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Always go to the funeral (2005)

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Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#121

Post by wvlia5 »

throwaway346434 wrote: post #96
litenboll wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shared your opinion until I attended my first funeral as an adult. They are very important for the grieving process, at least to me. That doesn't mean much money needs to be spent, I've only been to scaled down funerals where there's a short ceremony and a meal afterwards.

Eh. For children of less than stellar parents, a funeral is: - A bad person gets celebrated in a way that is not aligned to your understanding - A bunch of people who don't know about the less than stellar bits offering what feels like performative grief - Others who enabled the less than stellar bits angry their applecart has been upset, looking to lash out at a scapegoat. Obviously not everyone has this negative ex…

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Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#122

Post by Blemokolo »

wvlia5 wrote: post #119
Tistron wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a strong example of what happens often. We have an impulse from what I will call our authenticity and we decline and suppress it because of some sort of fear. As I've learned to pay attention to this, I've found that it always leads to slight disconnection, and following instead tends to lead to more connection and aliveness. Every time we avoid the alive impulse is a failure of sorts, but usually we don'…

Interesting. Do you think this other thing might be related? I usually supress emotions in order to perform, solve problems. I ignore all frustration, sadness, boredom and just focus or executing the steps to solve the current problem. Convinced that good performance is what leads to good quality of life. It's like the kid who jumps and cries around the father saying "I want to play". The father ignores him and says…

[dead]

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#123

Post by soco »

anal_reactor wrote: post #98
hombre_fatal wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with social events. All my life, I always get this last second resistance to going, yet I'm always glad I went. The reasons my brain comes up with for why I shouldn't go are just lies. Just go. And take what you can get while the opportunities are still coming.

That's bad advice to always go to social events. I tried to follow it in order to expand my social circle, but I ended up staying in places that sucked, with people I didn't like. I try to dedicate some effort to tell whether I actually want to attend or not, and then follow through. I follow my gut, but never change my mind after making the decision.

Of course if the only offer you get is places who suck and people you don't like, it's a bummer. Although I don't think the OP meant that - going for going's sake. In a hypothetical situation when the place would be just okay and the people too, some people's brains (mine too) tend to say "meh don't bother, nothing stellar gonna happen anyway". That is the impulse we ought to fight: don't save yourself for exceptional events, but be surprised by the small pleasures in regular ones. And still avoid the bad ones, that goes without saying.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#124

Post by slfnflctd »

liotier wrote: post #114
guappa wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are dead but the other people who attend aren't

Solidarity with the living is the whole point of the funeral.

Well, you could argue that's most of the point.

Remember, though, there are funerals where only one person attends. And publicly acknowledging one's loss - even if it only consists of going to a building with strangers and posting an obituary - can be one of the most important steps in processing grief for some people.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#125

Post by soco »

plorkyeran wrote: post #67
D13Fd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There have been times I don’t go the funeral. Because the dead person was a horrible person. The funeral is a ritual for the people who knew and loved the dead person. The question should really be about them, rather than the deceased who is dead and gone.

And if those people are going to be talking about how great someone I despised was, it's best for all of us if I stay home.

I hear this argument again and again, that the dead was despised thus the funeral should not be attended. Really folks, if all people you know are to be despised, then maybe the problem is not with them? Sure, there always is the occasional asshole, but it's not always the one in the coffin, so indeed then there might be times when we should just stay home for the better of everybody.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#126

Post by smeej »

wvlia5 wrote: post #113

Losing relationships to death feels strangely not bad to me. Losing relationships for other reasons that shouldn't happen, like fights, feels bad. It's like eating a cake. You eat and at some point there will be no more cake, and you can rest content. But if the cake falls to the floor while you are eating, it's sad.

This sounds like you're only thinking of people who die very old.

When my 99yo grandmother died, it felt natural, like it was the time for such things. She'd eaten all her cake.

When my 29yo sister died, it was completely different, even though her death was also natural and did not involve suffering (sudden cardiac death, because invariably someone will ask). Sure, she'd had some cake, but it seemed like most of it was ahead of her, and the cake didn't fall to the floor, it just sat there, uneaten and uneatable, which feels both sad and wrong.

At least if there had been a fight, there would be hope for reconciliation, or even if that weren't possible, we could still be glad to hear good news about each other's life. (Rarely does so much hatred endure forever that you can't ever be glad when good things happen to somebody.)

Death is worse.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#127

Post by ngr »

Tistron wrote: post #115
wvlia5 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why it is a failure.

I see it as a strong example of what happens often. We have an impulse from what I will call our authenticity and we decline and suppress it because of some sort of fear. As I've learned to pay attention to this, I've found that it always leads to slight disconnection, and following instead tends to lead to more connection and aliveness. Every time we avoid the alive impulse is a failure of sorts, but usually we don'…

This idea is also explored in The Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute. Reading it was truly transformative for me. It makes a strong point that we experience self-betrayal whenever we choose to ignore our moral compass and how this can harm our relationships.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#129

Post by smeej »

blahedo wrote: post #41
o11c wrote: post #16

> By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low ? They say your social cluster is 150 people, so you should be going to about 2 funerals every year (this ignores age-clustering, but that's counterbalanced by the fact that you often go to funerals slightly outside your cluster and the fact that the cluster changes over time).

My sister and I were talking about this recently (at a funeral in our family). We're in our 40s, and people older than us had largely been to a dozen funerals or more by their teenage years, while people younger than us often went to their first in their 20s or later (or perhaps when their own parents or grandparents died and to no others). We have not-entirely-negative memories of growing up going to funerals, becau…

I was forbidden from going to my great-grandmother's funeral with my parents even though I was 11 and an extremely well-disciplined child. "We want you to remember her as she lived, not as she died" was the reason given at the time, but leaving me out of the event where people were remembering her as she lived didn't make sense to me.

When my grandfather died when I was 15, not only wasn't I allowed to go, but I had to stay home and watch my siblings as my parents traveled a thousand miles away for a week. We more than had the money for plane tickets. They just didn't want to bring us (youngest was 10, and also not troublesome).

For my other older relatives, they've all insisted on not having services, and I can't help but feel it's both an effect and a cause of the fact that my extended family is very disconnected and fragmentary.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#130

Post by pjmorris »

steveBK123 wrote: post #26

It’s also a matter of regret minimization. 9+ times out of 10 when I’m on the fence about going to a major life event and go, I’m glad I did. Can’t think of the last thing I regretted going to. I’ve certainly missed some like graduations I regret not making it to. Funerals are towards the top of the list of big life events and I’ve never regretted one.

About 25 years ago, a friend offered 'Prioritize things that only happen once in life' as an idea for helping me decide whether to go to my friend's wedding or an important work event. The wedding was great, and the idea has been useful in many other situations, none more so that funerals.
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