My Christian, old republican southerner father wants me to attend his Christian funeral with all of his surviving relatives present. I don’t believe in any god, he knows that. He needs a religion to give a meaning to his life? Knock yourself out.
Religion is not the main problem here. The main problem is how close minded and fake people are in a southern small town in GA and above all, relatives. 2 aunts love to pretend everything is fine, they excel doing that on funerals and weddings, then stab you in the back as soon as you’re not within ear distance, either need drama to feel important or have way too much free time.
I wouldn’t mind a small Christian ritual with my mother, my brother, a priest and nobody else, but these women and their husbands? They drag everyone down with their stupid grudges about yard sales and business deals made in the early 2020s and seem to be envious of those who left that place and found something better. Last time I saw them, 7 years ago, they complained I don’t call them. What for?
I’m better off without them and don’t have the bandwidth to deal with them.
Family seems to be an identity issue for my father, the idea that his whole family won’t bury him together scares him. I told them I will honor him my way, with luck on the hospital bed where he dies or at home, that mother and brother are welcome to honor him with me, that I won’t attend a funeral with people I don’t like but he is not listening: he is now retorting to manipulate me (it would be so good, wouldn’t it be nice…?)
My father is not cognitively impaired. The easy way out would be to tell him ‘sure, I’ll come to your funeral with all those assholes you care so much about’ and after he dies, ignore it. I suspect my mother would agree, because she wasn’t born in GA and these aunts always felt superior to her, something my father always downplays because ‘we’re family’.
I like treating my father like an adult and want genuine conversations with him. To me, placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old who needs to be lied to so he doesn’t start feeling sad or feels I’m attacking him. It doesn’t feel right.
But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.
So what do I do?
2 aunts love to pretend everything is fine, they excel doing that on funerals and weddings, then stab you in the back as soon as you’re not within ear distance, either need drama to feel important or have way too much free time.
Okay? If shitty people do shitty things, let it roll off you like water off a duck’s back.
It kinda sounds like you let what other people do affect you deeply. Maybe work on giving fewer fucks about people’s drama and giving more fucks about what’s important to you. I know that’s easy for me to say, but it is an attitude that can be cultivated.
Yeh pretty much. I dont totally agree because sometimes ‘family drama’ can really hurt. Generally, funerals suck, but they’re not about you. You kinda just have to suck it up and have a tedious day. Stand off the the side and dont bother yourself with the other people.
OP, you ought to be there to bury your dad I think. I imagine you’d at least get a free feed out of it.
Go, honor your father, and celebrate the death of any future obligations you have to your shitty aunts.
You will be making a terrible, stupid and wholly avoidable mistake that can never be undone if you allow others to keep you from attending your own fathers funeral because they make you uncomfortable.
E: you are giving ground by not attending. You already have the right to the ground, you were explicitly asked to attend the funeral. If you choose to be bullied out of the funeral you are giving up the ground you were invited to occupy.
It is an act of cowardice, a retreat, if you don’t attend.
If you’re truly above these people then don’t let them push you around and honor your dying loved one’s wishes in spite of their bullshit!
Some of these responses are so nuts that they might be your aunts conspiring to fuck with you. Or caterers desperate to sell one more plate. It’s like they never visit graves or even talk about the person that died again. Are you even ever going to see these people again?
Fuck what your dad wants. Ask your mom/siblings if they need the support, if you like them. And if you do go, you can literally fart on your aunts. I can’t fathom why people want you to engage with people who make your life worse for no gain. Yeah, smile for your boss because you need the paycheck, but this?
Are you even ever going to see these people again?
the only ones I care about are my mother and brother.
Ask your mom/siblings if they need the support, if you like them.
this is the best answer so far. With difference.
I can’t fathom why people want you to engage with people who make your life worse for no gain. Yeah, smile for your boss because you need the paycheck, but this?
cannot upvote this enough
You could discuss with your father, other ways to honour him after he passes.
