Christian funerals are pathetic.
Offline Please excuse any language that slips by. I've been holding this in since the 5th and it's just been boiling up.
So the 5th was my step-mothers funeral. After everybody sat down, they played some funeral songs and then the person doing the service got up to speak. He was INSTANTLY selling the religion to us. The funeral service wasn't about my step-mom, it was about Christianity... with some loose sprinklings of my step-mom thrown in.
Several times I wanted to simply walk out, but didn't because my dad needed me there with him. If it was my fathers funeral, I would have stopped what he was doing and done the service myself. The thing that REALLY pissed me off, though, was at the very end he asked us to bow our heads in prayer and THEN he asked us to raise our hands if we accepted Christ.
Now, her side of the family is religious (she wasn't very), however, about 15 minutes of the hour long service was about pam... with 30 minutes being about Christianity and the other 15 being music. Surely, I thought, the internment would be ALL about her. How wrong I was.
Same thing, but this time it seemed less personal. The only personal thing that happened was the "releasing of the doves" which I thought wasn't going to be a religious thing. How wrong I was.
"This dove represents Pam."
"These 3, which follow and guide Pam, represent the Holy Trinity."
So in other words, unless you want your service to be filled with crap like this, specifically note that you hate Jesus or something.
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Hey Crimson, I'm so sorry for your loss. I do understand your frustration with the Christian funeral. I also think that this type of funeral takes away from the person who it is supposed to honor. Instead, the honor is given to the lord and Jesus Christ.
I had a good friend of mine die of a heroin overdose about 10 years ago. He was a great kid, funny, incredibly smart, and very artistically talented. He had been going to art school but dropped out to go to rehab and was basically in and out of rehab from junior high until he died. Anyway, at his wake, all the priest talked about was how much Bart liked working at the Starbucks (he hated it) and that god gave him a sense of humor so he could make the early commuter's day a little better as he served their coffee. Anyway, to make the long and the short of it, most of us were furious that this man, who had no idea who our friend was, was more busy praising god and thanking god than he was in giving our friend a good send off. He even had the balls to suggest that his dabbling in 'dark arts' (not magic, artistically) was what tempted him to heroin.
Anyway, I understand what you mean.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
I attended the funeral of a friend's wife. Imagine my surprise when the Catholic priest starts honking some long-winded, self-serving story about an "atheist convention."
"Sounds like lots of fun," he leans on his pulpit with the knowing smirk that no one's in the mood to debate him. He went on to make some incomprehensible analogy about architecture, with some straw-man atheist dumbfounded and rebuffed by the fucking watchmaker argument. It made me think what a small and sheltered mind this man must have, and felt an unexpected pity.
I was still tentative about calling myself an atheist at that time, but his speech made me realize better what side I was on.
I'm so sorry, Crimson. I hope you and your dad are doing OK.
It's so hard to get through crap like that, but we do it for the others that are grieving, too.
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CrimsonEdge,
Sorry about your step mom.
Your story reminds me of a funeral I went to about 15 years ago for a man who died of AIDS. The fundamentalist Baptist preacher actually had an alter call during the funeral. It was fucked up.
But I'm really glad you brought this subject up. It reminds me that I need to get off my ass and tell my family ( brother, nieces, etc.) that in no way do I want a Christian funeral.
Maybe I'll type up something this weekend and give it to them about what I want for my funeral. I'll look for some good jokes on line that I can use. Or maybe I'll just set up my video camera and do my own eulogy.
I'm not sick or near death or nothing like that. But ya never know. I could drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow.
I'll think of something.Frosty's coming back someday. Will you be ready?
Crimson,
Those memories at the funeral last a long time. I had to break up a fight at one and convince people to go to the interment instead of straight to the will reading at another.
I've had to 'sit up with the dead' once as a child and gotten beat up at a wake.
So far, I've been to one respectful service and it wasn't for anyone in my family.
Go figure. Every one of them had an allegedly devout minister as official.
magilum,
Was the friend's wife an atheist? Is that why he went off on a tangent?
For me. Harvest what you can. I don't know what's going to be good or bad.
Then, take me to the taxidermist. Turn me into a lamp/clock/radio/drink dispenser.
Have my corpse over for parties. Cheap. Give all of the money to stem cell research to preserve the living.
Or dump my naked dead ass in a swamp in Louisiana(gators choke on clothing) and take the money that would have been spent on a funeral and give half to SC research and half to the RRS.
Quite often at the funerals I have attended, I have wished that I could swap the dead person for one that needs to be.
To lighten the mood:
A woman on her deathbed tells her husband, "Promise me that you will ride in the front car with my mother to the funeral."
The husband says, "OK. For you, but I want you to know that it will ruin my whole day."
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I'm sorry to hear about your loss.
I have a lot of questions in my mind about how to handle things at a funeral. I refuse to pretend to be Christian, regardless of who's funeral it is. I don't want to do anything to disrespect someone's funeral, but I also don't want to be cornered into being preached at or having a religious discussion, either.
I want to tell people I don't want a Christian funeral, and I might want to be buried in a freethinker's cemetery, if there's such a thing, not that I want to put my loved ones at any terribly inconvenient costs or trouble, but I'm not sure my wishes would be respected.