Who are funerals for?
Working a lot with people in midlife, I’ve found that one of the things that enters more into that phase of living is coping with people dying: grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, friends and colleagues. Some of those losses will be closer than others. Many of those may involve funerals: attending them and more rarely organizing them.
One of the things that recently bereaved people get asked a lot, soon after someone’s death, is about funeral arrangements: Where and when is the funeral? May I send flowers? Will there be a viewing or a wake? I want to provide a couple of suggestions here for people who are more closely and more distantly affected by someone’s recent death.
I was a fan of Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001–2005) when it first came out, and recently rewatched the series. It centers on the Fisher family and their personal dramas. As they are a family of funeral directors, the audience also gets to see a lot of funerals (and a fair number of other routines and rituals). Most episodes begin with a death and follow the funeral arrangements as a sub-plot that usually resolves in the same episode.
One question that I do not recall being clearly addressed, in five seasons and 63 episodes, was that of who funerals are for — at least, not in the way I am asking the question here. In particular, I don’t recall an episode that focused on a bereaved person who didn’t particularly want a funeral.
Referring to recently bereaved people, and trying to answer the question Who are funerals for? involves demarcating who is a bereaved person and perhaps who is not. The short answers, I think, are: Bereaved people are those for whom the deceased was really important and Funerals are for people who need them. You will know if you are a really bereaved person from the fact, besides the pain of the loss of the person who has died who was very important to you, that you will be asked about arranging a funeral — it is your responsibility. But only if you want to take that up.
It is a bit trite to say that funerals are for the living. No matter how carefully and richly you may plan your own funeral, unlike a wedding, for instance, that is not a party you will get to attend. It is a bit less trite to say that funerals have evolved in many cultures to facilitate the work of grieving — making real something that the mind usually tries to avoid accepting. Not at all tritely, and to follow a specifically psychoanalytic insight, funerals can be part of the work of mourning that aims to prevent the bereaved falling into melancholia - a kind of depression where the self is punished as a proxy for anger at the abandoning object — the person who has died and left us bereaved.
So far so good: Funerals help bereaved people to mourn their losses and avoid intractable melancholic depression. We might imagine though that, as with most things, some people need funerals and other funerary rituals more than others. Generally at a funeral there is at least someone there who really needed it. But a lot of other people also attend funerals, some who want to be there, and some from obligation.
Many more distantly affected people want to attend funerals to aid their own work of grieving the person who has died. But, unlike people who are really bereaved, whose relationship to the deceased has been very important, many funeral attendees don’t really need to be there.
Some really bereaved people may want to mourn apart from the typical funerary rituals of their culture, and can do so without falling into melancholia: These are really bereaved people who do not need a funeral. They may want to mourn in some other manner, for example scattering ashes in a meaningful way, or having a memorial lunch, or going dancing! Asking these people to organize a funeral, then, is a bit like asking someone to plan and pay for someone else’s wedding: it’s something that one might do, but which would be very generous and not for the person doing the organizing.
So, for closely affected people, those who are really bereaved, do not feel compelled to arrange a traditional funeral just because more distantly affected people keep asking you to. There may be other ways you want to go about the work of mourning, and that is quite up to you.
And for more distantly affected people, if someone wants to arrange a traditional funeral and invite you, then they will let you know. Asking them (repeatedly) about it is putting your own needs before those of the really bereaved.
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