Who would come to your funeral if you died?

[Happygoluckydespiteitall]

Having a few health issues, very scary by themselves but also as could indicate something else life limiting - hoping not but have a few dark moments wondering about my own mortality.

Got me wondering really about what would happen if I died. Before a procedure I was really nervous about, DP was instructed I want to be cremated if the worst happens.

I don't live in my home country, and have not for a long time. Honestly I don't think anyone would really notice if I died beyond a couple of family members? I think it would probably slowly filter round to old friends on Facebook and for some reason I find that a bit depressing.

My brain just doesn't compute how anyone would even know if I died, friends from the past etc. My DP only knows a few of my friends, we all live spread out, nobody would travel to a funeral for me. Weird because where I am from, funerals are A Thing and are a way of saying goodbye to the person. Tbh my family probably wouldn't even come here - too far and expensive.

I think what it brings home to me is, I'm not part of a community? So there would be no funeral really - hopefully not for a long time anyway!

Who would come to your funeral?

Just bury or bum me

Properly snorted at this

It's really interesting to see the range of opinions. I'm not dwelling, and hopefully it's not something I do need to consider yet, but when things happen to you that make you confront how much time you might have left these thoughts come up.

I think I find it odd that if I were to die there would be so many people I'd have liked to speak to again. And I was feeling odd that if none came to the funeral, well it was weird that the last time I spoke to them I wouldn't be aware that was the last time.

But of course I am forgetting that it doesn't really matter because at your own funeral you are dead so it doesn't exactly serve as a time to get a last catch up with people anyway.

It's just so weird, to think one day - we will all shuffle off the mortal coil. By the very nature of it there will be lots of last conversations we have with others, not realising that will be the last time.

I do have a good social network and a large family but have said to my DH I dont want any fuss or expense. Funerals are expensive enough so either donate my body or cheap cardboard box funeral, cremation then ashes wherever. I'm dead I dont know and I hate funerals anyway. Of course they can do what feels right for them at the time. I dont need a lavish funeral, it wont matter to me. Its important how we are treated in life. When my brother died age 28 suddenly it was such an expense for my parents, not that they minded of course and the funeral and wake after was torture. Hated watching his coffin go behind the curtain just as much as I would have hated burying him. I would have liked to have kept his ashes at home with me but I went with what parents wanted. My friends mum passed away she went off to the crem by herself. We had a service for her and then a get together back at her house. That was less stressful all round and just what she wanted. Her ashes were scattered with her father's in a garden. Of course we all want to feel we will be missed and I hope I will be but I dont believe in alot of fuss being made at the funeral x

"You sound like you would like more of a network around you, is there anything you can do to build this?"

People you know from work and church would go to a local funeral, but would they travel? That's the issue for anyone not living in the town where they grew up or the place where they'll be buried.

"So assuming my parents are arranging my funeral, I guess it would just be family and family friends. "

They'd put a notice in the paper wouldn't they and then anyone who saw that would inform others.

" I think it very unfair on families to have to put a brave face on and encounter (let's face it) 'randomers' on such a monumentally emotional and private day."

How odd. You don't have to put a brave face on, it's completely acceptable to cry and be sad at funerals. Even if some strangers turn up, most of the people there would be people who cared about you. For some it's a private day, others don't see it that way. For many families, people showing up to pay their respects is a big help.

"But nobody bothered to visit/make contact! It was an eye opener that's for sure-particularly for those who I have supported in other ways."

Maybe they weren't sure if they'd be welcome or didn't know how to ask, rather than not caring about you.

Maybe and in all fairness, when you're that ill, you can't cope with visitors. Can't speak for everyone of course, but I felt lonely, ill and afraid during that time and I would have appreciated cards from friends or an email? Like I have done for the same friends over the years.
I just think some people are very wrapped up in themselves and won't put themselves at risk of being asked to get 'involved' with supporting a sick person (I personally wouldn't have done that) but might attend a funeral out of how it might look for them if they didn't iyswim.

My parents moved to a village and shortly afterwards my grandmother relocated to sheltered housing close by. She died a couple of years afterwards, not having made many contacts in the village, since she was pretty much housebound. My parents, though, had a wide circle of acquaintance by then. So, come my grandmother's smallish 'family' funeral in the parish church, half the women from the church choir quietly slipped in at the back and gave the hymns some considerable welly. Which I think was a lovely thing for them to have done.