perhaps, do it much before. Do it way before death is even a thing.
Ecclesiastes 7:4 "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."
https://bible.com/bible/1/ecc.7.4.KJV
My dad is an atheist but he believes in that. He hates seeing other people happy
The House of Mirth would be a great name for a bar, or a theater. Or anything, really.
Come to think of it, so would The Heart of Fools.
Coincidentally there is literally the novel "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton - published in 1905, it's an excellent late-Victorian/Gilded-Age period novel about the slow downfall of Lily Bart, a woman who was in New York's high society, then through a series of unfortunate events and social reproaches, descended into lonely poverty. It was quite influential at the time, portraying the materialism and shallowness of the moneyed crowd.
HN has never made me cry before, but here I am crying. This is really a wonderful article and discussion. Makes me appreciate this community even more.
It is crushingly disappointing to me how many of the comments here are about funerals. When the point of the article has nothing to do with funerals.
The thesis is this paragraph and I think it's quite striking and important
> "Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
Yes. And always go to the wedding.
Luke 9:60
> Let the dead bury the dead
We don't know for sure, but it is often said that the father wasn't dead in that story. That is the person in question was really saying "I don't want to tell my family what I'm doing, once they are gone I'll follow you". (timelines are not clear, but Jesus likely died a couple years latter so the opportunity to follow Jesus would have ended long before the parents died)
> By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals.
Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low?
They say your social cluster is 150 people, so you should be going to about 2 funerals every year (this ignores age-clustering, but that's counterbalanced by the fact that you often go to funerals slightly outside your cluster and the fact that the cluster changes over time).
My sister and I were talking about this recently (at a funeral in our family). We're in our 40s, and people older than us had largely been to a dozen funerals or more by their teenage years, while people younger than us often went to their first in their 20s or later (or perhaps when their own parents or grandparents died and to no others). We have not-entirely-negative memories of growing up going to funerals, because that's where we saw and caught up with extended family, so funerals are... well, not exactly easy, but they're not traumatic in their own right. For some of our slightly younger friends, though, even attending the wake and funeral in our family, they were having a harder time than we were. And almost none of our cousins brought their kids. For the author, six by 16 probably was a lot more than any of her friends, yes.
It's an interesting shift. A loss, I think.
I was forbidden from going to my great-grandmother's funeral with my parents even though I was 11 and an extremely well-disciplined child. "We want you to remember her as she lived, not as she died" was the reason given at the time, but leaving me out of the event where people were remembering her as she lived didn't make sense to me.
When my grandfather died when I was 15, not only wasn't I allowed to go, but I had to stay home and watch my siblings as my parents traveled a thousand miles away for a week. We more than had the money for plane tickets. They just didn't want to bring us (youngest was 10, and also not troublesome).
For my other older relatives, they've all insisted on not having services, and I can't help but feel it's both an effect and a cause of the fact that my extended family is very disconnected and fragmentary.
Okay, same here. It's not like I'm cutting people off because I'm a millennial.
My parents are / were just very distant from their families, didn't make much effort to tie their children into their adult social networks, etc.
I went to the only funeral I was ever invited to lol.
Generally the number of your friends who have funerals is heavily biased towards the end of your life.
America's average lifespan is 77. When you're 16, your parents are perhaps 46, and their parents are maybe 76.
And a lot of people live for 10+ years after retirement, so your teachers might all be alive too.
If you've got a big extended family, or you're part of an organisation like a church where 16 year olds come are getting to know 70+ year olds, you might have gone to more than 6 funerals.
But generally? At 16 your parents, their friends, your aunts and uncles, your 16 year old friends, their parents? Good chance they're all still alive. Your grandparents - maybe, maybe not.
Your grandparents also have siblings, and your parents would drag you to those funerals. You should also have people of many different ages in your social group and some of them will die of old age (and once in a while someone young).
> You should also have people of many different ages in your social group
"Should" seems right, but in practice, do young people have this? How? (Thinking of the US here.)
When I was a kid, this came through church. But church attendance among the young has fallen off a cliff, with (to my knowledge) no replacement.
