Non-funeral funeral

Mojisola

Robisere wrote: »

I don't want people being miserable over my passing, I want them to keep me alive in their memories by laughing and probably shaking their heads at the daft things that granddad, dad and husband often did and said.

You might not want that but, unless you've been a nasty person all your life, people who know you will be upset and sad when you die and they will need to grieve.

It's not fair on those left behind to try to get them to deny their feelings.

We were all sad when Mum and Dad died but we also remember them with love and affection (and humour at their funny ways) and feel lucky that we had them as parents - being miserable for a time and remembering loved ones with affection aren't mutually exclusive.

Malthusian

So I can order in my will that my executors must purchase a gold coffin, twenty moirologists, a grand's worth of Chinese fireworks and £2,500 behind the bar of the Bag of Nails to provide drinks for all attendants at my funeral.

However, while the executors are bound to buy everything on the shopping list, they are at liberty to not use them and instead have me incinerated at the South Bristol crematorium and chuck the ashes into Colliter's Brook. The gold coffin stands unused, the professional mourners get a day off, the pub gets £2,500 for nothing. While lawful, this seems a bit vindictive and wasteful.

Although I suppose the coffin and the fireworks become part of the residual estate and can be sold on eBay, so perhaps the executors are only carrying out their duty by not burying it in the ground / firing them into the air, given the interests of the beneficiaries override the wishes of the corpse.

peachyprice

peachyprice wrote: »

It's you who seems to not have understood. Funeral wishes in a will are not legally binding, the executor can do as they wish.

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

Can you cite an authority for that?

Seems I didn't need to, plenty of others have done so already.

peachyprice

Robisere wrote: »

Dad was a follower of my Romany gran's earth religion, as am I. I don't care to hear talk of "rotting" in the earth: my body will be in a simple willow casket which will decay with my remains and be distributed through the soil, to feed the grass and trees above me. What is left of my body, which is after all, not me after my mind has left, will therefore be recycled.

May I give the worms and beetles indigestion!

Is this a Romany thing then? This is EXACTLY how I feel about burial.

Keep_pedalling

badmemory wrote: »

I must say that I find it difficult to understand why anyone would wish to disrespect someone who has recently died by NOT respecting their wishes for the diposal of their body. Always supposing it is legal of course.

Most people do respect the wishes of the deceased, but sometimes relationships have broken down by then people can use this as a last opportunity to stick it to the silly old sod they have stuck by though the years.

Everybody should leave their last wishes to give those left behind some guidance. My wife will want a Christian service and although I am an atheist that is what she will get. I am not particularly bothered and if it gives my wife comfort I am perfectly happy for her to arrange the same for me. If I survive her my children are more likely to arrange a humanist funeral either way I will be well beyond caring.

Robisere

peachyprice wrote: »

Is this a Romany thing then? This is EXACTLY how I feel about burial.

According to my Gran, who passed in 1967 at 89, there are Romanies and Romanies, sometimes referred to 'Romas'. originally, they were tribes, but many centuries of persecution and attempts at genocide, cut their numbers. There are still different beliefs among Romas: some are actually Christians, many believe in cremation, in that the body mostly goes into the atmosphere and returns to Earth as rain or snow. My gran was brought up to believe that everything on Earth is connected: she once took me as a child, deep into a wood and told me to take off my shoes and socks and close my eyes, to feel the Earth. Most people I know call this rubbish, but doing that enough times (I still do it, at 72) does make me feel something peaceful and calm. It definitely relieves stress.

Incidentally, scientists now believe that all plant life is connected by very fine fibres underneath the soil. Don't believe it? -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/earth/story/20141111-plants-have-a-hidden-internet

Maybe my gran's people had something! Yes, it was a Roma 'thing', at least among gran's people. My dad, eldest brother and myself followed this simple belief system: no religious gatherings, no priests. Just the knowledge that we should be returned to the Earth we came from, and trying to remain a part of it whilst we live.