Spending 2-3 hours at the funeral home with his open casket, is a more personal way to say your farewells and honour him.
Scattering his ashes at an agreed location of shared importance for the both of you, can be a powerful final goodbye.
If he is insistent that only attending the main funeral is good enough, then it is less about honouring him, and more about scoring points with relatives.
Spending 2-3 hours at the funeral home with his open casket, is a more personal way to say your farewells and honour him.
as said, I wouldn’t mind a small Christian funeral where I could vet visitors. I’m all for a personal, even intimate farewell, but he wants the crowd.
Scattering his ashes at an agreed location of shared importance for the both of you, can be a powerful final goodbye.
Things I proposed already:
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burn his corpse, use the ashes to grow a tree, small ceremony with me, mother and brother. Even with a priest.
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burn his corpse to scatter his ashes on a river of his choosing, small ceremony with me, mother and brother. Even with a priest.
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burn his corpse, put the ashes in three small containers so each of us makes his own ritual.
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not burn the corpse, simply put the corpse in a hole, plant a tree over the corpse.
he wants the Christian cross with the crowd next to his mother. And me there, even if I feel is stupid. This is to be taken literally, he has already bought a place for my corpse to be buried next to him.
I feel he doesn’t care about how this makes me feel, which I guess happens to so many families when conflicts like this arise.
Sounds like you have given this plenty of thought, and already proposed burial options that may satisfy both of you.
I did mean that the funeral with relatives would still go ahead, but you would only attend something personal, as an extra to the traditional funeral.
You could also opt to go to the big funeral as final gesture to him.
However, suffering people who are ‘family’, but have sent you nothing but negativity, is not something you are obligated to do.
Other commenters can say you must do this or that for social convention, but only you will understand the amount of actual love and care felt from these relatives.
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Regarding the prebought plot, where you are buried is entirely your wishes and choice. The time is now to make it understood (clearly detailed in your will is best) where you want to be buried, if that is another important choice for you.
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You sound angry. Are you sure you’re angry about this and not about him dying?
The reasons to visit a funeral are:
- If it helps you process your own grief
- If you can/want to help others process their grief
If, when your father dies, you feel overpowered with emotions, you should consider going, because a ritualized, socialized process like this can really help you process the sadness in a healthier way. If you care about your mother or other relatives and think your attendance will help them process the loss, you should go. Don’t let your annoying aunts ruin your mental health or relationships with people you care about.
If neither of those applies, you are fully justified in skipping the event.
As for what to tell your father: I would say a white lie is justified in this particular case, whatever you decide to do in the end. He will not know whether or not your attend. Yes, this is treating him like a child; however, by manipulating you to attend an event which definitionally will not affect his life in any way, he is already being childish. Unfortunately this is how some people are, it doesn’t mean you can’t love or respect them in other aspects.
favorite quote of mine
“family is a sinkhole, and you were right to get out when you had the chance”
You go to your father’s funeral to honor your father’s memory. He isn’t going to bar his sisters from attending his funeral, that would be wildly out of the norm. When your dad dies, go to his damn funeral. This beef you have with his sisters is immaterial.
placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old
Your father expecting you to attend his funeral is pretty fucking standard. It’s a colossally large dick move to not attend your own father’s funeral just because you have a grudge against his sisters. Be a fucking adult and bear the presence of a few people you don’t like for a few hours.
Funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living. People should feel free to commemorate or memorialize their loved ones how they see fit. Demanding they do it your way is shitty and self centered.
Sure. But also: planning a funeral and communicating your funeral wishes is also for the living, which the father is. and respecting the deceased by honoring their wishes is also for the living, since it’s how we help solidify the norm that we respect people’s final wishes.
Demanding they do it your way is shitty and self centered.
Yeah, how dare that fucking asshole ask his son to attend his funeral just because he cares about “family” or something. It’s like he doesn’t understand that his sisters might ask some slightly uncomfortable questions or gossip!
