I do agree, more or less, that a funeral is for the bereaved, not for the dead. But if a person has strong feelings about such things, I think it's helpful if they leave instructions about what they want to happen after they die. And even if they don't have strong feelings, maybe they ought to nominate one particular person to make decisions about what to do. After all, the bereaved may not be of one mind about it.
My father, the cantankerous old codger, didn't want to have a funeral. He felt strongly about it. He put in his will that he wanted to be cremated, "without any ceremony or gathering". As it happens, he'd changed his mind about wanting to be cremated since he wrote the will, and he was buried, in a "woodland" cemetery (it's not a woodland now, but it will be one day). It took ten minutes. My mother was there, to see the job done, and my sister and I were there to give my mother support. We didn't do it ourselves because we didn't have suitable transport or enough strong men to carry the (cardboard) coffin. So my mother used a green funeral director, though she made a point of saying that it was a burial, not a funeral, and asked if the pallbearers could please dress casually. In the end, all they did was take off their ties. I suppose they'd just come from another funeral, so we couldn't have expected them to change into jeans and T-shirts. They also bowed after they'd lowered the coffin into the grave, which was a bit odd, and my dad would have hated it. But I suppose it's all part of taking pride in the job. It would have been churlish to complain.
But I digress. For my mother and me, it was a good thing that there was no ceremony, no readings, no eulogy. Not only because we knew that was what he wanted, but also because my mother couldn't have coped with it. (As she put it, it would have "finished her off".) My sister, on the other hand, would have liked a proper funeral [---][/---] and a humanist one would have done nicely, even though she's a Quaker. Of the rest of the family, some were understanding, some relieved, some a little disappointed, one quite annoyed. But frankly they weren't the priority. Most of them hadn't seen him for years anyway. It was my mum's feelings
and my dad's that mattered most. My parents had lived together for over sixty years. It was important to her that we were doing something that my dad would have approved of, even though she knew he'd never know. It was important to me, too. How could I have possible sat through a ceremony knowing that he would have been hopping mad about it? It would have felt wrong.
My mother has also made it clear that she doesn't want a funeral, and the rest of the family will be respecting her wishes. It won't please everyone, but that wouldn't be possible anyway. As for me, I don't have such strong feelings. I want the green burial ground and the biodegradable coffin and no embalming and no headstone and no cut flowers in plastic wrappers with corny little notes on them and no funereal costumes and no clergy and no God-talk and no pomp. But apart from that, I'm easy.
So I think I'll leave it up to my partner to decide, if he outlives me. If he doesn't, I'll plan and pay for the whole thing in advance, and be buried with no ceremony or gathering. If a bunch of my friends want to get together in the Hand and Flower and raise a glass or two to my memory, then that's fine by me.
Emma
so stick that in your Incense burner and shake it.
Really, it shouldn't matter anyway. It's unhealthy to have emotion imbued in what happens to one's body after death. I mean, I'm not going to be around to see it.
