Was I wrong to attend memorial

[EugenieGreen]

Last year one of my husband’s friends died. He’d been ill but his death was unexpected.

I don’t know if there was no funeral at all or whether it was private.

He and his wife came to our wedding and he was an usher but it was the first time I had met her.

Over the years I would meet him in passing and maybe her two or three times, most significantly at DH’s cousin’s wedding where we were on the same table.

DH saw his wife occasionally.

Lovely couple who were good company.

On Friday there was a memorial at a church followed by a reception.

The church had no pews but seats. When we got there there were names on seats and mine wasn’t there.

I sat at the back with three others who also didn’t have assigned seats. There were also tourists sitting at the back.

We went to the reception after and there was a guest list which I wasn’t on. My name was taken but I was allowed in. I saw one of the others from the back of the church there too.

The widow approached me and recognised me but said she didn’t know that I knew her husband that well.

Accommodation was made for me because someone didn’t turn up.

My DH’s sister-in-law and the wife and husband of the two cousins didn’t turn up.

We had no idea it was so formal and DH can’t remember who the invitation was addressed to.

It would not occur to me not to accompany my husband to a funeral or memorial.

Would you have gone of am I completely mad?

You seem to have read a different version of the OP's two posts from everyone else. You also seem to have the worst possible view of human nature. The OP did nothing wrong at all. Her behaviour and her husband's were perfectly normal. It's standard to invite everyone present at a funeral or memorial to have refreshments afterwards. If you want to do things differently you make that clear in your invitation.

It's not normal to realise you weren't invited to a memorial and then try to blag the reception!

Her name wasn't on the guest list, she knew it wouldn't be because her name wasn't on the seat in church.

She shouldn't have risked putting the widow in an awkward position.

As it turned out, she was able to eat the meal of someone who didn't turn up, but that might not have been the case.

She should've just gone home instead of trying to get in.

A funeral is a public event, but this was a memorial service some time later - the OP mentions the funeral was last year. Personally, I would expect a memorial service to be 'invitation only' unless it explicitly said otherwise

He hadn’t ‘just died’ as it was a memorial, not the actual funeral. Memorials are usually held at least 6 months to a year afterwards, in my experience.

Also, here in Ireland, you don’t have to have known the deceased or his widow to attend a funeral. Generally, if you know one of the immediate family such as a sibling, aunty etc…or you’re a neighbour, that’s all that’s required and it’s generally thought better to attend than not to.

In my experience it's extremely unusual for the refreshments after a funeral or memorial to be a sit down meal. I wonder if OP's husband completely failed to register that this was a totally different event from the sort of memorial that happens not long after a private funeral. If his friend died last year, was this more of a 'One year on, I'll get a few special people together to remember him' event? Very odd that this wasn't communicated clearly to OP's husband, though.

Sounds like the invitation was not clear that it was a sit-down meal. If that had been clear I am sure that OP’s DH would have asked about OP when he sent his RSVP.

Churches are public places. Wakes are not.

I think it was fine to go to the memorial service but not to go a reception afterwards if you don't know the person well unless an open invitation is offered after the service which it often is.

The memorial is about celebrating the life of the deceased, (so not really about supporting the widow iyswim).

A formal sit down meal with specified numbers is usual if the immediate family are organising something quiet just for themselves but as non family members were clearly invited, then I’d expect some married partners to be invited too, and in this case, especially as the deceased was an usher at their wedding and they had attended some couple based occasions altogether.

If you flip that around and imagine that the deceased was a bridesmaid at the OP’s wedding, would you still argue that OP’s husband would not be automatically invited to attend the memorial?

That would be very inhospitable in my mind.

But that's the whole point. You found out you weren't invited to the memorial so why did you then proceed to go to the reception. This was wrong and quite rude IMHO.

I would say it applies to everything EXCEPT funerals and memorials. Guests lists? Seating plans in a church? It’s unheard of. You don’t ring a grieving spouse and check who is invited or ask ‘ok to bring my wife?’

When she said I didn’t know you knew him that well, I would have said ‘he was an usher at my wedding’.