I was going to write this at the top level because I hadn't seen anyone make this point yet:
The thing that made me sad about this article is that it made me realize how lacking I am in community. My eldest child is six, and I can't think of more than a couple people who are likely to pass from natural causes by the time she is sixteen, who we are close enough with to definitely know about their funeral. And I have no idea how we would find out about the funerals of people we aren't so close to. It's not like there is a local paper with obituaries that we read...
Of course the elephant in the room is that when I was a kid, the coordinating organization for this was my family's church. Without having that community fixture, I find myself unsure how this sort of thing actually works.
I’m in my 40s and I’ve been to four, for each of my grandparents. That age clustering thing seems very important to me. For most of my life, my grandparents were the only people I knew well who were around that age.
Even now, there aren’t anywhere near 150 people whose funeral I’d attend.
Sounds within the right range to me. By that time I think I'd have been to five that I remember (a great-grandparent, a grandparent, an uncle, a great aunt, a school friend who was skittled on his morning paper-round). There may have been others that I was too young at the time to remember now.
For me, funerals and similar services are more for family and close (or at least close-ish) friends. My social cluster might number 150, but there are many in it for whom I'll pass on my regards & regrets from afar rather than attending a funeral or wake.
Are you attending 2 funerals every year, even averaged over a couple of decades to allow for clustering? I can think of one year when there were three, but that nowhere near makes up for the years when there were none or just one.
I'm not sure I'm quite hitting 2, but it's pretty close. I just sat down and made a list purely from memory, and got 1 per year since I started persisting memories. And I have to be forgetting some.
In fact, the actual number includes a significant decrease due to excluding "funerals I would've gone to if I didn't have a more important funeral to go to" and "people who moved away before they died". Thankfully in recent years remote recording is usually a thing in some form (live or not, video or just audio; the quality depends significantly on the funeral home).
Seems high to me. Similar to another commenter, I'm in my 30s and I think I've only been to 3 - both grandmothers and maybe a cousin. But I only remember one, and I don't remember which of them it was for.
For us it was only normal to go to funerals for family members, and my parents' generation is getting up there but still alive. So only your four grandparents are what you'd usually expect by that age.
I never even heard about deaths in friends' families unless it was a reason they were missing school.
>> By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals.
> Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low?
Not for someone who's young and mostly disconnected from their grandparents' generation. In my case, my family lived far away from pretty much all my relatives, which meant I'm not very close to any of them and going to a funeral meant lots of short-notice plane tickets.
I think I've only gone to two funerals in my life: one grandparent who died geographically close to use when I was a kid, and the father (who I never met) of a friend of mine.
I think it would have been better if it had been different, and I had gone to more funerals, because now my lack of exposure adds a whole extra layer of awkwardness onto dealing with death.
Even if I was close to my grandparents' generation, I only have four of them and that number doesn't increase over time. I don't think I know 16 * 2 = 32 people of my grandparents' generation, especially not now, way past my teenage years.
> Even if I was close to my grandparents' generation, I only have four of them and that number doesn't increase over time.
The scenario I was thinking of to get to more than "five or six" funerals by age 16, was to have "always go to the funeral" parents who took you to the funerals of grandparents and great aunts/uncles living nearby.
Depends on your relative age and family size. For me, my 40s are for funerals like my late 20s were for weddings.
Nowadays many families have just one or two kids and everyone is spread over all of country and world.
I don't know if I'd go to the funerals of all 150 people in my set. Most of them are acquaintances rather than friends or family.
I go to much fewer than 2 funerals per year. But now that I'm 55 it will likely start picking up.
Really? I'm in my 30s and I've been to fewer than that.
> They say your social cluster is 150 people
Maybe yours is.
Honestly that seemed really high to me. I went to my first funeral at 41. I did go to a couple of viewings/wakes before that. I’m not religious, and I guess I just don’t know enough people who would invite me to a funeral.
I'm almost 60 and have only been to a handful of funerals. One or two as a kid for my grandparents who I don't even really remember, one in high school for a friend, and a few other relatives and friends on my wife's side of the family.
Some of us had our family dispatched in bulk, but thanks.
E.g. the article is about their 5th grade math teacher.
>Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low?
Yes, it's low.
A valid point and a good approach. But it's quite a bad pun when used as a title here on HN - and with the capitalization, too.
What pun/title?
