My cousin was in hospital dying of cancer. I spoke to my mum and she said she wasn't sure what to say etc, so she ended up not going. I went. I said to him "hey this situation really sucks". We had a great conversation. He died. I'm really glad I went.

Fast forward a few years and my uncle (his dad) was in hospital dying of cancer. I spoke to my mum and she said she wasn't sure what to say etc. I said "you remember what happened last time. Just go." She went[1]. It was a good way to bring finality and say goodbye to her brother and she was really glad she went.

[1] I also went separately but that's slightly beside the point

Thank you for bringing this up. To add to that ... sometimes, circumstances (i.e. long distances) dictate that only 1 of those trips can be made and they may have to choose.

I had a family member with a terminal illness and a friend of the family from out of state decided to visit 2 months before the end to say goodbyes. They were elderly and on a fixed income so they could only budget the money for 1 trip. As a result, they had to skip the funeral. From my standpoint, they made the correct choice of prioritizing the conversation with a living person instead of attending a funeral.

I got so much time with him just before he passed. It was truly a blessing, even though he was already a huge part of my childhood, to get one last hurrah before I entered adulthood and he... well, took the next step.

I'm not a religious person, I don't honestly think there's an afterlife, and on this point my parents disagree. Maybe they would've made more time to visit him if they weren't sure he was going to a better place and they'd see him again.

They showed up in a funeral not because of her, but because they were afraid of what others would say about them if they didn't show up.

This is the sad reality of human behaviour in this day and age.

I've seen this with a relative with dementia - many people just weren't aware that she had no contact with them anymore due to this.

"Go to the funeral" isn't just about the funeral. It's a specific example of "if you have a chance to show up for someone, show up for them: even if (maybe _especially_ if) it's awkward or inconvenient".

Maybe they were there when you weren't there and they're asking the same question about you? Maybe your aunt never really thought to bring up that so-and-so had come to visit while you were there, so then as far as you know, nobody came to visit? Maybe they called, sure it's not the same as visiting but it's something.

It's true though, as humans we tend to not think about things and other people until they are gone. Don't be angry and upset, if anything, pity them for not having the time that you had.

Funerals are for the living, it's strengthening your friendships and relationships.

This is the point the article is trying to make. Parties and gatherings matter, don't confuse your birthday, Brit Milah or funeral being about you. It's selfish not have these ceremonies, they are about community and others.

It's a long road getting society more community focused again.

I've been meaning to visit her for the past five years, but never got around to it - and now never will.

I lost family members the day after having phone calls, or planning stuff to do together the upcoming weekend.

Leaving something to do later instead of now, that later might be too late.

It's not like you hurt your friends feelings for not speaking up.

When it was time to speak, nobody got up to say anything, until I did. I mentioned so many of us had negative feelings about him, and then recalled what good things he did for us. That ice broken, several of my cousins also stood up and spoke.

My uncle, who had arranged the funeral, closed it off by saying to everyone in the audience that if you wanted your own funeral to have more good stories, it was a good idea to patch relationships while still alive.

I think I would have regretted not standing up to speak. My grandfather did good and bad -- he invented the type of artificial voicebox given to people with throat cancer. He performed lifesaving surgeries on hundreds of people. He also yelled at his grandchildren during every dinner. He leered at my mother and aunts.

And yet, I would have regretted not going to his funeral, and not speaking.

I did misjudge it once: I was living in a different country with two fellow Irish people and the relative of a good friend died. In Ireland it would have been expected that we attend the funeral, in this case we showed up and there were only six closest relatives there, and our presence just felt inappropriate. I now know your place at a funeral is about your place in a wider community. That often overlaps with being a connection-of-a-connection, but not always.

The reasons my brain comes up with for why I shouldn't go are just lies.

Just go. And take what you can get while the opportunities are still coming.

But there's definitely some other effects in play there: revisiting people from your past who you've lost touch with is a pretty fraught experience, at least for me because ultimately the relationship is at best frozen in time from whenever you last talked: high school is particularly bad IMO, because it tends to feel like just trying not to be who you were a decade ago as everyone remembers you, rather then getting to be who you are now.

