How does your family handle death?

The last time I was at a Catholic ceremony, my best friend's wedding, the priest didn't give any instruction like that. Somehow, I managed to figure out I should stay in my seat. lol

 

Add taking the calls and organizing the daily deer kills to the list. Sure, that was a 20-point buck your husband shot. Of course, I believe you.

 

They would drive up in their trucks and pose for photos with their dead animals at the weekly paper I worked at in Michigan’s U.P.

I still remember the awful smell of a dead black bear some hunter brought to the paper to photograph. He probably smelled a bit rough too.

 

The funerals for both Mom and Dad were traditional. Both were pre-arranged by Dad. Service in the chapel at the funeral home. Coffins for both, viewing before the ceremony started. Everybody met up at the cemetery for a graveside, a mile or two away. Back to the house for a reception, another mile away. I don't even remember if there was a clergyman at Mom's. She wasn't fond of church. I did the official eulogies for both. Anybody who wanted could speak after I was finished. Mom's, in 1990, was the first I'd done and it was especially difficult. I had to read it, I couldn't just wing it. Same for Dad's in 2013, very difficult, too. We had the pastor from the church/school my niece attended because he had met Dad. First thing he said was the wrong age for Dad.

My wife's parents died a couple of years apart in the 20-teens. Cremation. No service. Family only and maybe 3-4 close friends. There is a small charter boat service in Ventura that deals with burial at sea. Cruise out 3 miles and the funeral group can spread handfuls of the ashes (which are more like pebbles) in the ocean. The company records the location so when the spouse dies, they can drop ashes in the same spot. The group went to a nearby restaurant afterward.

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I have been thinking a lot about this recently, especially since this thread came up (and several high school classmates have died). I attend as many funerals as I can in order to pay respect to the deceased and their family. And the whole process gives me a chance to relax in a peaceful environment in which I reflect on my family, their family and the good times.

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I hate it when it is obvious the clergy officiating the funeral has no idea who the deceased was. You can tell right away if they are just regurgitating the written obit. I will never forget this. My best friend when I was maybe 11-15, his dad was my little league coach. His parents were divorced before we became friends and his dad was a total womanizer. He was an insurance salesman and obviously had a way with words. We had these Playboy-quality women showing up for our little league games. So when he died, it felt weird being in a church and hearing the words of the minister. "Robert was a homebody. He loved being at home." I was sitting with another friend and his dad. His dad leans over and whispers, "Yeah, but who whose home?"

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In the past couple of years, for friends who have died, there have been gatherings at the beach where we used to go when we were young. People just show up, talk if they want, share stories. Nothing formal except one person taking the lead in thanking us for coming and inviting anybody who wanted to talk to do so. Approach family members, or not, if you want. Some of the attendees go to a restaurant after. Very casual. That's me.
I have pre-arranged a cremation service for my wife and I. Everything is paid for and it was only a couple of thousand bucks each (about half of what the Neptune Society charges). There is an 800 phone number that is available 24/7/365 for a family member to call and this company does the rest -- body retrieval and transport, cremation, etc. (The only upcharge might be if the death occurs more than 100 miles from home.)

 

The rabbi at my mother's funeral never met her and it showed. We gave him a lot to work with, but he didn't use most of it. At least I knew he wasn't going to be a difficult act to follow when I gave the eulogy.

 

And, as the Great Man said himself:

“Always go to other people's funerals,
otherwise they won't come to yours.”

 

As you probably mostly remember, my sister died last week, so I'm currently going through all this stuff.

Right off the top I'm kind of puzzled and a bit irritated that really I haven't had any devastating emotional impact. I think it's the classic symptoms of shock, but I'm not dazed or apathetic; I just don't seem to be affected that much.

I've had a few brief waves of really intense emotions, then three minutes later I'm just sitting there normally.

She was 62, about six weeks short of 63. She had been in poor but not awful health the last several years and most of my siblings and nieces/nephews had gone down to Texas to see her at various times since COVID.

She'd lived in South Texas, 1800 miles away, by the border for 39 years now, moving down there from Michigan after graduation from college.

She worked there as a teacher for some 35 years, and seemed to have a fair number of friends. For the first 10 years or so, she would come up and spend summers in Michigan (rather than 115-degree South Texas), but she'd only come north two or three times in the last 20 years.

Her death was unexpected but not shocking. In many ways it was very similar to our mother, who was only 5 weeks past her 63rd birthday when she died in 1994 after several years of assorted health problems.

