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.....

thigh "This sounds awful but as I don't want support, I don't want to give it either."

It doesn't sound awful at all. I had someone who dad would barely remember telling me "I'm finding your father's death very difficult" and it took all my resources not to say "go tell a counsellor - it's fucking rude to tell me that".

Are the people who don't go to funerals because 'it's all too much' frightened of their own mortality.

I'm going to die - though not particularly soon I hope. Realistically I'll probably have three more decades left. I'll hope to be cared for by kind people - possibly paid carers - but also with some input from friends and family towards the end of life. I would also hope that friends and family will want to come together after I'm dead, at a service, because I had some significance for them and they want to share their feelings.

I don't want a direct cremation witnessed by a stranger. I hope that I am worth more than that.

(I'm the descendant of Holocaust victims and there have been quite enough depersonalised industrialised deaths in the past.)

thigh

oh I hadn't even thought about transport for a direct cremation.

when I watched my father being loaded on to the conveyor belt, it really hit home that there just billions of us on a conveyor belt...this is what I have always thought though, I don't have DC or anything.

so I'm not sure I want to watch mum get on the conveyor belt either.

the crem were as respectful as they could be about it, but even then, it was like "oh look, the endless fucking rounds of humanity".

my memory box and photos give me comfort. There was no comfort at all in a funeral. I also realised I have no note of the eulogy as I ended up scribbling it on a piece of paper, no idea where that is.

@RosaWaiting: obviously we are all different and what gives us comfort will also be different. I can only speak for myself, planning my parents' funerals gave me a lot of comfort.

We knew my mother was dying (cancer) and I remember asking her if she wanted any particular hymns at her funeral. She said 'oh you know what I like'. She was right. I put a lot of thought into choices of music, readings, coffin, flowers, what she would wear, and into writing the eulogy which gave me something positive to focus on.

I had a very strong feeling during the service that she was looking down on us and nodding approvingly. That also gave me a huge amount of comfort.

The same was true of my father, whose death was sudden and unexpected. We chose some of his favourite pieces of music including the one open on his piano, which must have been the last thing he ever played. The flowers on his coffin included herbs and flowers from his garden.

@clairemcnam: I don't see that celebrating someone's life is incompatible with grieving, though sometimes people want to separate the two with a quiet funeral followed by a memorial service a few months later. That seems less common these days though.

My mother in law (in her 90s) has planned her funeral already, so I know that will be what she wants. She has left strict instructions that no one is to wear black and all the hymns she has chosen are jolly ones.

I quite like everyone wearing black, I want people to be sad at my funeral not bloody happy tbh.

I don't. Life goes on.

Yes I like people wearing black too. Yes life goes on, but the funeral is a short space to acknowledge grief. Because generally people do not want to acknowledge grief and instead want you to feel better soon.

@Blueblindsarefine

🤣🤣-I've told my friends that when I die they need to wear black and look sad for the day-then get on with living life 🥂🥂

Life doesn't go on for some bereaved people sadly, they may continue to exist but not life as we would call it.

Passtherioja that sounds like a good idea!

I don't like funerals probably because the first one I ever went to was my own father's when I was 13 and it was a pretty awful experience. Since then I've been to 3 grandparents funerals and a smattering of others and I always find them difficult because they remind me of my Dad, not because I'm upset for the person who has died.

Incidentally my dad was cremated and for years I had a nightmare about him not actually being dead and waking up in the coffin while it was burning. I think I saw it in a Bond movie and it still gives me the shivers.

I've never been to a cremation, so I've only seen it on TV, and I must admit I hate the look of that conveyor belt, heading into a curtain type thing. I think I might find that bit upsetting, much more than an 'ordinary' funeral.

I think we are often quite removed from death and reluctant to acknowledge it. I don’t think that does us any favours. Funerals are hard, but they are healthy. I think to hide away from them is a mistake.

Isabella great name and book btw, the last two I've been to, the coffin didn't move whilst the congregation were still in the chapel.

We asked for the coffin to be left until after the congregation had gone. Most people do these days.

I hate the coffin being left. I had this in a recent funeral and it was horrible walking out of the crematorium leaving the person I cared about still there.
Most funerals I have been to at a crematorium do the curtain closing thing. I much prefer that.

The last funeral I went to was my grandma's. Family only at the crem, then a service of thanksgiving at her church. I knew it was so important for me to go and see all the extended family, share stories etc. However I do find coffins really difficult to deal with. At the end of the ceremony at the crem, when everyone went up to touch the coffin to say goodbye, I left as to me she wasn't there, she had already gone. I have no idea if there was a conveyor belt or not, I couldn't bear to look. That side seems macabre to me.

However, this may well be my fear of my own mortality coming out.

Most funerals I have been to at a crematorium do the curtain closing thing.

At a funeral in Cardiff some years ago, we were warned that the curtain mechanism was faulty, so not to worry if they suddenly started opening or closing during the service... I was a bit disappointed that they didn't play up at all.

I left as to me she wasn't there

I remember that feeling at my dad's wake. Kept going in to sit with him and 'keep him company' but the man lying in the coffin didn't look like him at all. He had shrunk for starters...My six year old found it really comforting to go and sit and chat to him though. The hardest bit of the whole thing was when I had to leave the room whilst they put the lid on the coffin and I knew I'd never see him again. The funeral was a walk in the park in comparison.

Yes, seeing my father's dead body showed to me that a body alone doesn't make the person. It looked like him, but it wasn't him, it was missing something. And the part which was missing is still with me, I still talk to him in my head, even though it's been the best part of two decades.

I don't suppose anybody actually enjoys them. You go to show your support for the family.
Having said that, some are certainly more upsetting than others. The funeral of someone old who's had a good long life is one thing, the funeral of someone younger who's been cruelly cut off by disease or accident is quite another. But in the latter case showing your support for the grieving family is perhaps even more important.

I have found the funeral of a young person cut off by a cruel disease very harrowing, but there was no way we would not have gone, especially given how infinitely harder it would have been for his family,

Reminds me of people who don't go to visit their sick loved ones because they 'don't like hospitals'.

I've been to the funerals of a couple of people who lived to advanced ages - 102 and 97. What's often particularly sad then is that after people have lived a very long full life, that there are relatively few people to say goodbye to them. Their friends, their siblings, their life partners have died before them. If contemporaries have survived they may be very frail indeed and unable to travel.

I was extremely grateful to those who attended my late father-in-law's funeral. I also have no problem with those who have only a relatively slight acquaintance with the bereaved. A friend of my daughter's wanted to come along. She didn't know my father-in-law hugely well but certainly had talked to him on various visits to our house. I think coming along helped her to deal with the death of her own grandmother a few months before.

It seems to me that as a society we are becoming extraordinarily selfish. Funerals are a time when we look at our own connectedness with others. It's a pity that some people can't or won't do this. But I'm glad that most of us do think it's important.

My mums funeral was actually an amazingly cathartic experience following her truly ghastly death from a vicious evil cancer. It was packed- I met friends of hers I'd not seen since I left home years before plus everyone from her small village that formed my childhood memories. The wake was just an emotional drunken mess of tears and laughs.

However my brother didn't attend- he didn't attend our grandparents either. And I'm not going to judge him for that.