Why celebrate death?

smacl

So my father died rather suddenly some days ago and a after looking at the options we had a civil ceremony at the funeral last week. While there was nothing particularly wrong with it, nor did it hold any value for me personally and I would have much rather not been placed in a position where my own grief was on display. Reflecting later, I came to the conclusion that even as atheists we are socially pressured to follow what is Christian tradition, even if we pretend it is something different. Placing a humanist or civil celebrant at the altar in place of a priest seems little more than substituting quorn for minced lamb in a chilli con carne to appease the veggies. Why gather friends and family around a corpse in a chapel with kind words spoken in hushed, vaguely reverential tones? What purpose? Whose tradition?

While I still hopefully have a good few miles left in the tank, when the wheels do fall off this bus, the body will be left to science if they want it and the dog food factory if not. I'll have the party organised well in advance even if I wont be there in person, to celebrate life rather than death, about as far away from any church and faux preacher as possible.

FWIW, I loved my father very much and still do if only in memory. Apologies if this is a bit raw, but such is life.

sbsquarepants

Sorry to hear about your da, life can be a right bitch sometimes!

I suppose it's really just a mark of respect, a chance to say goodbye kind of thing, to reminisce, have a few pints and draw a line in the sand to move on from. It's probably just one of those things we do solely because it's the done thing!
I agree with you entirely about the quorn analogy - it personally makes no difference to me if it's a catholic, a hindu, a humaninst or a satanist that sends me off.

lazygal

I will use the dreaded phrase-"Sorry for your loss".
I think people need some sort of ritual around birth, marriage and death and for a very long time in Ireland that has involved a church ceremony. While I wouldn't want one myself, I could see how the familiar rituals could offer people the chance to concentrate on grieving rather than having to work out what kind of ceremony to have. I think its a bit like the Irish wedding. Everyone know what's likely to happen so they can concentrate on the important bits. The most recent funeral I was at was a humanist one and it felt important to mark the person's life and passing, both as some sort of mark of respect to them and more selfishly so those left behind could process the fact that the person was gone and that this occasion had been marked.

Buona Fortuna

Hi smacl, sorry about your Dad - Not a day goes by that I don't think of mine:(.

The short answer is I don't know.

I have family in UK and here. I always feel that the full Irish 2 dayer for all its faults is better "closure". Getting figety and a numb asre in mass. Having my nuts frozen off at the grave and then probably drinking too much at the wake. Its all kind of cathartic.

I'm not in the least religious but always find the UK ones a bit meh.

All the best and look after yourself.

Penn

smacl wrote: »

So my father died rather suddenly some days ago and a after looking at the options we had a civil ceremony at the funeral last week. While there was nothing particularly wrong with it, nor did it hold any value for me personally and I would have much rather not been placed in a position where my own grief was on display. Reflecting later, I came to the conclusion that even as atheists we are socially pressured to follow what is Christian tradition, even if we pretend it is something different. Placing a humanist or civil celebrant at the altar in place of a priest seems little more than substituting quorn for minced lamb in a chilli con carne to appease the veggies. Why gather friends and family around a corpse in a chapel with kind words spoken in hushed, vaguely reverential tones? What purpose? Whose tradition?

While I still hopefully have a good few miles left in the tank, when the wheels do fall off this bus, the body will be left to science if they want it and the dog food factory if not. I'll have the party organised well in advance even if I wont be there in person, to celebrate life rather than death, about as far away from any church and faux preacher as possible.

FWIW, I loved my father very much and still do if only in memory. Apologies if this is a bit raw, but such is life.

Sorry for your loss, smacl.

The way I see it, it's not about celebrating death, it's celebrating life. The life your father had, the relationships he formed, and the person he was. They are always sombre and somewhat depressing affairs, but I think even trying to make it seem like a proper celebration, people will still be wearing their grief pretty close to the surface. It can be almost impossible to hide it.

I also don't care what happens to my body after I die. In a way, I'd like it to be left to science. But at the same time, funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living. If my family wanted to give me a Christian funeral, I wouldn't oppose that (presuming of course I was still alive at that point to give my objections).

The point is, a funeral etc is simply just one last goodbye. A chance for those who knew the deceased to come together and say a proper goodbye. The grief never stops, it just gets easier to deal with in time. The funeral is simply just an epilogue of sorts, and I've often found that while the ceremony/funeral itself can be very depressing, the afters (meal/drinks/get-together) can be more celebratory and a lot more real/unforced.

smacl

Buona Fortuna wrote: »

I have family in UK and here. I always feel that the full Irish 2 dayer for all its faults is better "closure". Getting figety and a numb asre in mass. Having my nuts frozen off at the grave and then probably drinking too much at the wake. Its all kind of cathartic.

