To ask the worst funeral behaviour you've seen?

[Fishface77]

I went to a funeral today.
open coffin at home.
People were filing past the coffin to pay their respects when someone decided they wanted to get to the crem in a hurry.
Cue pushing and shoving and the coffin almost fell of the stand. Saved by the mans wife!
Also random women wailing. Seriously no
Need.

A mother and daughter came from Berkshire to a northern funeral with strong Irish background. Said prior to that they weren’t going to wear black and instead dress in a bright uplifting way. I tried to tell them they were misjudging the culture but they wouldn’t listen. They soon realised their faux pas

Although we often call the wake the gathering after the funeral, as treacle said, it is before. The gathering is a funeral reception or repass.

Wake comes from waking the body the night before the funeral. Staying awake with the body all night to make sure they were really dead before they went 6ft under.

Or so my Irish granny told me.

I went to the funeral of someone I didn't know well recently as I know his sort-of mum and was worried there wouldn't be many mourners. In fact it was standing room only. Some of them in hot pants - they looked very chilly!

At my grandmothers funeral my aunt took photographs of the hearse coming to the house with the coffin in. She took loads of photos in fact. After the memorial service we buried the body in a meadow (one of those Wild burial grounds) and before I went home I went back to the grave.

My aunt and uncle had torn the huge huge casket arrangement to bits and stuck all the amazing peonies and hydrangeas and roses that I'd cut from my own garden into the grave like lollipops. it might sound petty now but I was distraught. It looked AWFUL. When I commented hat I was upset I was told it was 'cultural' (my aunt is Thai) & to accept it. I didn't care about her culture. My grandmother was. 93 yr old salvationist who was definitely not a practicing Buddhist

theluckiest I just proper roared laughing at your DS as when I started reading I thought it was going to be a loud poo rather than burp.

The wake is indeed before the funeral, and there is usually some sort of meal afterwards too, but this is sometimes mentioned in obituaries with 'house private' stipulated in order to hint that only those invited should come. A lot of the time it's only a hint though.

My family didn't do that when two close family members died and it was really wonderful to have hordes of people in the house and even spilling into the garden. People brought food and packets of coffee and tea and lots else - cakes and rolls galore. Packets of TP..

I agree with Treaclesoda - people go to funerals and wakes a lot more freely in Ireland north and south than they seem to in Britain. There is no such thing as invitations to a funeral - everyone who wants to go goes. Funerals are held very soon after the death, so there would be no time to issue invitations anyway.

Bornfree I don't think bad behaviour is the norm (even at Irish funerals - to the poster who implied this is the case). It hasn't been my observation at all. I am shocked to read so many accounts of really horrible behaviour here, though I agree that maybe the heightened emotions bring out the worst in some.

How bloody rude of you, EllieThornton. There was no need for all the !!!!’s in your post either, it just wasn’t funny.

How bloody stupid of you - I thought it was funny. Very funny in fact.
I also thought the burp was funny too.

Mine are not nearly as bad as some on here, but my mother's funeral: well, the PIL couldn't manage to get their act together to be there on time, to my utter lack of surprise, though I was irritated at being roundly chastised by FIL for failing to confirm the church details. I was a bit busy, you see, creating and printing the order of service. Their son could quite easily have been contacted for this. The very last thing they would ever have to do for my family...
And the fucking minister, making a very pointed sermon at all three of the deceased's atheist daughters, about not giving religion 'a boy look', meaning a cursory glance, but really engaging with it. No thanks, I think your religion is self-induced brain damage actually, I'm just not rude enough to say it to your face.
Yep, still a bit steamed by that one, even though it's been more than three years. Sanctimonious twat.

Funerals are held very soon after the death, so there would be no time to issue invitations anyway

You see, this is another thing which confuses me, given the huge waits we often see in England

The funeral directors usually blame the lack of "slots" (which sometimes seems a little disrespectful) so is it that Ireland has far more directors perhaps?

I don't think so. Fewer people are cremated afaik, and the vast majority of funeral ceremonies take place in a church as opposed to a gathering in a funeral home or funeral chapel or funeral hall.

The funeral director in Ireland basically provides cars, hearse, embalming and dressing service, a room in the funeral parlour for the body to lie in state and be viewed if this is not done in the house, and a certain amount of setting up the church - setting out wreaths people may have sent, setting up a book of condolences, a basket for sympathy cards/Mass cards, and some ushering services sometimes. They also provide pall bearers if nobody from the family can manage that. They deliver all the cards and the book of condolences to the family afterwards.

You could have four or five visitations of remains going on at a time in a large funeral parlour, each one in a different room and clear signs up as to which gathering was which of course. This is usually a fairly solemn event.

Basically, when someone dies, they are laid in the coffin for a short time (maybe a day+evening), either at home or in the funeral home, then taken to the church in the evening ('the removal of the remains') and set in a side chapel (all of this accompanied by prayers at the set intervals along the way), then moved again to the top of the aisle for the Requiem Mass (if RC). People sometimes do a mini-visitation at that time too, lining up along the aisle to shake hands with family who are in the front pews and then returning to their seats. Mass gets going pretty sharpish on time, and at the end the coffin is loaded into the hearse and ferried to the cemetery. Prayers are said, holy water is sprinkled, and the coffin is lowered into the grave, which is then filled.

Sometimes the remains are removed to the church right before the funeral begins. (This is how RC funerals are done in the US.)

My exH was astonished that the coffin was lowered into the grave in Ireland, and that it was filled immediately. He was used to funerals ending when the coffin was laid on the ground next to the grave. Everyone then left the cemetery crew to do the burial. I found this extraordinary.

