How did your family treat death?

[Old Troop]

Mine was very casual about it -- Dad used to say, "just bury me on the hill behind the house." Mom discussed the degree of decomposition of her father when we kids asked after his demise. Grandpa always said, "well it will be an adventure; or not." Nothing was ever hidden from us as children, nor were any ideas of the afterlife or its lack off limits.

[Taverner]

1. There is a Heaven

What I learned, however, was that there wasn't. So I treat it with respect. And hatred.

[proteus_lives]

23. "What I learned, however, was that there wasn't."

Are you privy to knowledge that the rest of us are not?

Because I always the question of "what happens to you after you die?" is meant to be left blank.

[Taverner]

33. Let me put it this way:

Evidence there is a heaven: ................................................

Evidence there isn't: (1) Your brain dies shortly after the heart dies, (2) Decomposition occurs shortly after death

[proteus_lives]

38. That's evidence for the physical body.

Not the spirit.

[Taverner]

40. Show me a spirit then...

[proteus_lives]

43. Show me it it's not there....

[Taverner]

44. Can't prove a negative

However - can't you give me some evidence?

And if not, identify one thing that does exist from an empirical standpoint that has no evidence of its existence...

[proteus_lives]

48. Just a personal anecdote.

Which really isn't evidence.

Neither of us can prove our beliefs.

[frogmarch]

2. An aunt of mine told me

that when her sister, my birth mother, died in India when I was a couple weeks old, my dad wrote love letters every day and put them beside her in her casket while he waited for her family to arrive for the funeral. Because it was during WWII, no one could come. He never forgave them. That is why I knew nothing of my birth mother's family till I was an adult and did some research on my own.

Several years ago I learned through this same aunt (who died last week at age 101) that she'd learned through her son that my birth mother's grave had been sold to other people and that the coffin containing the letters and my mother's remains had been dug up and burned, and that her marble monument had been sanded down and resold to the people who bought the grave.

It's all very creepy to me, and that is one reason I will be cremated when I die, and my ashes scattered.

Apparently in my dad's family, death rituals were important. I've seen photos of his ancestors' graves dating back to the late 1500s.

[kayakjohnny]

4. Your post is the saddest and darkest thing I've ever read in all my years on this site.

I hope for peace and forgiveness and understanding for everyone who was involved with this story.

I can't imagine this happening.

All the best to you and your loved ones.

[kimi]

6. This is so sad

I believe that when folks pass on to another dimension, their souls are no longer here to hurt. But, respect is respect. Your dad must have suffered from this, especially since rituals were important to him.

Peace to your family. Hugs.

[Old Troop]

7. I'm so sorry to hear that, Frogmarch. My family's approach to death

was whimsical, but we would never allow or forgive the dishonoring of a person's memory or of people's burial customs.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. My dear Old Troop...

My family always treated it as a fact of life, as something that would come eventually.

We discuss openly what is to be done with our remains once we're gone from them...

We miss our dead loved ones, and talk about them freely.

:hi:

[kimi]

5. Whoo, heavy topic

Umm. First thing I remember is when my grandfather died, my mom came home and said that at the same time he passed, a baby was born in the same hospital. I guess I sort of equated the two things, birth and death, cause I grew up to be an OB nurse, my contribution to it all. I dunno.

Still. My family has this weird sort of ritual - weird to me, anyway. They take pics of everything. I went to a funeral of my uncle earlier this summer - the cousins were taking pics of everything! The casket, the inhumation, the mourning relatives, all of it. Kind of made me nervous.

Not sure if this is how modern families treat death. If so, I definitely want a "NO Pics" policy at MY funeral.

I think your family had a healthy attitude towards it all, Old Troop.

[Ishoutandscream2]

46. Kimi, your mom seemed to be stating Krishna Consciousness

Death and rebirth - as if your dad's spirit left this world and entered the new born's. Interesting statement from your mom.

[The Flaming Red Head]

8. Food, Food, Food

and more Food

[Fire Walk With Me]

36. My family treated death to some salmon mousse.

[Old Troop]

39. Trying to trick him into choosing someone else so the good times

continue, huh?

[Fire Walk With Me]

49. Death gets the mousse, we eat cake.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. In my family of origin, children did not go to funerals

and it was not talked about, beyond being told " Your Grandmother died".
No grave visits.
People just kind of "disappeared". Creepy.
We were not a close extended family, so there was not much conversation about the departed.