Probably right, could be I'm just turning into a grumpy old man. I think getting shít faced at an Irish wake is probably more meaningful to me than the funeral, as people say what they mean a bit more than just what they feel is the proper thing to say. In vino veritas, and in whisky even more so. Maybe as you suggest, the funeral is a necessary prelude. Thanks for the response.

Huntergonzo

Sorry to hear of your loss smacl, there's no easy way to lose a loved one, I lost my big brother 16 years ago and while time certainly does ease the pain it never fills the gap left behind.

As for funerals I to am an atheist so I'm generally not in favour of them but it is each to their own and I fully respect people's wishes. But I'm not a fan of the day itself if I'm the one who's lost a family member, like yourself I really don't enjoy my grief being played out I'm public and while I know most people in attendance are there as a show of support, I far rather just being on my own for a few days to get myself together, that's my way and I find the big day of a funeral very hard to contend with.

As for me, I don't know what to do with myself, maybe donate myself to science or whatever but as for a ceremony I'm happy to let my family decide that but with a very important condition, it's not to be in a church and there's to be no mentions of God.

jank

Sorry to hear about your father. I suppose one way of looking at it is not actually celebrating death but celebrating life. Death is what binds us all really. We are all going to die at some stage, its just part of the universe. When someone dies those that were close to him, friends and family come together and remember their life one last time.

From talking to people Irish people do do death better then our neighbours. It may not be for everyone but it certainly helps many.

eviltwin

Very sorry for your loss Smacl. It's a difficult time. We had the full on Catholic funeral for my father, it was what he wanted but I felt it was very impersonal. The priest spoke at length about dad but he'd never met him so it was very hollow. I would have rather heard stories and memories from people who knew him but that wasn't an option. It's very hard to personalise religious sacraments at times, I feel for me a humanist ceremony would be better so my family can give me the send off i would want. I think part of the problem is we don't talk about death and funerals so when someone dies often their family has no idea what they want, in a vulnerable situation it's sometimes easier to go with the traditional funeral. Again condolences to you and your family.

robindch

smacl wrote: »

Why gather friends and family around a corpse in a chapel with kind words spoken in hushed, vaguely reverential tones? What purpose? Whose tradition?

The father of one of the kids in my own kid's class at school died suddenly two weeks back. The celebrant out in Harold's Cross was somebody I think from the HAI and he did little more than introduce the two people who knew John well who came up and talked about him - I suppose twenty minutes each, with some music before, during and after, but there was little in reverential tones - it was almost entirely about John himself, what he did, who he loved, what made him laugh, and as an anti-authoritarian guy with a wide education and a ready wit, there was a lot of that. But what they said was revealing and poignant too - I'd only ever met John at the school gate, but even there and just with a few words a couple of times a week, it gave a huge sense of who he was as a person and what he meant to people. Perhaps that's what it's for? And to give a sense, in some way, of closure?

I'm sorry to hear of your loss but trust that your dad's life was as full as possible, with the best possible.

Canis Lupus

It's just the more formal part of death. It can be done in a serious or light hearted way but it's part where family and friends take that moment to stand in a suit and tie with their hands clasped as they honour the person that was and I guess stand with those left behind because sooner or later everyone has to go through it.

And then you all undo the top button and go have a drink somewhere and be loud and as merry as you can be.

magicbastarder

part of the rituals surrounding death are there simply to provide a template by which people can say goodbye to their loved ones; the benefit of the template is that by dropping into a well worn groove, the burden of decision making is taken from someone who is possibly/probably in no position to be making decisions. you're in no fit state to be 'inventing' the way in which you'd like to say goodbye.
as regards why we do it, if someone has been on the planet and made an impact on multiple people, many people like the idea of being able to say goodbye, so to speak, rather than simply having to deal with the fact that one weekend, the bar stool beside them is occupied, and the next weekend, it is not.

ScumLord

Funerals probably predate religion, I think they're very important. They celebrate a person's life and when a community comes together to pay respects it can give a lot of comfort, it can also help us see the affect one life can have and help us see that life goes on. It can be hard to get your head around the loss of someone you love, as much as logically you're aware the person is gone your brain can hold onto residual habits in relation to the person that's gone. I had a friend who died and had a closed confin, I never saw him dead and still decades later half expect him to show up at some point.

People at a funeral do tend to celebrate the life, you hear all kinds of stories about their life and it becomes a big book end in your mind. I think we need ceremony and it's one of the big things we've lost since people have turned away from religion. As much as we like to see ourselves as rational beings we're still just animals.

smacl

ScumLord wrote: »

It can be hard to get your head around the loss of someone you love, as much as logically you're aware the person is gone your brain can hold onto residual habits in relation to the person that's gone.

Yes indeed, still going to phone up the old man for a gossip about the day each evening, but slowly moving from not finishing dialling to not even picking up the phone. Progress of sorts I guess.

