To hate that funerals take place weeks after the death?

[Bloodybrambles]

I have the funeral of a parent this week. They had organised every part of their funeral and as their death was expected, there wasn’t no postmortem. However, between the funeral directors, the church and the crematorium, the earliest date we could have was just under a month.

As my parent had been ill for quite a few months, I had to put life on hold just incase that I was needed/having to do a trips back to my home town. Also didn’t feel in the mood to be living life normally with everything going on.

Life in this country continues after death, back to work, kids needs to be parented, trips to the bowling alley etc. Can’t say life is completely back to normal but I’ve made peace with them passing and it’s no longer consuming my thoughts constantly. I know I’ll never be 100% back to normal but I feel like I’ve been happy again this last week or so. I’ve been singing along to the radio again.

What I feel like I’m dreading is the funeral. I feel like it’s picking at a wound that’s started to heal. My parent wanted a very traditional funeral, no expense spared, very somber, no ‘celebration of life’ type affair. DH says what they’ve asked for is completely normal, for people to be sad and mourn for them.

I’m just rambling now, but I wish we could have had this in the first week. I’ve already had to make peace to continue waking up everyday for my family. I don’t want to grieve again, especially in a very public, and ceremonial type affair.

I know I have to put on my big girl pants and go. This isn’t about me. But if I could choose to have a 24 hour bug I’d take it.

For people who can't believe that ordinary cremations can require a long wait:

Population: in the 1970s only 12-13% of the population was aged over 70, now it's more like 20% and the population has grown, so there are many more people requiring a crematorium. All those boomers! (I am a boomer, by the way). It also appears from a quick google that getting planning permission for a new crematorium can be difficult. New ones need to be sited a distance from housing. Local residents don't want the traffic and potential air quality concerns.

Many, many people will only accept an 11am-2pm spot to enable people coming from a distance to get there and back. If the services are scheduled every 45 minutes, that means there are around 28 prime slots in a week. If there aren't many crematoria in an area with a reasonably big population you may have to wait longer. Some crematoria used to (don't know about now) shut for staff to have lunch. Some are open limited hours. My local one offers slots from 9.30-3.15 four days a week and the last slot is 2.30 on a Friday.

If you want your vicar/ priest/ celebrant to preside at the crematorium, you may have to wait — particularly during the winter when more deaths occur. The vicar I spoke to when my aunt died in January said I was the third person that day to contact him regarding a funeral, and that January and February are always his peak months. June, July and August are peak wedding. Remember that some people who've not been to church for decades will still anticipate having a vicar or priest preside at their funeral. Vicars and priests normally have responsibility for several churches/ parishes.

The Jewish and Muslim communities often have their own separate cemeteries (for burial, not cremation) and facilities and, being a much smaller population, with cultural expectations of speedy burials, have developed processes to move more swiftly.

My DH died in December. He didn’t want a funeral and I’m so grateful for that. I know some people need a funeral for “closure” but as a family we don’t.

I’ve also opted for direct cremation. My family are fine with that.

For Jews and Moslems a prompt burial is mandated by their faith

Couldn't believe the wait for a most basic cremation of my mother. It just drags it out. Grief does not stop,with the funeral but the enforced delay for funerals adds to the stress and can intensify grief

I was offered a date 3 weeks after my dad died. The funeral director blamed the cemetery and the church. Basically everyone said it was someone else causing the delay. I took matters into my own hands, spoke to the cemetery and church and made a pest of myself. I got it moved forward by 2 weeks.

A long wait is just awful.

A pp said that they had to wait 10 days for the death certificate, so how are certain religions able to have the funeral after 2 days without one?

@Bloodybrambles sorry for your loss. I think everyone is different and there is no one size fits all for grief and bereavement.

There was a very long gap between the death of my parent and their funeral for very specific reasons. I won't say how long as it could be identifying but it was well over 2 months.

I was really really glad because it gave me time to get used to the shock of it and to move into a state where I was capable of preparing a eulogy and being able to read it with love and without being unable to do it because of racking sobs.

I also liked the feeling of knowing that they were still 'here' as it were prior to the funeral which helped me.

It was all so helpful for me that I would be the exact opposite of you and say 'Isn't it terrible that some funerals take place within such a few weeks or days of a death'? For me months++ was a really big part of helping the grieving process.

The funeral is important and if you want to read something or speak of your love, being able to do that to the standard you want publicly does (at least for me it did) help the grief. I would recommend it as healing. I think it must be horrible if you would like to speak in honour of your parent or loved one but don't or can't because it's too soon and you can't manage it.

I do understand though that people are different

For me I would really commend a longer delay as it really helped me.

They're not.

They also have to wait for the death cert. So, if they don't get it in time, their funeral is equally delayed. But the bits after that are quicker because their religious leaders work things out differently. And culturally the communities are set up to deal with this quickly.

A pp said that they had to wait 10 days for the death certificate, so how are certain religions able to have the funeral after 2 days without one?

Most hospitals have a 'quick release' (sorry definitely not the correct term) system where the body can be released for faith and cultural reasons for a 24 hour/48 hour burial.