I've only got a couple of other friends that close that I would consider attending their parents' funeral. One parent passed away during covid and there was no service. When that other parent passes, I think I will go, even though we've not seen each other in years. Several states away, again, but I will plan on going.

I was going to add a top-level comment adding that there's a bit of nuance here between _the wake_ (calling hours, as the author puts it) and _the funeral_.

I actually have a similar regret about not attending the _funeral_ for a friend's mother, although I did attend the wake. In retrospect, I absolutely should have gone to the funeral but, at least in the US, the expectations around who should attend _the funeral_ vary between religions/backgrounds/etc. and it can sometimes be hard to tell what the most appropriate move is. This is especially true if you're no longer/not very close to the family in question. Some families want _the funeral_ to be a more intimate, private affair and will sometimes even mention that it will be in the announcement.

But, to your and the author's point, I think as a general rule, _going_ is the better bet.

In 2024 it would be quite better if we did more things out of societal obligation, instead of each individual placing themselves (and their whims) as the moral authority.

But I went because I felt a duty to my relatives that isn’t released just because they didn’t hold up their end of the bargain: he had indirectly given me life, even if he had done much ill besides. And moreover I felt an obligation to the office of the head of my family that transcended the particular man.

It would be a grim world in which comfort for the grieving is a service the deceased must have earned in advance, and we the comforters decide whether they have really earned it.

The funeral is a ritual for the people who knew and loved the dead person. The question should really be about them, rather than the deceased who is dead and gone.

More broadly, your actions are a reflection of your values. If there's a mismatch, then one of two things must be true: you fell short of your ideals and you should strive to do better in the future, or your stated values really aren't your values.

Now you've made yourself the asshole to other people. Not a great life strategy.

Societal obligation in this case is literally basic minor respect towards the remaining people. And frankly, the loneliness epidemic HN like to talk about is closely related to the ideology where the only thing that matters is yourself.

Funerals aren't about saying goodbye to corpses. They're collective, complex rituals that aid the grieving process.

I've tried, man. I'm deeply uncomfortable in social situations, and events with lots of wacky, nonsense traditions and rules that I don't understand makes things exponentially worse. Going to events like weddings and graduations makes me utterly miserable. I feel like shit for days before & afterwards, and I always regret going for months & years afterwards. I guess there's a chance someone there is glad I'm off being miserable in a corner, but I doubt it. So I've mostly stopped going to these things.

To end with a lighter note loosely related, a funny citation of the marshal Foch:

> "An assembly must have an odd number of members in order to make a decision, but three is already too many."

> ... I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.

I agree, but whatever you did earlier, that's not a reason to not do something now.

You kid sounds amazing. Be proud and ramble on.

Btw, which post are you referring to? I am curious to read it as well.

- kids who just graduated and realize that they've been told lies and need some life advice

- midlife crisis

- retirees who can see the death slowly approaching and reevaluate their lives in panic

And honestly, standing at his gravesite paying my respects, I do not have the painful memories that I had with my mother's funeral, trying to organize, trying to handle everyone and everything, and not being able to grieve in the way that I wanted until long after. Instead, I am able to simply talk to him, and not have such a frustrating coda.

They say that funerals are for the living. Sure. But going to funerals of loved ones has never made me feel better in the long run compared to more private goodbyes, and I am not the only one to feel this way.

The body does not need to be present for a memorial, as it is for a funeral. That makes it a somewhat easier event to arrange.

Then I'd assume that if 1 person had a really good reason not to be physically around for the first few months, you wouldn't think less of them if they make it up afterwards.

In my country (the Philippines), it's not uncommon for people to bring their children with them to funerals. I've been to the wakes of almost every elderly family member. It was also a good opportunity, however morbid the circumstances, to connect with the rest of the extended family, even those people who I didn't realize---until then---were my relatives after all.

Come to think of it, so would The Heart of Fools.

It's an interesting shift. A loss, I think.

America's average lifespan is 77. When you're 16, your parents are perhaps 46, and their parents are maybe 76.

And a lot of people live for 10+ years after retirement, so your teachers might all be alive too.