You’re right that funerals are for the living. They’re a place for the living to grieve, mourn and honor the deceased. Acting like it’s shitty or self centered for someone to express an opinion about their funeral or what’s important to them is honestly disgusting.
The man isn’t asking his son to deal with someone who traumatized him, or violated him in some way: he just doesn’t like the aunts. That’s like refusing to attend the funeral because you just really hate waking up early if you don’t have to.I’m not talking about the father, I’m talking about the shitty, patronizing responses calling op childish or out of line for deciding how they want to remember their own father.
It’s also an opportunity to reconcile. Not that OP seems to want that, nor would the aunts most likely want that, but sometimes such events just make things… Click.
Having okay relations with relatives is important, and afuneral is an opportunity for things to improve. That’s just pure sociology. You aunts will spin it into “God works in mysterious ways”, but it’s the same core thing with a culty religious spin.
So my take is: bite your teeth and attend the funeral. It’s a one-time investment of a few hours. Odds are the aunts won’t want to make issues. Maybe it fixes things. Your fathed did ask nicely, after all. And it’d be nice to honour his request. Any semi-okay relatives would respect that, religious or otherwise.
YMMW if they’re as fake as you say they are (religion is a hell of a drug), but if it doesn’t go the ideal way, you did your part and they failed theirs. If you don’t go, it’ll be the other way around because Christians unfortunately eork like that. And they like holding grudges. A funeral is (unfortunately) one of the few “chances” to reconcile. Shame someone needs to quite literally die for them to be this open to reconcoliation.
Speaking like an ex-christian raised in the tradition: this could be your opportunity to get things to smooth over. They’re bound be as open to reconciliation as possible. Just don’t force it. Keep your distance and honour your dad’s wishes. Forcing things will have the opposite effect of seeming disingenuous. No action other than showing up necessary.
The amount of families reconciled at christian funerals I’ve witnessed is in the low 20’s.
Funerals are to please the spirit of the dead so they don’t come back and spoil your crops.
I agree with you but wanted to see how un-popular my take is
He isn’t going to bar his sisters from attending his funeral
true, but my mother might. There is really that much animosity.
As a matter of fact, on one of my great grandfather’s funeral 2 brothers banded together to exclude a third one from the funeral. According to my father, this person had to leave the cemetery but then climbed up a tree next to the wall to watch the ceremony.
So there is already a precedent about excluding unwanted visitors from a funeral in my completely normal family 🤣
Yikes… Unless something truly terrible happened, that level of pettiness you’re describing is crazy. My family is insane on both sides, so I get things off things being normalized, but barring a close family member from attending a funeral they clearly very much wanted to witness is extreme.
One thing I learned from my own dysfunctional family is that their past behavior and decisions aren’t an excuse for me to repeat the behavior. Unless you want to carry the drama torch yourself, it’s time to take a step back and look at the big picture. How much do you want this animosity between your mom and aunts to influence your life? If you truly don’t care about them and their opinions, why are they worth you missing your own father’s funeral?
This year marks the 10 year anniversary of my adoptive mom passing away. There were many people at her funeral that I was happy to never have to see again. I don’t know the details of your situation, but try to keep in mind this is a decision you’ll only get to make once.
+1
Others have already said it, funerals are for the living. As long as you’re honest with yourself (this doesn’t seem to be about religion, rather shitty family) and you understand the consequences of your actions, you’re an adult, do what you want.
Will it cause a scandal if you don’t go? Probably. Is that something you’re prepared for? Can you deal with that fallout?
The people in this thread exclaiming you must go, it’s family! likely don’t come from families with shitty relations and themselves feel some societal obligation to go to a funeral no matter what. Geography doesn’t matter for honouring the dead. You go to comfort and commiserate with the survivors. If that’s not important to you, do it in your own way. There is no wrong way to grieve or mourn someone’s passing (obviously within reason).
You go to comfort and commiserate with the survivors.
agreed, with the ones I care about
I can see where you are coming from but I don’t think this is the hill to die on and I think you should go to the funeral if you are able to. I also have relatives I strongly dislike, but if we are simultaneously at a funeral or a wedding or something, I just don’t talk to them. If they have hurtful things to say about me (I know they do) I don’t care because their opinions don’t matter to me.
