No funeral

A friend of mine lost her brother recently. I knew the family and wanted to read the obituary, but I couldn’t find one. My friend told me that her brother’s children decided to have no funeral and no obituary; they just posted a message to their Facebook friends. Funerals and obituaries, they explained, are going out of style. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of funerals and obituaries being a matter of styles and trends. I still see plenty of obituaries and notices of funerals you can even watch on Zoom. But this all got me wondering: what’s a funeral for? Do you want one?

It’s easy enough to understand why many people would want a funeral. If you have a religious affiliation, it’s an important rite. It supports and formalizes the mourning process. It’s also a way to maintain and strengthen the fabric of your family and community, and an opportunity to celebrate a life and say goodbye. Funerals tend to be highly ritualized and rife with platitudes. Every mean-spirited sourpuss suddenly becomes a beloved family member and a pillar of the community. All the mourners tell the survivors that they are sorry for their loss, and want them to find comfort knowing that the deceased has gone to a better place. So funerals can be a mixed bag, but family members and friends still often feel a strong religious, social or cultural motivation to attend.

But times have changed. Many of us live far from where we grew up and away from family and old friends. Now that people live longer, we often outlive our friends and relatives. These days lots of seniors stay single all their lives, and have no children. We may not have a religious affiliation, and don’t want an expensive ritual that we consider meaningless. Some seniors might be loners who have had a bumpy ride through life, with few good relationships, and just don’t want to give those so-and-sos one last chance to sneer at them.

It’s a kind of balancing act, between our last wishes and our survivors’ current ones. Of course, whatever we decide, we have to make sure our survivors know what we want. But in the end, if they don’t follow our wishes, well, we won’t be there to complain.