To not go to funerals

[AtlanticStar]

Happy Sunday to you all. Sadly, several people close to me have died in the last few years (some quite a bit younger) and two others are close to death. Sorry if this sounds morbid. I made the decision a while ago to not go to a funeral again (except DH's and he doesn't want one). A younger fried died, and I didn't go.

Would you judge me harshly for doing this, or do you feel it's personal choice and many want to remember the person as they were. How much would it bother you if someone close to you died and a relative or friend didn't attend.

This isn't about not wanting to be upset. I really don't want a funeral myself, but I'm not sure you can even 'get out of them'.

I have no idea if I'm BU. Can you help please?

Yes @VoltaireMittyDreamsomeone upthread doesn’t attend funerals because they don’t serve any purpose for her…found that quite jaw-dropping but don’t have the energy for a big fight tonight 🤣

I mean…it’s an hour out of your life maybe a dozen or so times…to do something good for a bereaved person. I don’t get all this ‘boundaries’ shit which this feels very similar to in tone.

There are lots of things in life that we don’t have to do. Help someone if they’ve dropped something, hold open a door but they are part of the social contract and some people aren’t selfish cunts and put other people’s needs before their own.

I think what irks me is the insistence on having one’s cake and eating it: I don’t want to go to funerals because there’s nothing in it for me and I expect to be recognised as a better / smarter / more genuine person than anyone who does attend funerals.

What is this if not narcissism?

ridiculous but ultimately irrelevant, out-dated notions like kindness and empathy?

One of the most hurtful things my mother did was not attending my DH's funeral, it was the final nail in an already damaged relationship. I needed her that day and she was nowhere to be seen, for that reason I would always try to go to the funeral of someone who was dear to me.

@AtlanticStar

“Something else - I remember an old friend (Welsh) telling me that back in the day women weren't allowed to go to funerals.”

well, why didn’t you say sooner!? But of course, you should never attend another funeral ever again! None of us women should!

I’m Welsh and I’m familiar with the tradition of women not attending funerals. My paternal grandmother didn’t go to her husband’s funeral, she was in her 40’s when he died. More difficult for me to understand is that she didn’t go to her son’s funeral, he was a teenager when he died. My dad went to the funeral with his dad, his mother wasn’t there to comfort him. The funeral procession started at her house and she watched the coffin depart up the road to the chapel. When she died I found pictures of the funeral that someone else must have taken for her. The internment, the coffin arriving at the chapel.

The first real death in my family that I remember was my maternal grandad dying when I was about 18. We all went to the funeral apart from my paternal grandmother. She was at the house to watch us all leave for the funeral but didn’t come with us. But, for weeks after the funeral she was at my maternal gran’s house every morning when she got up, and every night for a few hours before she went to bed. She cooked for her and did her washing. I suppose she understood, from her own experience of grief at losing her husband many years before, what my grandmother would need beyond her presence at the funeral.

I think sometimes the tradition isn’t about not doing something, but about doing something bigger than that, supporting the grieving after the crowds have gone.

There are lots of things in life that we don’t have to do. Help someone if they’ve dropped something, hold open a door but they are part of the social contract and some people aren’t selfish cunts and put other people’s needs before their own

Choosing not to prioritise other people's feelings 100% of the time does not make anyone a "selfish cunt".

ridiculous but ultimately irrelevant, out-dated notions like kindness and empathy?

Those notions are neither ridiculous nor outdated. Opting not to attend an optional funeral is no indication someone lacks kindness or empathy.

A "half rate wellness influencer"? What's that. I'm sorry, I can't agree with you. Why is someone obligated to go to a funeral? I wouldn't want those people at my funeral. Why is that 'selfish'? I've never said I'm trying to get out of the 'hard' things in life. Been to plenty of funerals in the past. I've come to the conclusion that it's fine to not go again. I just hadn't thought about it properly before.

Exactly, huge medal and a balloon for you, for using your superior thinking to not attend funerals when it would be appreciated by the bereaved.

As if the rest of us are too thick to know better.

I’m 54 and have never been to a funeral. A few times I couldn’t attend for valid reasons — grandmother died during pandemic, for instance. But now I feel differently. I just don’t want to go to one. Ever. And will be specifying not having one myself.

I think this is about supporting your friend.

I vividly remember two of my mum's friends showing up for my grandmother's funeral. It wasn't about their relationship with the deceased, they were there for my mum. I mentioned my gratitude to one of them recently, about 30 years after the event.

As PP said, if someone loses someone close and they invite you, it means they would like you to be there and it would be a kindness to go.