Funerals, among other things, are an event that reminds us that there are things more important than the petty shit we squabble about and hold against one another. Whatever flaws we all have, we are all human, we are all going to die someday, and we are all going to lose those we love if we don’t die first. It’s a time to set all that petty shit aside and remember that.
Counterpoint: fuck subjecting yourself to reactionary assholes in Georgia. Even if they are family.
In my opinion, your stance is madness. You say you’re treating your father like an adult, but you aren’t acting like one yourself.
Adults tolerate minor discomforts to honor the ones they love. Adults make small talk or avoid people they don’t like at important events while still successfully showing their attendance.
Children prioritize their own small emotions and grievances over the needs and dignity of their parents because they don’t know any better or have any perspective.
So, which kind of son/daughter are you going to be?
On the other hand, it is immature and even selfish to care about the details of your own funeral. Your funeral is specifically an event for people who loved you, to process their grief. You will definitionally not be around to care about any of it, let your loved ones process their grief however they want.
If it was unusually selfish to care about how you were honored after you die, then nobody would be buying grave monuments or fancy urns.
Caring about your funeral at the end of your life seems to be a pretty common human experience. Hearing that your own child can’t be bothered to attend the event that is meant to honor your life is hard. I imagine it makes them feel like their child doesn’t love them as much as they thought they did.
Would I care if my child didn’t attend my funeral? No, I’d be dead. Would I care if my child told me that they were going to skip my funeral because they couldn’t tolerate a brief encounter with my annoying (never accused of actual abuse) sister? Yes, because it would show me that my child is being self absorbed in that moment and can’t muster up the energy to even pretend to care about my feelings on my deathbed.
I wonder how many unpleasant things OP’s father endured while raising them—I’d imagine a lot. Sometimes we bear little burdens for the people we love, and that’s totally normal, in my opinion.
If it was unusually selfish to care about how you were honored after you die, then nobody would be buying grave monuments or fancy urns.
I wouldn’t say unusually, but yes, people are known to be selfish and immature sometimes. Especially when faced with something scary and unavoidable, like death, and backed by culture and tradition.
I imagine it makes them feel like their child doesn’t love them as much as they thought they did.
People receive and express love in different ways. Not understanding and engaging with that is immature. Trying to manipulate another person into doing something uncomfortable after your death for no material reason at all is selfish.
Sometimes we bear little burdens for the people we love, and that’s totally normal, in my opinion.
Maybe the father can bear the little burden of not doing anything and not being materially affected in any way, then.
yours is an interesting post, I’ll try to rebut it.
I don’t want to honor an important person by having to deal with people I don’t like, that in the past stated very clearly they don’t like my mother to the point of calling her a gold digger (and worse).
Something I’ll never understand is why my father is so accommodating with people like that for family’s sake. To me that makes him weak and lets others walk all over him, even to the point of disrespecting his own wife for ‘family’. This I’ll never understand.
To me doing what you propose means turning something pure into a show, a theatrical production.
I’ll have to talk to my mother about this. If he goes first, she’s the one who’ll decide.
To me doing what you propose means turning something pure into a show, a theatrical production.
Welcome to life.
Of course it’s a theatrical production, just like church, weddings, birthday parties, and just about every other human event. The performance is part of the honoring. You dress up nice. You show your grief. You remember out loud. These are all visible signs of the respect you feel for the deceased. It makes others aware of how much the deceased meant to you. It reminds everyone of the value of life, relationships, and to not waste time with people you love because they might not be there one day.
They say you only get one shot at a first impression. A funeral is a time when everyone who cared for you comes together to create the last impression. You, as his son, have a lot of power to make it a good one.