If you've got a big extended family, or you're part of an organisation like a church where 16 year olds come are getting to know 70+ year olds, you might have gone to more than 6 funerals.

But generally? At 16 your parents, their friends, your aunts and uncles, your 16 year old friends, their parents? Good chance they're all still alive. Your grandparents - maybe, maybe not.

The thing that made me sad about this article is that it made me realize how lacking I am in community. My eldest child is six, and I can't think of more than a couple people who are likely to pass from natural causes by the time she is sixteen, who we are close enough with to definitely know about their funeral. And I have no idea how we would find out about the funerals of people we aren't so close to. It's not like there is a local paper with obituaries that we read...

Of course the elephant in the room is that when I was a kid, the coordinating organization for this was my family's church. Without having that community fixture, I find myself unsure how this sort of thing actually works.

Even now, there aren’t anywhere near 150 people whose funeral I’d attend.

For me, funerals and similar services are more for family and close (or at least close-ish) friends. My social cluster might number 150, but there are many in it for whom I'll pass on my regards & regrets from afar rather than attending a funeral or wake.

Are you attending 2 funerals every year, even averaged over a couple of decades to allow for clustering? I can think of one year when there were three, but that nowhere near makes up for the years when there were none or just one.

For us it was only normal to go to funerals for family members, and my parents' generation is getting up there but still alive. So only your four grandparents are what you'd usually expect by that age.

I never even heard about deaths in friends' families unless it was a reason they were missing school.

> Is it just me or does this actually seem kind of low?

Not for someone who's young and mostly disconnected from their grandparents' generation. In my case, my family lived far away from pretty much all my relatives, which meant I'm not very close to any of them and going to a funeral meant lots of short-notice plane tickets.

I think I've only gone to two funerals in my life: one grandparent who died geographically close to use when I was a kid, and the father (who I never met) of a friend of mine.

I think it would have been better if it had been different, and I had gone to more funerals, because now my lack of exposure adds a whole extra layer of awkwardness onto dealing with death.

Nowadays many families have just one or two kids and everyone is spread over all of country and world.

I go to much fewer than 2 funerals per year. But now that I'm 55 it will likely start picking up.

> They say your social cluster is 150 people

Maybe yours is.

Yes, it's low.

There’s no way around that. Death inconveniences the living. Your death will probably make a mess of some kind. Your dead body will have to be buried or cremated, or it will be an even bigger inconvenience. Your effects will have to be split up among the living in some way.

And if you find funerals to be an inconvenience, don’t go. But don’t kid yourself into thinking that everyone will be happier if you insist on no funeral. Many of us want to gather with everyone else who cared about the person who died, and it feels strange and wrong to be denied the opportunity. Funerals are for the living anyway. Let the living make their own decisions about what events they want to hold and attend.

In fact, I think you have it exactly backwards. The industry popped up in order to exploit a deep human need. It did not create that need.

Consider that funerals may have developed over millennia as a component of the grieving process. There is nothing necessarily religious about them.

When my 99yo grandmother died, it felt natural, like it was the time for such things. She'd eaten all her cake.

When my 29yo sister died, it was completely different, even though her death was also natural and did not involve suffering (sudden cardiac death, because invariably someone will ask). Sure, she'd had some cake, but it seemed like most of it was ahead of her, and the cake didn't fall to the floor, it just sat there, uneaten and uneatable, which feels both sad and wrong.

At least if there had been a fight, there would be hope for reconciliation, or even if that weren't possible, we could still be glad to hear good news about each other's life. (Rarely does so much hatred endure forever that you can't ever be glad when good things happen to somebody.)

Death is worse.

My mum came and said: "your cousin died".

I felt nothing, I different. I had a great relationship with him.

Seeing my non-reaction, my mum said : "you can cry". So I thought: "oh, so I should cry now, that's the appropiate thing to do in these situations", then I started crying.

As for me, I could always use more cake. I have high expectations!

The appropriate reaction is the wailing and gnashing of teeth, an enormous amount of discussion, imitating as closely as possible the dress and decor of previous death gatherings that you have references to, varnishing, buttressing, and putting makeup on the corpse so that it looks alive, then looking at it longingly. If you don't do this you're a psychopath.