Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Always go to the funeral (2005)

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 322 posts

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#211

Post by freedomben »

miroljub wrote: post #193
cobbaut wrote: post #177

Please visit people when they are still alive. My aunt was alone for the last three years of her live, up to 94 years old. She had almost no visitors, and was not able to go out by herself. I went there about every week, and was always the only visitor. Then came the funeral, with well over 400 people there, and around 200 people at the coffee table after the funeral. And I was like: Where the hell were you guys the…

People didn't go to visit her while being alive because they genuinely didn't care about her, or didn't care enough to bother to visit. They showed up in a funeral not because of her, but because they were afraid of what others would say about them if they didn't show up. This is the sad reality of human behaviour in this day and age.

Indeed, anecdotally I think there's an epidemic of uncaring going on in the world right now. I think the hyper-connectivity of always-on internet-based and smartphone-based stuff just overwhelms our capacity to care, but that's purely a theory.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#212

Post by colanderman »

mattl wrote: post #185
colanderman wrote: post #179

I'm surprised in all this discussion not to see the distinction between a wake and a funeral. The advice I've heard is, go to a wake to support those who are grieving, go to a funeral to grieve yourself. (For this reason, the wake is held at more "convenient" hours.) Do others make this distinction? Is the practice of holding a separate wake a regional/cultural thing?

I think the wake is more of a Catholic thing perhaps?

Maybe (I was raised Catholic), but I also attended a wake of a teacher of mine who was Jewish (culturally if not religiously). Thinking more now, where I'm from (northeast US), "wake" and "calling hours" are synonymous, whereas they might not be in other parts of the world. So I may be perpetuating some confusion of terms.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#213

Post by pmarreck »

hoseja wrote: post #141
pmarreck wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fear-repressed authenticity" is something to gnaw on.

Like 80% of your authentic urges have to be repressed to, erm, live in a society. It's then hard to find a good point to stop doing that.

I have a 3.5 year old son and the thought HAS occurred to me- "if we never learned to 'behave' (i.e., conform to societal norms), would we all just continue to be little selfish dopamine monsters?" lol

You might say the foundation of polite society itself rests heavily on the shoulders of millions of weary parents with varying amounts of care and effort expended

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#216

Post by hindsightbias »

shever73 wrote: post #110

This is a very Irish thing. Funerals in Ireland are always well-attended and going to a funeral - even of someone you don't know - is important in the community (see this recent news article, for example[0]). I notice the author's surname is Sullivan. As my grandmother liked to repeat: "If you don't go to someone's funeral, they won't come to yours." [0] https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/crowd-shows-up-to-funera...…

More than once a bar stranger has said “I thought this was a wedding party” at my family Irish Wakes.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#217

Post by throw_pm23 »

sneak wrote: post #81

Alternately; this anachronistic idea that not going to a religious ceremony is “the wrong thing” can be disregarded. I never attend funerals, and I rarely attend weddings. I skipped my father’s funeral. It simply doesn’t matter if you go or not.

Reminded me of the famous quote by Twain: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#218

Post by throw_pm23 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #38

Clever marketing by the funeral services industry. And no, I don't want my last act on Earth to be inconveniencing people.

Why do you think it is an inconvenience for people to meet other people they know and/or like? You could see it as a last gift from you to bring them together.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#219

Post by throw_pm23 »

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote: post #77
ksenzee wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that could be minimized. For example, by not taking precious square meters of Earth surface from the living. I understand and even agree with the sentiment here, but to me “I don’t want to be buried” or “I don’t want a funeral” is micromanaging. I’ve expressed a preference for as little inconvenience to the people I love and as little damage to the Earth as possible. My children or whoever else survives me can…

As part of my plan of not inconveniencing anyone, I already doled out kids' inheritance in cash and real estate, and will donate the rest. I also rented 100-years storage at forever.com, so nobody has to deal with my old photos, memorabilia etc. Everything else is a matter of 2 hours' work by a garbage disposal team. Executors can walk.

I predict your 100-years storage to last about 2 years.

Re: Always go to the funeral (2005)

#220

Post by sanderjd »

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).

I was going to write this at the top level because I hadn't seen anyone make this point yet:

The thing that made me sad about this article is that it made me realize how lacking I am in community. My eldest child is six, and I can't think of more than a couple people who are likely to pass from natural causes by the time she is sixteen, who we are close enough with to definitely know about their funeral. And I have no idea how we would find out about the funerals of people we aren't so close to. It's not like there is a local paper with obituaries that we read...

Of course the elephant in the room is that when I was a kid, the coordinating organization for this was my family's church. Without having that community fixture, I find myself unsure how this sort of thing actually works.

Post reply on HN