AIBU not to go to funerals

[Mallowmarshmallow]

A while ago, m husband's auntie passed away and we attended her funeral. I didn't know her very well but found it very very upsetting. The grief of her lovely family was the saddest.

One of her daughter's said her partner hadn't attended as he finds funerals too upsetting and I was wondering if I could be one of those people....

I assume nobody enjoys funerals but I find them really upsetting. I'm wondering if I could be the sort of person who supports before and after but doesn't actually attend the funeral. I might manage my own parents....or I might not.....

I don't think I would feel like people weren't supporting me if they didn't come to the funerals of my nearest and dearest though. I think I would respect that they were remembering and mourning in their own ways and that support can be provided in other ways.

I don't know. If you're close enough to a person that you could offer genuine support before/after the funeral, then you're probably quite close, which means you really should be sucking it up and attending the funeral – it's a form of collective support that is obviously important to a lot of people.

If it's someone who you're not as close to (such as husband's aunt, for example!) then you have more of an excuse for not going (nobody will really miss you, after all), but you also have less chance to offer any other support outside the funeral, so... it's kind of a catch 22.

Personally I don't think I care of 1 or 100 people attend my funeral. Show me you love me while I'm alive rather than dead

People say this kind of thing a LOT but funerals are not about what the dead person wants! They are not about making the dead person feel better! They're about the family and loved ones of the person who has died, who are often going through one of the hardest times of their lives!

Unless it’s someone I knew well or a family member of a close friend I don’t tend to go either. It feels intrusive almost. I’m not going to have a funeral when I pop my clogs so maybe this also affects my feelings.

It's not about you. It's about showing the close family that their loved one was cared about. Sit up the back if you must but be there.

My husband’s ex didn’t go to either of his parents’ funerals. That formed part of the evidence when he divorced her for unreasonable behaviour.

I don't think I would feel like people weren't supporting me if they didn't come to the funerals of my nearest and dearest though. I think I would respect that they were remembering and mourning in their own ways and that support can be provided in other ways.

I think I would assume they just didn't want to put themselves out enough to come. The funeral is surely for the benefit of the people closest to the deceased person. I have always appreciated the number of people who turned up to funerals to show their support and so do other people I know. For that reasonI'll always make the effort to attend funerals - not for my own amusement but to offer a little bit of comfort to the close family and friends.

YABU
My mum didn’t speak to her brother for 20 years because he didn’t go to either of their parents funerals. He “doesn’t like funerals”.
No one does, you go to show respect and to comfort the bereaved.

Not speaking to people is what 4 year olds do... They were his parents as much as hers ValleyoftheHorses

Leaving the funeral to your sibling to deal on their own is unforgivable,don't think I'd be in the mood for much conversation either tbh!

when I am in a state of grief, 'hell is other people', and it is really the wake, and the requirement to be social, at a time when I need absolute and total privacy, that is most devastating

Even as someone who'd rather attend than not, I genuinely do get this; from experience, holding it together's made even harder when you're expected to console others for their grief. Fully understandable when they're close relatives/friends of course, but a bit much if you get a competitive griever like my exMIL, determined to make it all about them

Puzzledandpissedoff that's where I am. I go to support other people and it's fine. The funerals of the very old are fine, even when much loved. However if the raw grief were mine I wouldn't want to go. I would not want anyone I didn't live with to try to comfort me. I'd be afraid I'd explode with anger instead of responding "correctly".

She just couldn’t forgive him for not coming and leaving her to arrange it and go through it all on her own. Not much to talk about after that level of brotherly love is there?!
She had my Dad but that’s what people say about having siblings surely, that you are there for each other when parents die.
I think not going is a shit thing to do to your family and shows no respect for the deceased.

Thete is so much going on at funerals, and so much of it is about face, small talk, ritual and being heard saying the right thing and seen to behave in the expected way. It's a role which can be played if you're once removed from raw emotion but some kind of institutionalised social torture in the early stages of grief.

ValleyoftheHorses had something similar in my family, it's bloody awful.

It’s part of being an adult. All I wanted the morning of my mum’s funeral was to crawl under the duvet but I did what she brought me up to do - make myself look as presentable as I could, straighten my back, grit my teeth and get on with it. If she could manage it for my brother’s funeral, I could sure as hell do it for her.

Of course we must go to funerals, it's to support the family not about oneself. I was at my friend's dad's funeral yesterday, can think of plenty of other things I'd rather have done but was very pleased that I could support her. She was so grateful to us for being there, I was shattered when I got home but felt a profound sense of, I don't know, privilege sounds a bit sanctimonious but just happy to have made her day just a tiny bit more bearable.

I've only been to a few, and that was for immediate family members.

I find funerals an important part of the grieving process
Not everyone does though. I certainly don't, they're meaningless rituals (and a massive waste of money) to me. There seems to be an idea on mumsnet that everyone shouod think exactly the same way on this issue and anyone who doesn't is just being selfish.

