To think we should wear black for mourning for as long as we want?

[recklessruby]

Just that really.
I have recently been reading about the practice of Victorian mourning and mourning clothes. They showed the world you were grieving and to be gentle with you.
These days I feel the mourning period is rushed and people expect you to feel better straight after the funeral drinks and tea.
I have been to funerals where people were wearing colours and it didn't feel right to me (unless it was the family s request).
So would you be ok with black clothes for some time after?
I feel it would show society you are grieving and don't want to snap out of it?
I want all black at my own funeral by the way.

Well you can wear what you want. But I wouldnt think "person wearing black"=must be grieving.
I'm not having a funeral or memorial service of any kind.

I am mourning the death of my father a few days ago. It is a very difficult time and everyone deals with it in their own way.

I agree that clothes worn to funerals should be smart and respectful, but beyond that I don’t see how everyone being all in Black helps. My grief and the way I mourn my dad’s death is inside me. I share it with my family and anyone who asks how I am, because it is relevant. I would far rather just tell people how I feel than wear an armband or other symbol. But maybe that’s unique to me.

I am the type of person who is very in touch with their feelings, I am not afraid to sit with the difficult feelings and the pain. I can still laugh at funny things and wear a red top even while I am in the midst of all this pain and grief, because in life pain and grief coexist with joy and hope and love. It’s all part of the human experience and doesn’t exist in isolation of all other feelings. This is why I feel OK wearing purple or navy blue or racing geeen to a funeral.

Wearing black does not make someone a better mourner than another.

In short OP (and I mean this as gently as I can) do what helps you in your grief, but don’t judge how others grieve.

I have a friend who only wears black she is not nor has ever been in mourning. I am a year on now from the lose of my husband I grieve everyday day but don’t nor have I ever worn black. Nor did I were black to my husbands funeral as he didn’t want that so I worn what I knew he would have liked.
If someone wishes to wear mourning clothes then it is up to them but I wouldn’t assume someone wearing black is in mourning.

Of course people should be free to grieve and others should have empathy, but you seem to suggest that your whole world and life should change when someone passes, to focus on your grief. It's a part of life and I think to an extent it is more helpful to continue on your life as normal and not centre yourself around grief and mourning.

Obviously those who need support should get it, but I lost my mother at a young age and it consumed my life. Mourning for her didn't help anything.

Returning to work can be difficult for your colleagues, do I mention it or don't I? When my mother died I went back to school the day after the funeral, it was the last day of the Spring term and it got over the awkwardness and the problem had gone away when the Summer term started. I was fine until registration. My Year 11 form came noisily up stairs then fell silent when they saw me, they'd been told why I was off. We did the morning business in silence and I sent them off to Assembly, the last lad to leave, an utter reprobate, came over to my desk, patted my hand and said 'You OK luv?'. I was until then!

Sorry for your early loss @reckless. It sounds like you still have a lot of sadness and grief that you can't let go. Maybe your reading has made you question this? Of course when Queen Victoria lost her Albert, she never recovered from his death; wore black, hid at Osborne House, avoided public engagements and became increasingly controlling and neurotic of her daughters. The Victorians did many things well, but and whilst they certainly acknowledged grief - openly talking about loss and dealing with feelings was NOT one of them, and they were emotionally poorer for it IMO. Consider seeing a bereavement councillor to talk it through? I actually think we deal with grief pretty well in 2018 Britain - look at the response to Grenfell, look at how we commemorate year after year. But that's my view.

I think in Victorian times mourning was a matter of "respectability" rather than something aimed at treating people more kindly. You were expected to keep mourning for years (and then eventually do the transition into half mourning, greys, etc.)

If someone dared to break mourning before the period that was seen as "decent", they would have been maligned (and possibly even more so in the case of women).

The case of Tennyson's sister - who was engaged to his best friend, Arthur Hallam - is interesting. Hallam died young, and Tennyson wrote "In Memoriam" to grieve for him, and his sister was expected by the public to mourn Hallam forever. When she eventually dared to marry another man (a sea captain), it was a national scandal, because everyone was so enamoured with the dea of a woman mourning for her "soulmate" forever. The poor woman was vilifed.

You're coming across as pretty melodramatic OP.

do find it a bit sad that people in the UK seem to be almost afraid of death and have to minimise it as much as possible. My OH's grandparents both died fairly recently and it was so weird to me that none of his friends or colleagues went to the funerals. That would be seen as so rude and thoughtless where I'm from. Then once they die it seems like they're never mentioned again, when actually I think it's quite healthy to keep some happy memories alive.

Did your oh want his colleagues to attend or invite them though? I think most work relationships stay at work for people, and I think in this country many people aren't that close to their grandparents as they move around quite a bit.

I do find it a bit sad that people in the UK seem to be almost afraid of death and have to minimise it as much as possible. My OH's grandparents both died fairly recently and it was so weird to me that none of his friends or colleagues went to the funerals. That would be seen as so rude and thoughtless where I'm from.

Yes to this -- while acknowledging it's a huge generalisation, and that I personally only include 'England' in my sense that this country doesn't deal well with death, culturally, as that's the only place in the UK where I've lived long enough to get a good sense of of behaviours around death.