I think we need ceremony and it's one of the big things we've lost since people have turned away from religion. As much as we like to see ourselves as rational beings we're still just animals.

magicbastarder wrote: »

part of the rituals surrounding death are there simply to provide a template by which people can say goodbye to their loved ones; the benefit of the template is that by dropping into a well worn groove, the burden of decision making is taken from someone who is possibly/probably in no position to be making decisions. you're in no fit state to be 'inventing' the way in which you'd like to say goodbye.

I suspect my problem lies with the orthodoxy of it all, where the procedure boils down to a box ticking operation and the resultant ceremony is numb and conformal. Doesn't mean its not the best solution for many or even most, just that I personally hated it with a vengeance. Fails to appease the animal.

Anyway, nothing like a good rant on boards to get some weight off your chest. Thanks for the replies.

Hotblack Desiato

Sorry for the loss of your father smacl.

I was at a non-religious funeral for the first time a few months back, it was just family and friends talking about the deceased and their memories of him and what he meant to them, it was infinitely better than any religious funeral I've ever been to. The deceased was related to a colleague so I could be objective I suppose. I don't think there was a humanist celebrant but it's possible the 'friend of the family' introducing everyone else was one, I don't know, but if they were they were totally unobtrusive.

Like a lot of things, people in a religion soaked society like Ireland think 'religion gave us X and Y' when in reality it's prehistoric rituals around life events X and Y which eventually gave us religion... humans have been marking death for a very long time indeed.

Peregrinus

I'm coming late to the discussion, but my condolences too, smacl. However clearly we know the death of someone close to us is approaching, and however we try to prepare for it, it is always an incomprehensible shock when we experience it.

You headed the thread "why celebrate death?", but in fact the OP indicates that your real issues is not whether we should have rituals to help us deal with death, but what those rituals should be. You've given some thought to how you'd like your own death to be marked, and (presumably) that gives us a pointer as to how you feel your father's death might have been marked in a way that would have been more supportive for you.

I have family in various places around the world, and I have participated in funeral customs in different cultures. I have to say that, on the whole, I think Irish funeral customs are pretty healthy. ('Course, that may be influenced by the fact that I'm Irish.) I get, of course, that if the funeral customs are distinctively religious, and the mourners are of a different religion or no religion (and the deceased may have been of no religion) there's going to be a mismatch there. And it's certainly true that Ireland used to be a lot more religious than it now is, and that our funeral customs reflect this. So we're going through a transition when we need to develop funeral customs more suited to contemporary Irish attitudes and values.

I'd like to think, though, that we can do that while still holding on to the healthy aspects of Irish funeral customs. I have been to civic funerals here in Australia which were utterly dismal for everyone involved, believers and unbelievers alike. My own father died recently; he had (and wanted) a religious funeral (and I am myself a believer, so this wasn't a problem for me). I found it very supportive, and an awful lot of the comfort that I got from it had nothing to do the the religious aspects of the funeral - the huge numbers that turned out, the people who came to the house with food, the chat, the reminiscences of my father - all that was tremendous. And there were also explicitly religious acts which I appreciated - for example, the parish choir turned up to his funeral and sang (and this is something they do regularly for funerals in my parents' parish). And, as well as the parish clergy, there's a lay team in the parish who turn up to assist af funerals for parishioners. You don't have to be religious to make, or benefit from, a gesture of solidarity like that, and I'd like to think we can develop non-theistic funeral customs and practices which make space for that kind of thing. If we can't, we will have lost something.

El_Duderino 09

Sorry about your dad.

I think there is value in having a ceremony to say goodbye. It gives people a chance to come and say goodbye. It's bound to be good for the grieving process. It's good to have an itinerary of events because there's a good chance that the immediate family will be stunned and not particularly effective at enacting the deceased person's wishes for a funeral. For that reason I think it makes sense to have a template for a funeral that is understood by everyone and can be carried out by friends if the family are unable to do it at the time.

If you're super organised you could get a venue and a ceremony of your choosing. It's likely that death comes at short notice and doesn't really allow for bespoke send offs.

ScumLord

smacl wrote: »

I suspect my problem lies with the orthodoxy of it all, where the procedure boils down to a box ticking operation and the resultant ceremony is numb and conformal. Doesn't mean its not the best solution for many or even most, just that I personally hated it with a vengeance. Fails to appease the animal.

I always hated the religious stuff, it used to boil my blood to hear a priest hijack the funeral to promote the churches ideals, even if the person had no faith. But as life goes on you go through a few funerals and begin to appreciate the fact there's procedures in place. The routine allows the job to get done when people aren't in a good mental state to be organizing something like a funeral. It allows other people to take on tasks that are familiar, everyone has a general idea what to do and how to do it.