This is an example of a hospital's policy on this but they all have them.

https://secure.library.leicestershospitals.nhs.uk/PAGL/Shared%20Documents/Deceased%20Urgent%20Certification%20and%20Release%20Outside%20Normal%20Hours%20UHL%20Policy.pdf

My grandmother died in a nursing home on Friday evening (years ago). Nobody comes to pick up the body before Monday. And the doctor of the nursing home signs death certificates only on fridays. The city she lived in only does burials 2 days a week on Thursday and Saturday. Most extended family lives elsewhere so they wanted the funeral to be on a Saturday so in a city of 200 000+ people the Saturdays are really busy. So yeah, it took forever.

It’s horrendous, OP. I come from a country where the funeral takes place a few days after the death, and I think that’s so much better.

I prefer the longer time, it gives me more chance to ease the unstoppable waves of emotion to actually cope around people.

The fact that other religions can organise it faster shows that YANBU

Agree - my dad died a couple of years ago and it was 3 weeks before the funeral. The delay was getting a crematorium slot, there is obviously limited availability and not enough slots. A new crematorium is being built not far from me as they clearly need to expand capacity. It never used to be like this, I do remember there was a delay with my granddad because he died late in the evening on the thursday before Good Friday, so we couldn't even get a death certificate until the Tuesday, but I think the funeral was maybe the Monday after that.

A friend's mother died in Ireland just before Christmas on a Friday, she was buried the following Tuesday.

I've only read OP's posts.

Is this your first experience of deep grief (parent, sibling)? I don't mean to patronise you, but over the years I have learnt how grief impacts me, that as hard as it is, and that all the waiting seems to compound it, it is part of a process.

It is normal to dread the funeral, and I agree, waiting all this time gives room to ruminate.

Your grief will continue after the funeral obviously, but I do think you will feel a sense of relief, your shoulders dropping, not 'closure' but a movement to the next stage. The limbo between death and funeral is awful, and I know now that once it's behind me I will feel a bit better.

They also have to wait for the death cert. So, if they don't get it in time, their funeral is equally delayed

and the crematorium charge for the delay - somewhere in the region of £300

I love your humour OP. You'll be grand. It won't be fun but something tells me you'll be OK. Take care and keep looking for the laughs.

Sorry for your loss, the wait is the hardest part. You need to do what's best for you.m

Funerals are taking about 17 days in my area.

My only experience of direction cremation is a friend, it's an odd experience. His sister struggled with it and this was compounded when they kept tinging up to say he'd been transferred here, there and everywhere. It wasn't a pleasant time gir her hut hopefully not all experiences are like that.

My mum was bullied into signing my dad's death certificate even though I pointed out it was incorrect. She was threatened with legal action, not very helpful for a 75 year old who's just lost her husband of 54 years. It was the day after he died there was time to sort it but the pressure was horrendous. The hospital wrote a letter but that wasn't accepted by GRO so when we told the hospital they helpfully just told us to send the letter with instructions of what'd we'd already done. The certificate has never been corrected as a result so it says he had prostate cancer when he didn't. It's incredibly unfair to put family me,bers under such duress when they didn't make the mistake. After seeing my mum being bullied into signing the documentation, we were handed the certificates. I was feeling pretty pissed off now, I'd sat with my dad as he died the day before and just seen my mum bullied. I took the certificates and handed them back, there was banding on the print which made it harder to read. They were replaced after some huffing and puffing about it. I was very much in the not my problem mood when she said the printer was to blame snd its going to cause me some extra work. Surely if your printing legal documents you make sure before hand that the printers working. The irony is there's an edit on his birth and marriage certificate.

Not able to organise a piss up in a brewery. The country, not the OP.

Most of the Europe is 1-4 days after death. Two weeks in the uk.

Pathetic.

Why are you so incapable? Of everything?

Gosh that's very difficult. My mam was buried within two days of her death. It feels shockingly quick at the time but it does give you time to process and start picking up the pieces of your life.

Not necessarily. It’s just as likely a person will go to a funeral home as be laid out at home. Just depends on the wishes of the family.

Find the wait in the UK utterly bizarre as my norm is that the funeral is within days of the death. We had family pass seay in the UK this year and was 4 weeks to the day for the funeral

If you want your vicar/ priest/ celebrant to preside at the crematorium, you may have to wait — particularly during the winter when more deaths occur
But you shouldn't have too, people die all over the world and countries manage to respect the dead and the family by organising a quick funeral.
It is inhuman that loved ones wait weeks.
That the deceased is stored. Just awful that a rich developed country like England cannot manage it.

It's awful to have to wait, it just prolongs the unsettling misery. It's a month round here but when my FIL died 10 years ago it was only a week's wait. No idea what's changed. The crematorium has been enlarged so maybe it's lack of staff or something.

The religious institutions perform some of the last rites if there is no one commercially to do it. Our local Mosque had volunteers preparing bodies during covid and transporting bodies, as undertakers could not do it fast enough. If you have these things done, all you need is for the cemetery to use the small bulldozer to dig up a hole and lay the artificial turf and planks around it.

That is very unusual. I was given the death certificates the next day both times. And that was just a few years ago.
I know though if there is a post mortem it can take far longer.