We are being labelled disrespectful and I disagree over funeral

[Bluehummingbird]

We don’t agree with so don’t attend funerals. It’s part of a wider belief system we have devised part of it being to see those we care about as much as possible and do as much as we can for anyone we love who is ill or needs support.

Recently FIL passed after a long illness. We helped with care, spent a lot of time with him and supported MIL which we continue to do. We were with him in hospital and were able to say goodbye.

The issue is that we didn’t go to the funeral. We’ve had nasty comments from family members (who never bothered to see him or help MIL as they ‘lived too far away’ and who managed to travel though to the funeral and stuff their faces afterwards as they told us they even managed to take food for the journey home then the next sentence calling us out for behaviour).

SIL said it wasn’t fair she had to step up to help with funeral arrangements. I said to her ‘we arranged the care, we did all the hospital appts, I cleaned the house for MIL and we looked after the dog when they needed a break so it was your turn to do something’

Everyone is saying dh can’t have been able to say goodbye properly but he did - in the hospital? It’s like we don’t need to physically go to church each week to feel close to god or worship we don’t feel the need to go to a set place on a set day to say goodbye to someone who isn’t there any more and we find it performative.

I know most people do funerals but I’m struggling with having to repeatedly explain our position on this and we try to be good people and want to be judged on our actions for the last few years not for the 1 hour service and then the few hours after wake that we missed ?

Sometimes you need to put your “beliefs” aside and do the right thing to support the people you love and care about.

Yes I think so I feel we just don’t have the same view on certain things as a lot of people and perhaps the ND aspect is why

You are getting a hard time on here, OP, but I understand your position and you clearly did right by your FIL.

However, I wonder if you might consider quietly attending funerals in future, if only to avoid giving rise to any family misunderstandings.

Most people support their family and friends and go to the funeral. It's not an either/or.

I can see where u are coming from . People dont bother with people when they are alive but do once they have died . Funerals mean absolutely nothing to the person who had died .. my mum didnt talk to her brother for years, blocked him off her phone said she didnt like him - then got all annoyed when his wife didnt give him a funeral (they done something else with his ashes ) - dont let anyone make you feel bad..

I don't blame her for saying that at all. My SIL does fuck all for my FIL, my husband and I have to do everything. I am OVER IT.

So your belief system boils down to you putting your needs before anyone else’s? There’s no wriggle room at all?

Good grief, what have I just read? The funeral wasn’t about you, but you’ve managed to make FILs death all about you and your DH. Couldn’t you have just put your beliefs on the back burner and supported the family through the funeral process? That would have been the compassionate thing to do.

Okay, kindly and gently, you two are just opting out of proper adulting. This isn't a belief system, it is fear. We actually do have someone in our family who doesnt attend funerals. They have schizophrenia and are sectioned at least once a year. They have terrifying hallucinations at funerals etc and so they dont attend them. They do come to the wake. My cousin is severely disabled by their mental illness and has only ever achieved semi-independence. That's why we make that allowance and understand why they won't be there.

Would you like your family to see you as so incapacitated that you are unable to attend these events? Literally so disabled by your neurodiversity that you don't get why you'd be expected to attend and play an adult role on the day along with the rest of the family?

I hear a lack of empathy and some judgement in your post. An elderly couple taking a few sandwiches for a car trip is normal - they’re not the drive thru Starbucks generation.

I go to funerals to support the living mostly, and to mark the lives of the decreased. In a small number of cases, I am personally grieving.

When you lose a loved one, you want the world to notice and say “that mattered”. I’d say your MIL goes along with your views just to keep the peace.

How selfish are you
Your poor poor MIL having to pretend she doesn't mind when quite obviously she will really mind not to have her son there with her.
It will be what she always remembers about her husband's funeral, her son and family couldn't be bothered to come

It won't have been a good funeral because everyone will have noticed and wondered and asked why you weren't there
The fact that your husband was at home crying over photos is irrelevant. He couldn't be arsed to be joyful about his father's life with the wider family, friends and those who knew him well

To say I am gobsmacked about this is an understatement, selfish and mean is as polite as I can be

My thoughts are with your husbands Mum

This nails it

I agree with this as well.