I don’t want to honor an important person by having to deal with people I don’t like…
That’s the childish response I was talking about. Nobody wants to spend time with people they don’t like, but a mature realization is that your mild discomfort is secondary to the importance of that moment, even more so, it is secondary to the importance of letting your father know that you love and honor him.
As I understand it from your description, you have prioritized avoiding discomfort over attending his funeral (his final wish), and you’ve prioritized avoiding discomfort by telling him that you’re going to skip instead of even softening the blow by shouldering the burden of a white lie. You chose yourself twice over your dying dad’s feelings and final requests. That is a pretty tough pill to swallow for dad.
To me that makes him weak and lets others walk all over him…
Do you like your dad? I got the impression from the original post that you generally had a good relationship with him, but then you put him down here.
People are flawed. People have weakness and severity in them and sometimes lean too far to one side. You dad is dying. If you don’t accept and possibly forgive his humanity now, when will you?
That’s the childish response I was talking about.
then I’m childish. Note I don’t say that meaning I should change. What I’m tempted to do is to agree with mother what to do with his corpse after he dies because I have the feeling she also hates some family members pretty strongly and would prefer to be her genuine self during a ceremony like this than having to cater to visitors and see the ones that wronged her, pretending all is fine and dandy.
People are flawed.
absolutely. As you said, I’m childish and don’t want to change. My father has the good traits and also the bad ones I mentioned. Why should I only mention his good side? Because we’re family? My father cheated on my mother, my mother forgave him. This I’ll never understand.
A funeral is a time when everyone who cared for you comes together to create the last impression. You, as his son, have a lot of power to make it a good one.
yes, with the ones I care about, the ones I respect, not with a bunch of rednecks.
As I understand it from your description, you have prioritized avoiding discomfort over attending his funeral (his final wish), and you’ve prioritized avoiding discomfort by telling him that you’re going to skip instead of even softening the blow by shouldering the burden of a white lie. You chose yourself twice over your dying dad’s feelings and final requests.
Because I don’t know what’s the right call here: do I treat him like the adult he always was, being brutally honest with him when dealing with difficult issues because we all die or do I treat him like a scared child incapable of having sound decisions anymore, a person that only reacts and thinks emotionally?
If you don’t accept and possibly forgive his humanity now, when will you?
this is a very good question. How does forgiving and accepting his humanity look like to you? Because to me, now, accepting his humanity means white lying to him, lying to him to hide an unpleasant reality. But this means I’m treating him like a child, means the father I always knew is gone.
I sort of agree, weirdly. Funerals are weird, OP, as is family. As someone with a horrendous family and a very bad social brain, I totally empathise with saying you have ‘no bandwidth’. But you only get one father, and one funeral for him. This need not be a long and drawn out event.
In your position, I’d tell him you’ll go and you’ll have a shitty time and you’ll really hate it and let him know you’re doing it for his sake. That way you’re not lying, you’re just agreeing, in the worst case, to waste a few hours of your life with some unpleasant people.
Even better, tell him you want a nice time out now, like a nice dinner, as payment for enduring his funeral when the time comes.
OP funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Don’t attend the dumb shit ceremony and have whatever ceremony help helps you deal with your grief. If anyone has a problem with that, tell them to go to hell.
I agree with you, just wanted to see how unpopular this position is
I also agree that funerals are for the living. Plus, if he’s very old, maybe you don’t need to treat him like an adult. Some people age in reverse and become a bit like little children again. I know a doctor who loves children and wanted to become a pediatrician first, but chose to become a geriatrician instead, because she found she loves the elderly for the same reasons she loves children and wants to care for them. Plus, they tend to have better manners, at least on average. But nevermind all the drama about the funeral, it’s probably not even about the funeral and more about some vague fears and coping strategies. Maybe you can address the underlying issues directly. Or not. More importantly, is there anything you would like to tell him(for your own sake), while he’s still here?
His request seems reasonable, and from the information at hand, it seems you’re being a bit selfish.
If you care about your father, you can tolerate some insufferable people for a couple hours to honor him. You don’t even have to socialize. You’re there for him, not them.