Anyway when we got the word on Monday, we were thrown into instant decision making mode. We had to ask each other if she had ever expressed any funeral wishes: did she want a funeral service or to be buried in Texas?

As far as any of us, or a couple of her friends who were in contact with us, knew, she had never expressed any intention to be buried in Texas. Two of our sisters agreed she had mentioned briefly she wanted to be cremated.

Which is, I confirmed, now "accepted" by the Catholic Church -- as recently as 2001 when my dad died, cremation was "reluctantly allowed but not encouraged."

The Church now allows cremation with the caveat the ashes are not to be divided in any way, used in the construction of any object, kept in a home or commercial building, or scattered.

We agreed our sister's ashes will be buried in the double plot where our parents are buried up here in Michigan. The cemetery informs us that one additional urn of ashes may be buried in each individual plot.

Two or three of my siblings will fly down to Texas in two weeks to clean out her stuff as best they can (another trip will almost certainly be necessary sometime in early fall). They'll also have to wrap up her legal and financial affairs.

She was living in a mobile home complex so the trailer will have to be sold, and she had a car which might be useful to our now college-age nieces.

We're probably going to hold a rosary/memorial/prayer service in Texas in the first visit. Her trailer park community has a central banquet/party building which should do the trick.

Then in late August, we're doing the full funeral mass bit at our old home parish on what would be her 63rd birthday. That'll give our cousins who are now scattered literally all over the country, a few weeks to get together to make the trip if they see fit.

So obviously this is going to stretch out for several weeks more, for our family at least.

 

My brother-in-law died several years ago. He was a career military guy and worked civil service at the local base after retiring. He also wore Hawaiian shirts every dang day of the year. So when he died, my sister-in-law asked all of us in the family to wear a Hawaiian shirt to the funeral. She even put a bunch of his on a rack at the house so people could choose. So there we were, all decked out in Hawaiian shirts, the military folks who were there - he was well-known - were in their uniforms and most everyone else where in suits, etc. But it made his wife happy, and that's what counted.

She died a few years later. She wanted no ceremony, no nothing. Her husband was cremated, she was cremated and their two dogs had been cremated. So one Sunday the family all gathered at a favorite spot of theirs, said a few words and scattered their combined ashes.

I wrote this previously on another thread, but when my dad died in 1999, I was working about a thousand miles away from my hometown. At the funeral home in my hometown, the director came up to me and said he had a call from my newspaper wanting to know if I wanted to put dad's obituary in a newspaper where nobody knew who he was. Because I was an employee, the would give me a 20 percent discount. Uh, no.

 

I like the Hawaiian shirt plan. Fitting for the man, it seems.
I don't know how many funerals I have been to where some random person walked up and started talking to me, asking questions. "Uhhhh, I don't work here."
Why do they think that? Because I'm an adult male who actually still wears a suit and tie when I go to the funeral home.

 

One thing my sister's death has done is ripped the cover off the subject of the rest of us discussing our own various arrangements.

I'm the oldest, by 10 years over the now-next-oldest, so actuarially the odds are pretty high I am next in line, so I can pretty much start pencilling in my own plans fairly seriously.

I'm leaning toward the idea of doing a very minimalist funeral Mass at church to fulfill the basic requirements so my Catholic relatives don't all believe I'm ticketed straight for hell. And then doing the reception and visitation as an extended Irish wake -- lots of drinking and music.

 

It's now been a week since I got the word about my sister.

I "broke the news" on the Politics thread, because more than anything else I was (and still am) angry at Fatfuck for driving a wedge in our family as well as millions of others. So that's why it was relevant in that thread.

But that's probably 100 pages back* now, so I guess if I'm gonna comment any further, I'll do it here. As I've detailed above, it'll be going on for a couple more months.

Anyway, I do thank all those who offered condolences.

* Actually, it's now 106 pages back. Pretty good guess.

 

When I was the one-man SE at a small-town paper, we didn’t have AP photos. So the photos in sports were either ones I took or people would send in their photos. We used to have hunters send in their photos of their kills. I still remember one time, a hunter had a pic of his deer kill, and the deer had his tongue sticking out. My EE debated whether or not to run the pic, but we did.

Then one time, as I was finishing off a shift, a guy came to our front desk and said he had a deer kill pic for me. I asked him where was the picture, and, like you, he wanted me to take the pic of him and the deer in his truck. Pic taken.

I also remember getting in the middle of a family feud when a dad brought in a pic of his kid catching a fish. Ran the photo, and then the Mom and a grandmother called, complaining that we got the kid’s name wrong because the kid had her last name instead of the Dad’s and wanted a correction. We refused.