Does it? Perhaps to an extent as we’re all different. I’m autistic and dyspraxic and I can’t relate at all. Even if I’d rather not attend certain events I know that they are important to people who are important to me so I attend when feasible. I also know that funerals are not about me and my feelings but about supporting friends and family especially the principal mourners and showing respect for the deceased.

Why is it cold? She was there for him when it really mattered and her MIL had lots of other family to support on the day. I think it’s fine not to go.

Our beliefs not our needs

I think you are taking quite a rigid view of what funerals are about, by the way. I don't think most people see them as a final goodbye. Most people will remember the dead, look at photos, involve children and remind them of the good times etc after funerals too. But a funeral is normally the last time the deceased person's relatives and friends all gather together and share memories and grief in a wider group.

Still, it's done. Maybe if it's compatible with your belief system and emotional state you could invite family members to a meal or memorial event some time. I'm sure your FIL would hate the idea of his family falling out over this. Try to help them all to pull back from the drama and resentment.

OP, have you ever been to a funeral or, more importantly, a good funeral? When a group of people who loved the deceased come together to share grief, it’s a different experience. It can be powerfully healing and supportive.

Funerals are really for the people left behind. The people that are dead don’t care about them! …it’s part of the process of saying goodbye and helping the bereaved grieve. It’s a valuable event that allows people to get involved in organising something practical that often helps focus one’s grief after a death and give people something tangible to organise and centre their attention on other than feeling overwhelmed with sadness. It serves a really important purpose and actually some of the wakes I have been to have been extremely cathartic, people get to tell their own personal stories and share them. They have been funny, heartwarming, upsetting, supportive in equal measure.

A son not attending his own father’s funeral is so far out of the norm that most people would wonder if there’d been a rift of some kind. Or if your DH was dangerously overwhelmed with grief. Or ill. Or something else. Which, as PP have said, puts your MIL in the awkward position of explaining your vague ‘belief systems’ on a day when she would probably rather be thinking about the husband she’s just lost - even if she’s politely put a brave face on for you.

and fwiw, most people comment about the ‘lovely spread’ at funerals because it’s a neutral compliment to offer the family, a reassurance that they’ve done their best in a miserable social obligation.

The difficulty with that argument is that opting out of going to your dad's funeral is such a violation of social norms that it means you're creating an issue for other family members that they don't have a choice about. People will have been surprised and will have asked. The attending relatives were made to take on the burden of explanation, without having any choice in the matter.

It's unfortunate, but we live in a society where it's not possible to make decisions in a vacuum about this sort of thing.

She’s the one that matters in this situation. Let the others moan.

I can’t rationalise any belief system that is about being there for people where they are alive and then unconditionally insisting you will not be there for your closest loved ones on one of the days they will need you the most.

This exactly. If your belief system is about being there for people when they are alive, then be there for the living people at your FIL’s funeral, whether you believe it’s the final goodbye or not, whether you believe he’s ’really gone’ or not, whether you’re a bit pissed off with SIL for not helping more or auntie for not visiting etc.

Believe me I had all the same swirling grumbles and resentments at my mum’s funeral (who I had indeed given up an awful lot to drop everything and care for, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat) - people who hadn’t made it, people who were only there for the sandwiches, people who hadn’t visited before she died etc etc. But I also knew it meant something that we’d all come together this way to honour and remember my mum, it meant something that my friends showed up for me, my family were all together in one room which were the times she loved the best, the food was bloody amazing because she’d have expected no less.

My love and care for my mum didn’t stop when I was with her as she passed away. My love and care for the rest of my family, who were also grieving, doesn’t stop just because mum had gone. If one of my siblings or other close family member had straight up not shown up because of some ‘belief system’ they’d devised, I’d genuinely have never forgiven them or got past it.

People would assume he's upset about money.

I’m really confused… so it’s not actually a ‘belief system’ just an acknowledgement of how awful they are and that they bring up grief all over again?

The way you’ve previously mentioned not having faith or believing in a place of worship made it sound like it was some offshoot of atheism which, as an atheist myself I disagree with. I’m perfectly capable of going to church weddings and funerals to respect others beliefs, it doesn’t mean I have to share them.

I would be prepared to have this come up over and over again as it ultimately sounds like this is just that you find it all too traumatic. That is actually much more palatable and less offensive than ‘it doesn’t match our belief system’