First Post

[Logic please]

Hi darkc, my condolences also.

I see that you have already been directed to our sources in respect of your query, hopefully they will help you.

I also hope that, now you are out of lurkerdom, that you will return and join in, when you are able.

[darkcentury]

That is hauntingly beautiful BlueDevil.

I am just feeling at the moment that I would like to be totally irreverent and have the most inappropriate music played at the funeral. Why do we allow ourselves to be bound by social conventions? Hymns at a funeral for someone who was an atheist? What a lot of BS. I am still seriously considering Black Sabbath just to piss them all off.
I personally feel that I have no need for any formal ceremony. It is only an excuse for the living to display their grief publicly. The relationship I had with him was personal and has nothing to do with public outpourings.

[Logic please]

@darkc: FWIW, I'd like a funeral to primarily be an authentic celebration and acknowledgement of the person, and the life lived, on their terms. Grief plays an inevitable part, but I'd be hoping for it not to become the raison d'etre, if it were my own funeral.

I can't speak to the IRL expectations that you're facing but AFAIAC, if an authentic *celebration* means Black Sabbath, then crank up those amps. If that means no *formal* ceremony, so be it.

Just my $0.02, and quite probably worth somewhat less, in terms of tangible assistance.

[BlueDevil]

A google search on 'music for funerals' gives quite a few hits. At a quick glance at some of the sites there wasn't a lot that grabbed me, but you never know, you may find just what you are looking for.

[4lan]

Originally Posted by darkcentury

Hi all
<snip>

Howdy dk,

Welcome to our community.

Please let me express my sympathies for your loss.

And FWIW I offer you this; I'm confident whatever you decide to do regarding the arrangements will be good enough. After all your partner will always be near your thoughts I'm sure the resultant event will be a similar experience for all those present. Just do what feels right for your partner, yourself, your family and friends.

Best wishes,


4lan

[Ce4or]

My condolences,I strongly agree with fataardvark

The most moving parts (for me) of funerals I've attended have been where people spoke of their memories together.

It can be very beneficial to the speakers also

[David Nicholls]

Hello darkcentury,

As a fellow human I empathise with your sadness on this occasion that none of us escape and share the feelings you have at your partner’s loss of life. It was this sentence that intrigued me and prompted my response as that is exactly how my partner and I expect to dissipate into the universe via a crematorium.

I personally feel that I have no need for any formal ceremony.

Our wishes are ratified in our wills on death and when all officialdom is done and if our body parts are of no use to science or the coroner, to be taken to a crematorium accompanied by the survivor as a witness to the event. The ashes will then be distributed on our favourite piece of land at that time.

Formal funerals seem to be an ‘us and them’ affair. The living and the dead - as though the person in the coffin is an object unlike us. I’m sure the rejection of the idea of our own death, is at play here.

Having been to many formal funerals and religious ones (the latter being the worst kind by far) I have concluded that most people don’t want to be there and that the person who has died discussed mainly in eulogies containing information everyone knows anyway. After-gatherings seem to be more about catching up with people hardly known.

Maybe there is a grief expunging component for some of those in attendance that is helped by such formality but I have never felt it myself even though I have been very close to some of the people who have died. I feel that the memory of the life of my partner and me would be distracted in a death ceremony if surrounded by others, some who are only present out of duty. My true grief will be a personal thing and getting blotto alone is the only way I can imagine at a time of such forever parting.

To me, those who may have shared memories of the deceased can do likewise in a group of their own making.

I’m not recommending our method as this is individual choice. The one thing I would recommend is that whichever method is employed, do it in such a manner that does not become a sad memory of how you would have liked it to be done.

Good luck.

David