Living Funerals
I did one of those big messy cries the first time I read The Fault in Our Stars and got to the scene with the living funeral. The idea is that the person is alive to hear the eulogies they’ll miss when they are not there in the near future.
I forgot about the scene until The Guardian ran a story about living funerals. Reading about it, I realized how much I would not want this, no matter how lovely it sounds in theory and how much the people in the article found comfort in the ritual.
My brain is not equipped to process the enormity of my funeral. The logistics — sure. I have planned out what I want to happen when I’m gone. But I cannot imagine observing my own funeral, sitting these while I contemplate how these are the things that will be said and done when I’m actually gone. Or, like the person in the article, lying inside a coffin, crying.
What do you think of living funerals? I would be okay attending, but I wouldn’t want one myself.
2 comments
Ok, the guy getting into the casket on his 40th birthday with no diagnosis or reason to think he’s not living for another 40-50-60 years – that’s just weird/ghoulish/indulgent or all three. Just have a birthday party, for goodness sake!
But for the rest – I think it is a beautiful idea. A beautiful way for the person to say goodbye to the people they love, and for their people to say goodbye to them. A funeral post-death is starkly one-way with no destination for that outpouring of love. The loved person who is gone never feels it. Of course, I know that funerals are also a comfort to the people who lose the loved one, and that’s important too. But if I had a terminal diagnosis, I’d totally consider having a party to say good-bye and thank you to the people I love. Especially as doing it individually would be painful and exhausting, you might forget someone or they might not realise why you want to talk to them, etc etc. (Of course, there would have to be a separate on-line party for the people I love who are all scattered around the globe!)
For me, hard pass. For anyone else? I don’t know – seems a little less like a funeral and more like an affirmation. It might be useful for someone to know how much they’re loved.
At my aunt’s funeral luncheon, my cousin wandered around playing a video that she had of her mom saying “it’s lovely! Thank you so much!” It was sweet and hilarious. (It was recorded before her mom got sick when a friend of my cousin’s had sent a gift.)