When my mother died from cancer at age 57 ( I was 39 then) her husband ( he was # 5) had her taken to the funeral home, cremated, THEN notified me and my brothers who all lived within 50 miles of her home.
Not having a cemetery, headstone, plot, etc to go to struck me as strange and disquieting at the time.

I have never been to a funeral.
Seriously.
And I am getting Medicare in a month.
Weird.


My 2 sons and I are close, and we all share the belief of cremation and that we will return to "star stuff".
We find this very soothing.

[siligut]

10. Practical, in general.

Casual, like my mother keeping my father's ashes in an old polar bear cookie jar. Then when my mother died, my brother wielded together a titanium box, tossed my father's ashes in and then my mother's, shook them up and said, "Now their having a good time." My husband wants me to scatter his ashes onto Safeco Field. I keep telling him, I will be too old to be thrown out of a stadium.

[av8rdave]

11. Casual denial

The person concerned usually became very quiet about the whole thing.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. I'd say they treat it pretty emotionally mature, as your family does.

But both sides of my family are farmers and hunters who know death well, and know not that while we might not wish to run into it, we need not fear it. And though few are practicing religious folks, they've pretty much all been raised in churches and so also have the hope of heaven in their minds. Whether they're version of 'heaven' is much like what they were taught, I doubt, but I'm sure their version is a lot better anyway.

So at death, we mourn, and at our family reunions, we remember - but there's no hyperemotionalism, no attempts to pretend that death doesn't happen, no euphemisms...

[Massacure]

13. Interestingly enough, my views of death were shaped most by a computer science class I took.

I'm a Comp Sci major in college, and I took a class called Artificial Neural Networks. After taking that class, in a way I can argue that humans do not really have free will and that we are really just a product of our brain's algorithm that outputs responses based on the stimulus it receives.

I've only had one of my close family members die so far (my grandpa), and that was pretty much a normal Catholic funeral. I was seven at the time, and my parents let me attend the funeral, but not the burial. I kind of resent my parents for that, but I've only been to his grave once.

[pokerfan]

14. Just put me out by the curb

Why not? We pay a monthly fee for curbside pickup. Use the money that would have otherwise gone to a funeral on something fun like a party (wake?) or a vacation.

"Death is nothing to us. When we exist death is not, and when death exists we are not." -Epicurus

[Art_from_Ark]

25. That reminds me of a Monty Python skit

Son (entering kitchen): Hello Mom, Hello Dad.
Parents: Hello, Son.
Son: There's another dead bishop on the landing.
Mother: I wonder who keeps bringing them here? I've put three of 'em down by the bin this week and the dustman won't touch 'em.

[pokerfan]

35. big MP fan

I may have been subconsciously remembering them.

[madinmaryland]

47. Heh! "Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!"

[rug]

15. Half my family went out for cigarettes years ago.

And my dog is still out chasing rabbits.

[Old Troop]

41. One of the few pets that didn't go to that wonderful "farm" huh.

[applegrove]

16. When my grandfather died and all of his grandkids were in highschool my dad gave each of us a rose

to put on his coffin. It was small gestures of nuturing like that that helped.

[HEyHEY]

17. My mom wouldn't let him in the house.

[rrneck]

18. Like a river in Egypt. nt

[Orrex]

19. My great grandfather tried to trap her in a magical circle in the basement about 100 years ago.

He caught somebody, I'm sure of that much.

[lightningandsnow]

20. I wasn't allowed to go to my grandfather's funeral.

I was 8 years old at the time, and my family believed it was bad luck/inappropriate for children under 13 to go to funerals.

I was pretty close with my grandfather, and this was pretty upsetting to me.

[nolabear]

21. Pretty badly, really.

My mother developed cancer when I was nine (and she 28), and over a four year period and despite radical surgery that left her in awful shape, she slowly succumbed. Nobody, not the doctors, not my father, who knew, not anyone, told either her or us kids that she had not been cured and was dying. I think I must have known in a way after a while (my GOD the painkillers), but I was a kid and in my conscious mind I just didn't go there. One Christmas we all got the flu and she went into hospital for the last time right after (unknown to us they were putting off admitting her so she could have one last Christmas at home) and she died there. I literally came home from church one Sunday and my father met me at the door and said she had died. For quite a while I had the fear that I'd given her the flu and killed her.

