Funerals

Funerals.  I've never really taken time to really think about them before.  With my grandma's recent passing, and all of the funeral stuff going on, I was forced to think more about the whole process.

It has become such a commercialized, money-making, quote on quote cultural thing.  You just have a visitation, and you look at the body, and you talk with all of the people who knew the deceased, and you have a fancy coffin, and you have a nice funeral service, and you eat a meal afterward, and you have a big procession to the cemetery, and you have a little burial service.  And at each place people pray, and quote Bible verses, and say nice things about the person who died.

Why?

Why do we do all of these things?

Why do we "have" to do them? 

Our society has turned something that happens every day into a big production.  People make their entire living working in funeral homes and helping families swim through the ocean of things that they 'have' to do because a loved one has died.  People just don't question it anymore.  This is how our society deals with death.  It's just 'what you do'.  You stand in line where you're supposed to and participate in everything, but in the end does it matter?  Will the deceased be more honored by that than if you had a simple burial at the cemetery and skipped the rest? The fact of the matter is that they're gone.  Everything you do after they're gone is just to help yourself cope and grieve.  Maybe it makes you feel better to do these things, and if that justifies all of the time and money spent to do it, go ahead.  For most people, I just don't think they cope and grieve the best going through all of the rigamaroll.  You do it all because you're 'supposed to', but you're just exhausted at the end of the day from putting up a front, and holding back emotions, and talking to tons of people you don't really know that well. And you're really relieved when it's all over and you can try to get back to 'normal' life.

Personally, I'd rather be alone and with my husband.  Maybe have some close friends and my family around so I could be able to really grieve.  I don't want to spend hours staring at the dead person's body.  In fact, I don't really want to see it at all.  It's not them.  It never looks like them.  It's just their empty body.  It's dust.

For a lot of people, it's a new thought.  Nobody really likes to think about death, and dying and the fact that they themselves will someday die.  I don't know yet exactly what I want to happen when I die, or what I would want to do if my husband or one of my children died, but the thought process has to start somewhere.  A lot of these thoughts are incomplete.  Many of them I haven't completely finished processing yet, but I hope to.  Stay tuned.