It's time we did something about funerals. No one really "likes" going to a funeral, but they're just one to those aspects of life that tell us we must find the way to muster up some courage to deal with...if only for an hour of our time. It's just that, funerals are done in such a detached manner. Most of the time, the deceased is viewed in a open casket, looking more like a caricature from some silly cartoon, rather than the person you once knew. Yes, I know, some due to a long illness or accident, don't look all that pretty, and most often we hear that the deceased "looked natural".....natural? Of course they don't look natural...they're dead.
The part I loathe so much...is the readings and "memorial speeches" given by the clergy officiating the funeral/wake. Typically used is the same repetitive retoric you here...at EVERY funeral. Where's the memorium to the person in the box? Names are said incorrectly, facts are omitted; pertinant to the deceased very fiber of existance. Helloooo...is the clergy not being paid to give the big send off and make this good bye feel and sound like a collosal party, as if the deceased could walk on water?
If for nothing else, most sermons can be used for insomnia, or meditative purposes....slowly and quitely lullying the bored to tears victim into a borderline coma. For someone who lived many years, they are given an hour of bye bye time...words and people, quickly ushred in and out, as if there's another "event" waiting in the wings.
The lazy and trivial offerings are ridiculous and need to change. Don't most of us deserve something more significant than a cookie cutter send off?
Death, is much too important to take with such nonchalance.
I agree, Bella. I have often thought that funerals today are nothing but a money-making venture at the deceased family's expense. Our culture has become so...oh, I can't find a word for it....lazy, no....apathetic, that's it...that having a funeral is "just what you do" when someone dies. I went to my grandmother's funeral just recently and I have to say it's a poor excuse for a family reunion. I saw people there that I haven't seen in literally 10 years. Some of them had never even met my youngest son.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am all for celebrating the life of the dead....have a good old-fashioned Scottish wake...proper respect paid to family and the deceased and then a whopping party celebrating the life they lived and the one we are still living.