I accept that there are those here who will rubbish this. That's OK: no one has to believe anything that I believe. But by the same token, I do not have to share a belief in a deity that exists somewhere "up there" and passes down laws to live by, via some barmpot who wandered out of the desert with his brains sunbaked, untold centuries ago.

Robisere

Mojisola wrote: »

You might not want that but, unless you've been a nasty person all your life, people who know you will be upset and sad when you die and they will need to grieve.

It's not fair on those left behind to try to get them to deny their feelings.

We were all sad when Mum and Dad died but we also remember them with love and affection (and humour at their funny ways) and feel lucky that we had them as parents - being miserable for a time and remembering loved ones with affection aren't mutually exclusive.

I respect your opinion but not your way of expressing it. You don't know my family and you don't know how we live, laugh and love together. Everyone is an individual, but I know my family and they know my wishes. I don't want them to mourn my passing, but I do want them to think about me from time to time after I am gone. Shared family humour is a part of family love and I would like them to say occasionally "Remember when he said/did that?" and smile. That's a way to be remembered: to live on in the minds of those you love and who love you back.

Your ways may be different, that is what makes us all individual. Not worse, not better, just different.

Mojisola

Mojisola wrote: »

You might not want that but, unless you've been a nasty person all your life, people who know you will be upset and sad when you die and they will need to grieve.

It's not fair on those left behind to try to get them to deny their feelings.

We were all sad when Mum and Dad died but we also remember them with love and affection (and humour at their funny ways) and feel lucky that we had them as parents - being miserable for a time and remembering loved ones with affection aren't mutually exclusive.

Robisere wrote: »

I respect your opinion but not your way of expressing it. You don't know my family and you don't know how we live, laugh and love together. Everyone is an individual, but I know my family and they know my wishes. I don't want them to mourn my passing, but I do want them to think about me from time to time after I am gone. Shared family humour is a part of family love and I would like them to say occasionally "Remember when he said/did that?" and smile. That's a way to be remembered: to live on in the minds of those you love and who love you back.

Your ways may be different, that is what makes us all individual. Not worse, not better, just different.

I don't think our families are that different in how we remember our loved ones.

What would be impossible for most people is not to feel upset by the death of someone they love.

There have been tears at the funerals of friends and families but also plenty of happy memories, laughter and shared stories about how good they were, what fun we had together, how much we will miss them, personal foibles that make us smile when we remember them, etc.

mum_of_joey

ska lover
There are no contradictions here. I'm talking about the masses of relatives that you see on TV adverts, all hugging each other in an often unreal depiction of 'family life'. Apart from my brother, who I am estranged from, as he is rich and never helped my mother while she was alive when she was desperate (she had to stuff the holes in her windows with newspaper to keep out the cold and he refused to help her), and his selfish wife who used to sneer at my mum's dilapidated house, thus I would have nothing more to do with them after mum's funeral (yet they were happy enough to grab half of mum's estate), I have one relative, my son, who is disabled and lives many miles away. I visit him but he is unable to get into my house because of his disability and he has lots of people on his dad's (my ex-husband's) side. I wouldn't expect or want to be asked there at the same time. I cannot stay over as cannot afford to put my cats into a cattery and certainly wouldn't leave them overnight to look after themselves.

Thus I have learned to be on my own. Yes, I wish that things were like when I was a child, when all the aunties and uncles came to us for Christmas - they are all dead now. So I have not 'cut myself off' through choice - there is one person left, and I have tried to make the best of it. So please don't assume that I should 'tear myself away from the TV and the cats' because I have lots of relatives that I should be with, and that watching TV with the cats is something to be despised. I love my cats - they are the reason I get up each day. I like TV. What's wrong with that? I am unlikely to have many people at my funeral. We don't all have the same family circumstances.

Tabbytabitha

nightofjoy wrote: »

Yeah, I know all that, but any living friends & relatives will know that these are my wishes and to organise anything afterwards would be pointless and in direct conflict with them....

Funerals are for those that are left, not for the dead. Unless you dislike them, consider that they may find that having a funeral helps them through the grieving process.

I strongly believe that the dead should not force their opinions on the living in most cases.