The funeral director in Ireland basically provides cars, hearse, embalming and dressing service, a room in the funeral parlour for the body to lie in state and be viewed if this is not done in the house, and a certain amount of setting up the church - setting out wreaths people may have sent, setting up a book of condolences, a basket for sympathy cards/Mass cards, and some ushering services sometimes. They also provide pall bearers if nobody from the family can manage that. They deliver all the cards and the book of condolences to the family afterwards that's my experience of funeral directors too in England.

I've been to 3 burials in England and the coffins have all been lowered into the ground with family there.

In N Ireland Protestant funerals it is very common for the funeral service to be held at the house of the deceased, or their close relatives house, although in recent years I have seen a move towards holding them in church. It's not a religious/non religious thing either as many of the most religious people I've known have been buried from their home. But I'd say at least half of the funerals I've been to have been at someone's house. Close family will be in the living room, then everyone else will be in the kitchen, and hallway until eventually it spills into the garden and sometimes
out into the street. When someone dies, the undertaker brings the body to the house the next day, then everyone visits for the next 48 hours or so and on the third day they're buried. There will be a second service at the graveside (and until recent years, only men went to the grave). There is only one crematorium here for the whole country, but it's still all done in the same timeframe if someone is cremated.

At my father's funeral (I was 14) his first wife turned up in shocking pink, his son from his first marriage did a eulogy and basically accused myself and my sister of being the reason he had grown up without a father, and then they both walked out of the church and got into the first car despite my mother having organized and paid for his funeral and told them specifically they were to go in the second car.
That was all after she (first wife) went to the funeral home and told the director that she was his wife and changed the coffin we had chosen to the cheapest undressed pine effort (the kind of thing a John Doe would have been buried in).

Yes, DameDiazepam - sorry, I wasn't clear - the coffin is left on a tarp or little dais on the grass beside the grave in the US, not Ireland (or the UK). (My exH is American).

It's very unusual for a RC funeral to be held apart from a Requiem Mass /outside a church. There is a funeral rite without Mass that can be done in a funeral home or at your own home, but you would have to plead special circumstances if you wanted this. Also, if you want cremation, this happens after the funeral Mass. Families who choose this usually get it done very soon after the funeral.

Someone mentioned the delays in funerals in the UK being due to getting a "slot".

This often seems to be the case where we live with cremations. At the one I went to on Friday you could see they were running cremation services back to back. As one group gathered at the front when the hearse arrived there was a service ending inside and that group leaving through a back door. It did have a conveyor belt feel to it which must be awful for families who feel rushed through saying their goodbyes.

I was asked if I wished to put the soil on top of the coffin at my dad's funereal. I had thrown a rose onto it, his beloved Manchester United top was also buried with him. I found closure in this action (he was not a good father, so incredibly conflicting for all of his children).

At my grandmother’s funeral my aunt decided that she was going to be the hostess. However, she had not had anything to do with the arrangements or even my grandmother for the last few years of her life. It had all been left to my mum. However, she gladly welcomed everyone and thanked them for coming to she her mother off.

On the day itself, my mum was suddenly overwhelmed and couldn’t cope with the idea of saying her final goodbye and wanted to stay outside. I knew that she would regret it in the long run and managed to talk her into walking in holding my hand. We found my aunt had sat her entire family- in laws, girlfriends etc at the front and there was no-where for my mum to sit. The embarrassment of other people who realised what had happened as they shuffled around to make space was palpable.

My aunt sat blissfully unaware as she complained that the coffin looked cheap and that The Lord is My Shepherd was very old fashioned. My grandmother believed totally in a good old-fashioned funeral and loved that psalm. She had always said she could be buried in a cardboard box; she believed that she would be finished with her body then and her soul would be elsewhere.

The final straw was my aunt complaining about the choice of reception venue: my grandmother’s favourite place for afternoon tea. She thought that a pub would have been better (my grandmother hated pubs). Everyone else knew that she would have loved knowing that at her final party was in a big, posh country house. She loved that sort of thing.

Thanks so much everyone for the caring explanations of funeral rites in Ireland; yet again I'm learning a lot here, especially about where the funerals are held, as well as how

Linked into the speed with which folk seem to be taken to rest in the church or home, I'm just wondering if there's more of an expectation around passing at home rather than in hospital?

And yes, I was surprised myself when I first went to an American funeral and saw the casket left unburied when the mourners moved away. Each to their own of course, but it seemed ... I don't know ... unfinished, somehow?

I hate to argue with Treacle, but with Roselawn being so busy and if there’s a delay getting a JP To sign off a death, there can be a longer time to a cremation in Northern Ireland.

Die Wednesday bury saturday. Die Monday. Bury Wednesday.

Cremation took a week to get a slot due to a bank holiday recently.

Service in the house because the body comes home and then go to church for service then crem but that’s only really close family if there’s been a church service.

Sorry I’m a plank. Wednesday bury Friday. Basically bury not the next day but the one after.

Sometimes bury on a Sunday afternoon but not always.

This is a good article on cremation services in Northern Ireland and the, my belief, quite frankly bonkers thoughts behind the opposition to it.

Expemsive I'm happy to be corrected. I've only ever been to a couple of funerals where there was a cremation afterwards and they were both within the 'normal' timeframe, so I had wrongly assumed that was generally the case.

@Elendon I'd love to read that article but I think you forgot to post the link!

An engagement announcement at my sisters funeral was the most crass thing I've ever experienced.

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