When I worked in older adults mental health there was someone who got admitted to hospital with depression every time they went to a funeral, a few weeks later. It was a huge trigger. The consultant did prescribe no more funerals, because they felt it would be rude not to go, but getting older they were getting more frequent too.

I accept that society says I must attend funerals in order to support other people.

However my family want privacy and no funerals for any of us. So who would we have a funeral for? Not the deceased and not the main mourners so - for the neighbours? Given that "support" would be an unbearable burden why must the people who do feel the need for funerals trump the people who have no use for them?

Like I said, I accept I must attend.

@BenidormBlast

IMO funerals should be attended in the same way as weddings are, ie by close family and friends.

When I've been very upset at the loss of a close relative the last thing I want is to feel like there's an audience, with someone from 20 years ago 'paying their respects' or in fact having a nose.

It's like a badge of honour when people say 'oh the church was packed'. So what really??? It's who was there when they were alive that is far more important.

Agree with this.

I think it's nice to go to the funeral of a person you have known and cared about, (if you can,) as it is a sign of respect, and shows that you cared about that person. It should not be mandatory though, and people should not be made to feel bad if they don't wish to attend. There have been some pretty harsh comments on here, aimed at people who don't want to attend funerals, and these comments are well out of order.

What I have ZERO tolerance for, is people turning up at funerals of people they have had naff-all to do for 14-15 years or more. I have seen a few people turn up at a couple of funerals I have been to this past 3 years, (one family member and one neighbour,) who had had nothing to do with the 2 people who died since the early to mid 1990s. I thought what are they doing here? (A few other people thought that too.) They didn't bother with them when they were alive, why show they care now?

I have known a few people come to funerals of people they have had nothing to do with for 25-30 years plus, ignore most people there, and then leave when they realise they're not getting anything in the will!

What also pisses me off is people attending funerals of people they don't even know and have never met! Several women who live 5-10 minutes walk from me, go to EVERY funeral at our local Church, and although it's a free country, (and they are allowed,) it baffles me.

How can you mourn someone you have never met? And how can you mourn someone you have had naff-all to do with for a quarter of a century? You obviously didn't give a shit about them when they were alive, so why pretend you care now they're dead?

And as for the 'they are showing respect for the family left' comments.... Why? When close family members of mine died, the last thing I wanted was someone from the past who had had fuck-all to do with them (OR me) for 25 years, feigning interest, and smothering me with their 'competitive grieving,' and faux mourning.

I definitely don't want fake mourners and 'competitive grievers' at my funeral, and I don't care if there is only 20 people there. As the poster above said, it seems to be some badge of honour when the Church (or Crem hall) is 'packed to the rafters' and 300 people turn up. Yet I bet (in most cases,) 70% or more of those people had naff-all to do with that person (OR their family,) when they were alive.

I have known a few people come to funerals of people they have had nothing to do with for 25-30 years plus, ignore most people there, and then leave when they realise they're not getting anything in the will!

Do they read the will publicly at the funeral? I've never heard of that happening although I understand that cultures differ.

I just think sometimes you have to suck it up. Some events are miserable/awkward/soppy etc and you have to feel that thing then move on. So many people avoid feeling things now. I think that’s actually more unhealthy than the occasional strong emotion.

fox I completely agree. Quite frankly unless you have been around the deceased within the past year of their life why bother at the funeral - too late surely? I've been shamed into attending funerals of people I hadn't met. I had nothing at all to contribute and don't know how my presence was supposed to have helped anyone. I'm not doing it anymore unless I feel that I will mourn the person's death, how can I if I've never met them?

But funerals aren't miserable and upsetting. They are solemn, and of course the mourners will cry, but ultimately I think they are mostly uplifting. Tears shouldn't be confused with misery.

Guaranteed the eulogy will mention things you never knew about the departed. At the end, the departed leaves to a better p[lace (you would like to think), and his nearest and dearest are comforted by the presence of friends and family, and the collective memories shared at the wake.

I think a funeral really marks the end of the real grief, and the start of the healing process. IMO

I think it's very possible to be upset about the death of someone that you haven't seen for many many years.

As a child I spent a lot of time with some cousins, because the grown ups were visiting each other and the children obviously came too. But we weren't close enough to stay in contact as adults ourselves. We had little in common aside from being related. They were lovely people but we weren't close as adults. When one of them died at a very young age it was still upsetting. I didn't weep and mourn and wail and cry, because by that stage I didn't really know him. I didn't know his likes and dislikes, his hopes for the future etc. But I did know how much fun we had had as children, building dens and climbing trees. I went to his funeral and I hugged my aunt and uncle (who I did still see) and I said I was sorry, that it was a tragedy. Which it was. I didn't wail and expect them to comfort me (I didn't wail at all, because why on earth would I?). I didn't actually meet his wife because she didn't know who I was and it wasn't the time to come and introduce myself. She was being comforted by her own family. But if I hadn't gone to that funeral, his parents would never have forgiven me. As indeed they have never forgiven one of my siblings who was 'busy' that day. And I wouldn't blame them at all.