Deaths and Funerals

[atashi bunny]

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago after a friend died, I write a lot when I'm frustrated and I guess I just wanted other people's thoughts and experiences of death and well, attending funerals.

What do you say to someone who is about to die? What do you say to them once they are dead? What do you say to someone who is about to lose someone? What do you say to someone who has just lost someone?

We were taught a lot of things in school and I guess it comes to that saying, ‘the most important thing we learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learnt at school.’ We are never really taught what to say at funerals or what to say to someone when they’re dying or what to say to someone who has just lost someone. Because what can you say? Is there a right thing to say?

I went to a funeral once, to be honest it was long and boring and the worst part about it was the atmosphere. If someone dies, there is always someone who will cry for them and to sit there listening to the melancholy cries really is the worst.  I never want to go to another funeral, when I die I don’t want a funeral, I don’t want a party, I just want people to move on with their lives, just to forget. When I told this to a friend he said, ‘A funeral is a material form of the proof that someone lived their life to the fullest, so we must watch over it respectfully.’ I agree with him but a funeral is having to suffer, to know that it will feel like forever for you to be happy again, for you to know that you will always remember someone that you will never see again. You feel that you have to honour them by remembering who they are but the irony is that you are reminded of the sadness.

I went to that funeral, the only one I’ve ever been to and I wish it would be the only one I go to, but life is cruel and death is always looming. I said to the parents of the girl, ‘there lays her empty shell, I wonder where she went, I wish there was a way to find her, please accept my condolences, I don’t know what I should say at a time like this, but it’s frustrating… so frustrating…’ I wonder if I said the right thing and whether there was a right thing to say but in the end I left with the parents crying just as they had been before I spoke to them.

[Guest Brent1430291862]

I don't see anything wrong with what you've said to the parents. It just that the parents are very emotional simply because their daughter died and maybe they were in coping stage.