It's not ideal for everybody but I think it will be a long time before people actually change from those familiar routines.

ford2600

@smacl sorry for your loss. Mind yourself grief is a really powerful thing and is as individual as you are. Support from your family and close friends along with being kind to yourself are probably universal things that will help. You'll really have to figure it out day by day and sometimes minute by minute. I grieved more on bike than anywhere else, still do from time to time

When my father died we also had a religious funeral; my mother wanted it. All siblings would have been atheist like me. We did a few things though which personalized the funeral
*The wake was in house, which I would highly reccommend. You get to talk at length to people you want to and meet others etc. It was a really nice way to say goodbye over 2 days. I find funeral homes and the queues/draughts/solitary handshake really horrible places.
* I met priest at door of house and told him I wanted a "religiously lite " ceremony; that was the actual phrase I used
* My father was a really good singer and we hired the lady who sung at my wedding(in church also, a really lovely Protestant one-I'm a sucker for old buildings). She sung some of his favourite songs
* I spoke at funeral and described my father as best I could

Without causing WWIII, using church was probably necessary to get buried in family plot.

In hindsight, church ceremony, was only a very small part of process. While I'll call bull**** (far too much according to my wife) on other religious ceremony's/customs/dogma at the time and now I'm perfectly ok with it.

lazygal

ford2600 wrote: »

Without causing WWIII, using church was probably necessary to get buried in family plot.

This is a common misconception. Unless the burial ground is on church grounds, most graveyards are owned/run/managed by local authorities or county councils. Is the family plot in a church owned graveyard? Either way, if the family bought and maintain the plot, I'd like to see the kurfuffle if a priest told you it couldn't be accessed for a burial.

ford2600

lazygal wrote: »

This is a common misconception. Unless the burial ground is on church grounds, most graveyards are owned/run/managed by local authorities or county councils. Is the family plot in a church owned graveyard? Either way, if the family bought and maintain the plot, I'd like to see the kurfuffle if a priest told you it couldn't be accessed for a burial.

Church grounds. Burial by local gravediggers.

I agree with you. But who wants a fight at that time in their life. Rows over land ownership are never pleasant even at the best of times.

Local Authority property would be a different matter

We adapted the religious ceremony to suit us and to honour my father.

Shrap

smacl wrote: »

So my father died rather suddenly some days ago and a after looking at the options we had a civil ceremony at the funeral last week. While there was nothing particularly wrong with it, nor did it hold any value for me personally and I would have much rather not been placed in a position where my own grief was on display. ...................What purpose? Whose tradition?

smacl, Thanks very much for coming here and telling us about your father's death. It's a huge grief to share, and I reckon we all feel privileged to know you well enough (online tho it be) that you've let us know. So, very sorry for your loss, like us all.

Somehow, that collective acknowledgement of the grief seems to be a massive part of the funeral rites. Living in a small community as I do, one of the major concerns here when someone dies is "Oh, I so don't want to bump into them (the grieving relatives) in a month's time and say sorry for your loss then...", so people are cheered to be able to go to the house or the removal or the funeral, to be able to give condolences in a timely fashion and not raggedy assed in the shop or on the street when they randomly meet you next.

That's why I often think that the funeral ritual is somehow as much about the community (friends of the family) as the family tbh. Every funeral, I feel so sorry for the family, not just for their loss, but for their obligation to stay going all day, meeting and greeting and thanking others for their acknowledgement of the loss. Like other posters though, I really can't think of a better way to do that than the Irish wake experience, with or without the religion, or the Irish way of hurrying the acknowledgement of the death so that there's no awkward gap in the condolences.

For those of us who have to go through the motions of a family funeral in a remote and clinical setting without the wake/house experience, I know it can feel empty and meaningless at the time, but the meaning is there in the people who come to pay their respects. Of course it would be more true to the person's life if the family home is full of folk coming and going and talking and gossiping, but we can't all do that and it's a fairly lost tradition in the cities at this stage. The people who care and who came to your father's final gathering are hopefully going to come back to you as the main memory of the occasion, without the thought that the setting, the readings and the conformity didn't mean much to you on the day.

Can't imagine (don't want to tbh) how it is to lose a parent - thanks again for telling us smacl. Thoughts with you right now.

smacl

ford2600 wrote: »

@smacl sorry for your loss. Mind yourself grief is a really powerful thing and is as individual as you are. Support from your family and close friends along with being kind to yourself are probably universal things that will help. You'll really have to figure it out day by day and sometimes minute by minute. I grieved more on bike than anywhere else, still do from time to time

Thanks for that. Took an extended lunch time spin into the hills, and being in open space in the fresh air is most certainly good for the head.

smacl

@shrap, thanks for the kind words, genuinely appreciated. You're probably right that the ceremonial side is of benefit to the local curtain twitchers community, who in fairness aren't a bad bunch. I was lucky enough to have some close friends at the wake who know me well enough to steer me clear of the crowd.