Edited because I've just seen your latest posts where you've said the reason you don't want to go is because you hate the person. Well then don't go then. I think this is quite a different proposition from how most of us interpreted your original post.

Well, but you understand that nobody wants to, and yet we do because it’s a kind altruistic act to do for someone in our lives who we presumably care about to some degree or other?

This whole ‘nahhh they’re just not for me’ is the height of solipsism.

Ok, if you say so.

Yes. This is exactly the tradition I was born into and imbued with - both the non-attendance at the funeral (though often the provision of the tea afterwards) and the value of supporting the grieving after the crowds have gone.

Well I do @WellConfusedandDazed

Do you genuinely not care that it might hurt people you care about, if you don’t show up on one of the most difficult days of their lives?

Im really not goading, it’s just very different to how I think of it.

I’ve obviously had several people close to me die but no immediate family members. I think there is another perspective which is that funerals are burdensome to arrange, at an already awful time, a huge expense, and not that personal anymore because many people are not religious. I’ve listened to friends talk about how awful arranging it was, they hated the funeral etc. I feel like I was there for them, even without attending, and no one has cut me off or been dramatic because I didn’t attend a funeral. My father stopped going to them as well, years ago. My DH’s father did not have a funeral (his request) and my DH was relieved. i’m not going to argue with you — if you think it’s selfish and self-centred that’s fair enough but I just don’t Think that they are the big opportunity to be there for someone that you think they are.

OP, you are not being unreasonable.

You can ‘get out of’ having a funeral by prepaying for a non-service disposal, i.e. direct burial or cremation. You can specify in your Will that your estate is not to be used to pay for a service or ‘wake’.

I have told my closest relatives I will be doing this and how I would like them to dispose of my ashes. They have laughed and promised to undertake my wishes.

I have also told them I will not be attending any more funeral services.

I think the best position is ‘never apologise, never explain. After a lifetime of doing what other people want me to do, expect me to do, criticise me for my reasons for not doing, etc. etc. I am going to do what I think is right. No more guilt, obligation, duty.

@VoltaireMittyDream none of this is what I think. I've never said there's nothing in it for me. I would never expect a funeral to be fun and I certainly don't believe I am better / smarter than anyone else for choosing not to go.

Do you recognise that plenty of people on this thread have also said they don't or won't go to funerals and have given various reasons for it? Reasons that all have merit to me. Are they self-serving narcissists.

I only came on to ask AIBU and I'm quite happy for you to tell me that you think I am BU. I value your opinion. But it seems as if someone has an opinion different than your own, they have suddenly become a narcissist. I get it. You think I ABU.

@AmyDuPlantier "Superior thinking"? Really. Who actually said that on this thread? No-one. How do you know it would be "appreciated by the bereaved"?Do you know the bereaved in my situation? Are you really that upset that I, and others, on this thread have thought about it and decided it's not for us. Who has accused you of being "too thick"?

@WellConfusedandDazed yes, I think this is true and I hadn't considered the organisation side of it. You didn't want to go. No-one cut you off. No-one got dramatic about it. Your father presumably stopped going for a reason. Do you think he was a narcissist?

I just said that to give an example that there are, and were, all kinds of reasons some people wouldn't attend a funeral. Like, you literally couldn't. It's not a one size fits all. Of course you should go to a funeral as a woman - if that's the right decision for you.

You haven't explained why you won't go? I generally go to support the family of the deceased so feel not going is a bit selfish. But I'm Irish, go to many many funerals. And unless it is someone close I don't find them personally distressing, though I feel great sympathy for the bereaved of course.

I am just pulling out certain elements of discourse on this thread, not making blanket statements about anyone who’s ever chosen not to go to a funeral for whatever reason.

Some posters have said they find funerals pointless; others have given the opinion that people who go to funerals are being ‘performative’. Yet others have set up a false dichotomy between people who attend funerals, and people who offer ongoing support to the bereaved, seemingly unable to understand that most people do both things - it’s not either or.

I’m hearing you say that there is one particular funeral you don’t want to go to because of a difficult relationship with the deceased. That makes total sense to me. I also get it when people say they are traumatised by funerals. Fair enough!

What I don’t get is the decision just not to go to any funerals ever, because one don’t like them or see the point - accompanied by the stubborn insistence that there is no point, and that any bereaved person whose feelings are hurt by this are, as one poster expressed, clearly not grieving well enough if they’re able to notice who’s turned up. It’s a total failure to understand that other people’s feelings are not wrong or stupid if they’re different from yours.

Yes we all have free will, we can have our own boundaries, nobody is obliged to do anything they don’t want to in a free society etc - but we also need to live with the consequences of our choices, which may be that some people feel hurt by us, or think we’re a twat.