"Always Go", like the programming language. But - I see the editors changed the capitalization, so it's good that you didn't notice.
For many of us here a corollary is:
Always get on the plane. Make the trip. Weddings. Baptisms. Graduations. Funerals. All of it. Even if going home is hard.
Clever marketing by the funeral services industry.
And no, I don't want my last act on Earth to be inconveniencing people.
> I don’t want my last act on Earth to be inconveniencing people.
There’s no way around that. Death inconveniences the living. Your death will probably make a mess of some kind. Your dead body will have to be buried or cremated, or it will be an even bigger inconvenience. Your effects will have to be split up among the living in some way.
And if you find funerals to be an inconvenience, don’t go. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that everyone will be happier if you insist on no funeral. Many of us want to gather with everyone else who cared about the person who died, and it feels strange and wrong to be denied the opportunity. Funerals are for the living anyway. Let the living make their own decisions about what events they want to hold and attend.
>> There’s no way around that.
But that could be minimized. For example, by not taking precious square meters of Earth surface from the living.
>> Your effects will have to be split up among the living in some way.
That's not inconvenience :)
> But that could be minimized. For example, by not taking precious square meters of Earth surface from the living.
I understand and even agree with the sentiment here, but to me “I don’t want to be buried” or “I don’t want a funeral” is micromanaging. I’ve expressed a preference for as little inconvenience to the people I love and as little damage to the Earth as possible. My children or whoever else survives me can make whatever decisions work for them. I don’t want my last act to be ordering them around. My dad, for example, had always planned to be buried, but when he was nearing death he suddenly said he wanted to be cremated, which was distressing to some of the family and was going to mean redoing a bunch of plans. When we asked him what was behind this sudden change of mind, it turned out he didn’t actually care one way or the other, he’d just recently found out cremation was less expensive and he was trying to save us money. Turns out it’s important to say what you really mean—“I love you and want to save you inconvenience and grief”—rather than “I don’t want a funeral” or “I don’t want to be buried” or whatever.
> That’s not inconvenience :)
Heh. You must not have been executor of anyone’s estate. It’s pretty inconvenient. All I can hope for is to have enough money that it’ll be worth it to whichever kid ends up doing it.
As part of my plan of not inconveniencing anyone, I already doled out kids' inheritance in cash and real estate, and will donate the rest. I also rented 100-years storage at forever.com, so nobody has to deal with my old photos, memorabilia etc. Everything else is a matter of 2 hours' work by a garbage disposal team. Executors can walk.
I predict your 100-years storage to last about 2 years.
Wonna bet?
The counterparty risk is too large.
We can deposit $$ with a mutually accepted escrow. I will collect in 2 years if the site is still there.
> That's not inconvenience
It frequently is. In fact, it tends to be a more difficult form of grieving in my opinion because now they are forced to throw away things that were yours because they know nobody else wants them. Your bedding, your old spice cabinet, the magazines you never threw out. All of those are more for your heirs to deal with emotionally and physically.
A funeral isn't the same thing as a burial.
Why do you think it is an inconvenience for people to meet other people they know and/or like? You could see it as a last gift from you to bring them together.
OK, so go to the wake or the shiva or whatever. You don't have to buy into the funeral industrial complex to believe it's important to honor the dead.
In fact, I think you have it exactly backwards. The industry popped up in order to exploit a deep human need. It did not create that need.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_American_Way_of_Death
Always go to the funeral!
It's not for you, and it's not for other people. It's just a thing. It's not an analogy about doing the right thing. It's just going to the funeral. That's what you should do, for lots of reasons. When you do it, you'll know why; maybe later, but you'll know.
It definitely is for you and for other people. I challenge you to describe what it's for if not those two things
Do the right thing even when you really don't want to is a valuable lesson, but I'm not sure I believe that the right thing to do is attend funerals for people who you were not actually close to. It feels extremely insincere.
It's not just whether you were close to the deceased; it's do you know the survivors. I've attended funerals where I never met the deceased but knew a survivor.
Yeah. Went with my cousin-in-law to his grandmother's funeral. I had maybe met her twice. It wasn't for her. Meant a lot to him, though.
I've gone to the funeral of a community leader who I only met a couple of times, but the stories of their life and seeing how they had touched the people around them was inspiring and I hold those stories dearly and feel the loss of the community. Hardly insincere.