Normally there's an announcement after the service along the line of "The family would like to invite you to join them at The Cask and Still on St Mary's St" and if that wasn't made, and particularly with the names on chairs, I'd probably just have made a plan to meet up with dh later on tbh.

I remember hearing Victoria Coren on a podcast talking about some professional funeral gatecrashers that her family managed to prank at her dad's memorial service. I am not accusing you of anything like this at all, you genuinely knew the man and simply misunderstood the (I would still say unusual) arrangements, but it does show you what some people will do: My dad's memorial service was going so well. Then the ghouls turned up | Celebrity | The Guardian

Did the invite get thrown out? Obviously it just had his name on it. I wouldn't worry about it though, obviously no offence was intended. I do think it's a little strange that neither of you noticed that your name wasn't on it.

I think the fact that she sent invitations was your clue here. I’ve never heard of such a formal memorial service but I’ve also never heard of someone sending out formal invitations.

Yes, but 'invitation' doesn't necessarily mean a formal printed invitation like a wedding invitation. It could have been a Whatsapp message.

I have to ask though, why did you go on to the reception once you’d been through the church service and seen that you obviously weren’t invited/expected?

The only memorial service I have been to was for a teacher when I was at school, who died in service. Numbers were restricted to staff and pupils only., but given the circumstances that was probably to be expected and then the wake was held at the school. (Boarding school- she lived on site. )

OP has explained that. Obviously she assumed, as I would have done, that the refreshments were going to be informal. I think her husband must have missed a message.

When we walked over to the reception and it became clear that my name wasn’t on the guest list I did hesitate but the person on the door didn’t make it a problem and simply added my name.

When looked into the adjoining room and saw that it was a sit down meal I again hesitated but at that point his widow came over.

True that it could’ve been a WhatsApp message, but ‘invitation’ made me think formal, paper. I’ve never been ‘invited’ to a funeral or memorial service - the time and date might be posted but I’ve never considered that an ‘invite.’ Might just be me.

After names on chairs at the service and the OP’s not being there, I would’ve thought that was a pretty clear message.

A funeral or memorial in church is public. It's highly unusual to have names on all but the front few seats, a bit controlling to be honest to place everyone. If the reception was formal with a seating plan you should have left at that point, again very unusual I've only ever known buffets and I organise funerals

It's a big help with things like this when everybody in the community knows the conventions and follows them. I get the impression that in Ireland there is total clarity about what will happen at a funeral, who should attend (just about everybody), who will be welcome at the refreshments (ditto), how quickly it will happen (very), etc.

In the UK it all seems far more fluid. In some communities, e.g. Orthodox Jewish, Muslim, it all happens very fast and the religious rituals define what everybody does. For the rest of us there's no longer any prescribed form so we all end up making it up on the hoof and then there's the possibility of other people misunderstanding.

When my Dad died last year my Mum was absolutely knocked for six by the whole thing but one thing we didn't have to worry about was what form the funeral should take, because she just said 'This is how things are normally done here' and we went with that. My Dad had left instructions too (about music and reading), so my brother and I just followed their lead. The funeral directors and the people from her church community all knew the form. The local pub, ditto. We put an announcement in the local paper and contacted relatives separately, and dozens and dozens of people turned up. It was actually really lovely.

And based on your update I think it's pretty odd she didn't assume you would be with your dh, they were obviously close. Perhaps she was trying to keep numbers down

So how did you hear about this memorial in the first place? Did your DH specifically receive an invite, and was it only addressed to him?

Generally I would say that you were absolutely the right level of acquaintance to go to a funeral/wake, and that even if you weren't it would be fine to accompany your husband. I've gone to friends' parents funerals to support them where I've barely met the parents.

So normally I'd think you were completely fine, but because this sounds like such an unusual arrangement depending on how you were told about it and what you knew (e.g. did you know the wake would be a sit down dinner in advance?) then I might have checked

In our culture, funerals are for everyone to attend. They are open door. The more the merrier. It shows the person had a good life and touched many.