Funerals Are Necessary
I’m not a morbid person or someone who seeks to go to funerals or memorial services. But after the second death of an Uncle in the last few months I’ve come to a conclusion - Funerals are needed.
Not because of that ridiculous “closure” belief, I don’t even think that’s real. When someone close to you dies, there’s no such thing as closure. Things will happen to open up that wound again and again. It will get better with time of course. You may not burst into tears at the mention of your loved one’s life, or cry everyday, or get angry or depressed, etc. So it can get easier to cope, but closure, no way, no how.
Back to Funerals and Memorial Services…they serve a purpose. I always said I didn’t want anything done for me when I’m gone, just cremate me and remember me how you wish but I know now that funerals are for the living (of course) but they are to help the people left behind to say their goodbyes. They’re also for people to start new beginnings.
In September I had the opportunity to be with a lot of family that I hadn’t seen in years. This time it was the same. In September we cousins promised to keep in touch more often and try to get together once a year or so. This time it was was even with more extended family (not really blood relatives, but who cares?) that we made our promises.
We caught up on life and where it’s taken us, we hugged, cried, and talked about the old days. We realized we have more in common than we ever thought and got a lot of joy from that. Being with people you grew up with, parted ways with just through the reality of life, live far from now, but still have the common ideals of Family, Respect and Love makes you feel young again. It also made me feel like I’m doing a pretty good job of living my life.
With the death of my two uncles, I’ve seen such positives that I may just have to stand up and testify at church tomorrow.
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December 2nd, 2007 at 12:46 am
Funerals are most definitely necessary but I really think that we should institute the process of pre-funerals, too. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that there were so many people who loved and cared about you before you passed away? Funerals are generally such lovely tributes to the lives that have passed on but don’t you think it would be nice to have such a gathering before it was necessary? To be able to talk about how much someone has meant to you, to show that person how many peoples’ lives have been touched, and to show him or her that no man is an island and that one life touches many. I would like to hope that the good Lord lets us stick around for our funeral services but just in case he doesn’t, wouldn’t it be nice to know how much we were loved while we can still hear it? I think that most people don’t realize how very many people care enough about them to attend their funeral and I think that’s horribly sad. It seems like we should be saying things while we still have the time. Just my thought - and a long-winded one at that!
December 6th, 2007 at 9:34 am
So glad you had plenty of family to surround you through all this. I once told my parents I wanted no service should anything happen to me, but now that I’ve had to bury two of my grandparents, I’ve changed my thinking on that. Had we all not had each other to lean on, I don’t know how we would have survived the loss. Now when I think back to the days of the funerals, I remember reliving happy memories and reflecting on the good times we had with them.