I know this is an awful story and people might be inclined to be really uncomfortable hearing it, but I'm sure it's one reason I'm a therapist and a writer, two of the talk-about-itest professions on the face of the earth. Take it from me, talking about it is better.

[Silver Swan]

22. My father died when I was eight.

My mother didn't think children belonged at funerals--she had a bad experience as a child-- so I wasn't present at my father's funeral. It didn't bother me. Funerals are for the living, and if someone doesn't want to participate, that is fine. I try to avoid funerals, myself.

When my mother died, we didn't have a funeral, because she didn't want one. She wanted my sisters and I to go out to dinner on her, and get drunk. So we did.

When I die, I want everyone who cares to go to a karaoke bar and sing Cabaret ( the long version with the Elsie verse) in my memory.

Death is like general anesthesia, except you don't wake up.

[proteus_lives]

24. As part of life.

Nothing was hidden. I was in the room when one of my grandfathers died. They brought him home from the hospital and he died in his own bed. I was one of those standing at his bedside.

It was a very spiritual moment.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

26. If there are twenty cars in the funeral procession ...

at least five of the cars will have coolers filled with beer in the trunk.

:hi:

[Old Troop]

42. I would hope so!!

[polly7]

27. del.

[HopeHoops]

28. Same as all the other kids - "Take two pieces of candy. Oh you look so cute."

[hedgehog]

29. Funerals were where we met extended family. I was shocked

to discover as an adult that some people didn't take the children to the wake and funeral.

We laughed, we cried, we talked, we remembered.

[ChoralScholar]

30. I was the only one my mother shared her funeral plans with.

Not even my dad knew. Thankfully he let me carry out her wishes.

She felt like she didn't deserve a funeral. A graveside service is all she wanted, and didn't want to be viewed outside the family. And Amazing Grace is the only song she wanted sung, a cappella. I brought in a quartet of some close friends to sing, and the lead singer couldn't make it, so I filled in.

This time of year always reminds me of her. She was a breast cancer survivor (she died of a stroke unrelated to the cancer), and bought a jeweled pink ribbon off of Home Shopping network, long before they became mainstream.

She was so proud of that. We had the funeral home put it on her when they dressed her for burial. She even asked that memorials be made to Susan G. Komen foundation instead of sending flowers.

[Iggo]

31. They didn't. (Not with us kids, anyway.)

I'm pretty sure I never went to a funeral when I was a child. I know people died, but I was never part of it. The first funeral I went to was my Nana's when I was about 25. (Pall bearer and everything...*shudders*.)

[JNelson6563]

32. My family is Catholic

So funerals are a long drawn out affair. Since most of the family members I really cared about are already dead I don't anticipate many more funerals. Everyone knows I want to be cremated, none of this filing past the caskets, "Oh poor Julie, she looks so lifelike!". Nah, cremate me and disperse my ashes over any lake that's convenient in my beloved Michigan and we'll call it good. Play Vivaldi's Four Seasons, drink some wine, eat some Belgian chocolate and smoke some chronic. Voila! Julie-style funeral. It's all good.

Julie

[sammytko]

34. A time for family to visit and recall the good times

Some tears, but also some laughs.

I was watching an episode of Mad Men and roger made a statement that stuck with me "Life, there is always a tragic ending, so make the most of it!"
or was it Don? Anyway its so true. You know how its going to end.

[old mark]

37. Some made a big fuss...most just plain died. nt

[YellowRubberDuckie]

45. If someone in our family died...

...it wasn't discussed. Everyone spent the next week drunk out of their minds and the kids just kind of went outside. If it was cold, we'd sit in someone's vehicle and talk...or not. I remember my mom slapping me a lot after my dad died like it was fault. And when my sister died, my mom again tried to make herself feel better with alcohol then screamed at me that she wished it had been me instead of her. I've always been the kid who was there. The big disappointment. Even though I'm the one that never got into any trouble of any kind, went to college, and essentially caused no trouble for anyone, despite a lack of supervision and parenting from age 16.
Death has been a part of my life since I was a kid. And I know that if I love someone they will be snatched from me eventually by death. I don't know if there's a heaven or a hell, but I am pretty sure it doesn't work how the fundies think it does. I don't think if you are hateful all of your life to people you see as dirt beneath your feet that you are rewarded for it when you die. That's bullshit.
Duckie