I've attended the funerals of my enemies just to pay my respects for the rivalry that we had.
> I've attended the funerals of my enemies just to pay my respects for the rivalry that we had.
What? You have enemies? Like the Joker and Batman or Lex Luthor and Superman?
Honestly, to me, that word describes a kind of relation that mainly exists in comic books and between nation states.
I have a few folks who I felt wronged me significantly in my life's travels, and they take a bit of rent-free space in my head every once in awhile.
I don't actively search for their obits or anything, but if I learned about a funeral, I'd make the time to visit, stand quietly, and reflect.
Probably not the healthiest thing, but not my unhealthiest quality either. At the moment it is only theoretical. But I can think of 3 or 4 I'm now likely to google up and see what they're up to and assess who is closer to the pine box. :)
> I have a few folks who I felt wronged me significantly in my life's travels, and they take a bit of rent-free space in my head every once in awhile.
Do you have grudge against those people, such that put effort into trying to undermine or defeat them? I feel the word "enemy" has connotations of a kind of direct, sustained opposition that just seems like it'd be really unusual (and unhealthy) in real life.
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Alternately; this anachronistic idea that not going to a religious ceremony is “the wrong thing” can be disregarded.
I never attend funerals, and I rarely attend weddings. I skipped my father’s funeral. It simply doesn’t matter if you go or not.
It matters a lot to those who are grieving.
Consider that funerals may have developed over millennia as a component of the grieving process. There is nothing necessarily religious about them.
Reminded me of the famous quote by Twain: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
Losing relationships to death feels strangely not bad to me.
Losing relationships for other reasons that shouldn't happen, like fights, feels bad.
It's like eating a cake. You eat and at some point there will be no more cake, and you can rest content. But if the cake falls to the floor while you are eating, it's sad.
This sounds like you're only thinking of people who die very old.
When my 99yo grandmother died, it felt natural, like it was the time for such things. She'd eaten all her cake.
When my 29yo sister died, it was completely different, even though her death was also natural and did not involve suffering (sudden cardiac death, because invariably someone will ask). Sure, she'd had some cake, but it seemed like most of it was ahead of her, and the cake didn't fall to the floor, it just sat there, uneaten and uneatable, which feels both sad and wrong.
At least if there had been a fight, there would be hope for reconciliation, or even if that weren't possible, we could still be glad to hear good news about each other's life. (Rarely does so much hatred endure forever that you can't ever be glad when good things happen to somebody.)
Death is worse.
I remember my first death.
My mum came and said: "your cousin died".
I felt nothing, I different. I had a great relationship with him.
Seeing my non-reaction, my mum said : "you can cry". So I thought: "oh, so I should cry now, that's the appropiate thing to do in these situations", then I started crying.
Sure, there's nothing special about that. Many people are too young to understand the finality of death when they first encounter it. Death becomes harder the older you get. When my grandmother died this year I felt a much heavy series of emotions than just sadness. It's the finality of it that gets you.
Some people are just more accepting and more living-in-the-moment types.
As for me, I could always use more cake. I have high expectations!
Be careful, or they'll lock you up. The appropriate reaction to death has been determined, and deviations are considered at best a form of mental illness, and at worst a form of terrorism.
The appropriate reaction is the wailing and gnashing of teeth, an enormous amount of discussion, imitating as closely as possible the dress and decor of previous death gatherings that you have references to, varnishing, buttressing, and putting makeup on the corpse so that it looks alive, then looking at it longingly. If you don't do this you're a psychopath.
The appropriate response is certainly not to make fun of people online, and yet here we stand.
I will not attend any more funerals, unless I get the church to stay out of it. The priests at the last events I attended to did not know the diseased. Even the wedding speeches I heard took place with nothing concrete on the people in questions. As for mostly church funerals in my significant others or my family: - Boring while overwhelming, - a farce since everyone planning it is either fighting or not caring enough to start a fight, - and not at all about dealing with death in a good way (grief, laughter, moving on. Something cultural should happen, but no one at the events ever found it. Only jealousy and nepotism were present if you heard any discussion about real values of having those funerals. And those came up behind closed doors.)