I think black at funerals is an irrelevance, but I do think that Victorian mourning codes were socially useful in that they provided a reminder to people not in your immediate circle of your 'stage' of grieving. Having said that, though, in the parts of society where codes were at their most strictly observed, you could find yourself having to wear full mourning for a set period for a cousin or aunt or uncle you had never in fact met.

Where I am from, Catholic practices offer something slightly similar -- month's mind masses, anniversaries, memorial cards, offering masses for the repose of someone's soul etc.

My loss was 26 years ago so I have learned to make peace with it. 26 years ago today.
So never a pleasant day. We were school sweethearts and had a baby young. Ds was just 4 at the time so had to concentrate on him.
We all wore black to the funeral but tbh a lot of us wore black all the time anyway.

My OH's grandparents both died fairly recently and it was so weird to me that none of his friends or colleagues went to the funerals

I don’t know many of my friends or colleagues grandparents. If they asked me to attend to support them of course I would, however I wouldn’t attend as a matter of course.

I would be careful about assuming wearing black will signify anything to anyone else. Black is not a colour reserved just for mourning these days, even head to toe black. And I wouldn't assume people will understand a black armband either.

This is the problem. While I don't disagree per se with the principle of being allowed to show that you're in mourning, I don't really know how you'd do it in Uk culture these days.

Victorian mourning was very much about women being the possessions of their men

A pp talks about hiding death in the UK. As mentioned, my parents are from another country. I simply find it frustrating to have all the extra stuff rather than being able to get on with my life.

I had to attend a number of funerals in younger years - don't ask! - and after that I decided that I would only attend a funeral if I really had to. I am rather hoping my mother will be okay if I just do a funeral privately for her. It will be bad enough for me without having to organise events around it and deal with her friends, many of whom I can't bear.

I don't think it's a terrible thing to want your normal life to go on. You can still remember people, you can still talk to them. Or you might want to forget. That is your right.

life is very long for most of us. We have to be able to choose some of how it goes. it contains plenty of stress already.

I don’t know many of my friends or colleagues grandparents. If they asked me to attend to support them of course I would, however I wouldn’t attend as a matter of course.

Neither do I , but in Ireland if you know someone who is affected by a death, especially close family, you go to the funeral as a way of supporting them. Doesn't matter if you actually knew the dead person or not. The difference in attitudes to death is striking to me, that's all.

Wearing black is more of a British thing rather than universal.
I would like people to think kindly of me when I go, and don't care what anyone wears.
The only thing that scares me is the actual transition from my own life to being dead and I hope that it will be peacefully and painlessly in my sleep.

I really don’t think anyone should judge anyone else in how they choose to grieve. If people choose to grieve by celebrating the dead person’s life, that’s equally valid as wearing deep black. There are no top trumps in grief. When someone very close to me died tragically young, his friends all wore an item of clothing to the funeral that reminded us of him. It was one of the most touching things I’ve ever seen. It was a deep act of respect. The funerals I have had struggled most with were those that did not reflect the person who had died: a religious one for an atheist, a humourless one for someone who had a wicked sense of humour. But it was the family’s choice, so they were entitled to do this.

I agree with the PP though, it sounds like you haven’t really dealt with your own loss OP.

My OH's grandparents both died fairly recently and it was so weird to me that none of his friends or colleagues went to the funerals.

Friends, very close ones, I could understand going to the funeral. But colleagues? For a grandparents funeral? No. That is not normal or expected where I am. Some people struggle enough to get time off work for their own grandparents funeral. Let alone a colleague’s grandparent! Can you imagine whole departments shutting down for the afternoon because James’ grandmother had died.

And I’m in Ireland!

I don’t know many of my friends or colleagues grandparents. If they asked me to attend to support them of course I would, however I wouldn’t attend as a matter of course.

That's one of the main differences between the UK and elsewhere, I find -- in my home country, whether or not you know the dead person is irrelevant, and it would be taken for granted that friends and colleagues would attend because they know the bereaved person. The idea of waiting to be invited to funerals isn't something I ever came across until I lived in England.

Sorry, misread the grandparents' part -- my post was primarily about friends and colleagues losing parents. I'm long past the stage in life where people still have grandparents.

and it would be taken for granted that friends and colleagues would attend because they know the bereaved person

If you work in a large place how do you get enough time off to cover everyone’s bereavements.

The idea of waiting to be invited to funerals isn't something I ever came across until I lived in England

It isn’t about being invited at all. It’s about the bereaved (who let’s face it are the important ones) saying “I’d love you to be there”. I would have found it utterly hideous for my colleagues to randomly turn up to my grandparents’ funerals.

I m obviously not grieving now but we are doing In Memorium at school so I did a bit of background reading first about Victorian customs and it brought up this question for me in our busy lives of 2018.

I don't think "we" should do anything. I think you are free to wear what you want to wear and to have that carry its own significance, that's up to you. You can't expect everyone else to understand.

I'll treat anyone I meet with enough kindness and compassion so that if they happen to be grieving (or living with depression, or just having a bad day) I'm not making their day harder. I'd rather "we" as a society focused on that than singling out one group of people who we should be kind to.

I can’t imagine going to a colleague’s grandparent’s funeral. I would find it quite weird if someone did that.

I do see the OP’s point. However, the risk with specifying black at funerals is that then people focus on finding black clothes rather than clothes that are neat and modest.