Funerals: Why Bother?
At best, a funeral feels like a sad and inconvenient family reunion. We put on our darkest Sunday best, try to keep the children quiet and subdued, and go to a church to listen to songs and memories. Then we offer our helpless condolences to people in tears.
It’s a remarkably unpleasant experience — so why do we bother?
Rituals surrounding death and mourning are ancient and varied. In Varanasi, India, the recently departed are paraded through the town in festive cloths and sprinkled with water from the Ganges River before cremation to encourage an end to the reincarnation cycle. Victoria-era England encouraged photographs of the recently deceased often posed as if still alive to give family members one last “memory”. In some cultures, a well-attended funeral is the most important part of the ritual. In others, loud wailing is encouraged (and sometimes bought and paid for!). You can find just about anything in the funeral and mourning rituals around the world. Anything except nothing.
In essence, every culture for tens of thousands of years spanning the entire globe has had rules and rituals to mark the passing of its people. We stand in a unique moment in our current American culture, where death and dying have become, for the first time in human existence, a hidden, ignored, and often forgotten part of our collective human experience. In our American melting pot, there is no longer one right way to bury and mourn our dead. And due to our relatively low mortality rates, longer life spans, and clinical settings away from the home for the sick and dying, we are a culture that perhaps for the first time in human existence, is wondering, what — if any — ritual ceremony should be done for our dead?
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The argument for continued ritual is twofold. The first concerns the living. “Death-anxiety” as studied by psychologists, is the measure of discomfort a certain group experiences when thinking about or confronting death. And here in America, death-anxiety is at an all-time high. The studies at to why, have yet to reveal a meaningful pattern. They vary, for instance, on whether certain religious groups have higher or lower death-anxiety from one study to the next. Only broad observations are consistent. Generally, Eastern cultures have lower death-anxiety than Western cultures, and in the West, death-anxiety has gotten progressively worse throughout the years. The most observed method of dealing with death-anxiety in the West, is avoidance. In other words, we spend less time talking or thinking about death and illness. We visit the sick and dying less and we, inevitably, go to fewer funerals. It will, perhaps, come as no surprise to the reader to learn that this tactic of avoidance has increased our culture’s levels of death-anxiety. As with most of our inner conflicts, avoiding the problem, tends to make it worse. If we are ever, as individuals, or as a culture, going to achieve a lessening of death-anxiety, we need to stop avoiding the subject. A healthy community that embraces rituals surrounding death and dying will have a naturally lower level of death-anxiety.
The second reason to embrace some sort of funeral ritual is, of course, for the deceased. Of course, we must do something with our deceased if only for health and safety reasons, but the inspiration to make their burial something beautiful likely stems from a human experience nearly as universal as death: love. Did you know, we have evidence of elaborate burial sites among Neanderthals nearly 300,000 years ago! So how do you love someone who is beyond experiencing your love and why bother? Medical and psychology experts have pointed to loving relationships as a key to better health for decades. When we feel loved, we tend to live longer, have lower stress levels, and stronger immune systems. But it’s not just receiving love that’s good for us. When we engage in an action meant to show love or kindness, we engage a part of our brain called the striatum. This part of the brain appears to be active any time we feel that “warm glow” sensation of knowing we did something good for someone else. This means that whether you believe your deceased loved one knows about their funeral ritual or not, you can experience the benefits of loving them no matter what. And if you do believe they can receive your love from beyond the grave, what better way to mark their passing than with an act of remembrance and / or celebration?
A funeral ritual is a way to invite your community into an act of love and remembrance for your deceased loved one. It is likely to improve your mental health and your ability to grieve as healthily as possible. As a community, it has the power to lower our death-anxiety and create greater opportunities for connection. So, what should your ritual look like?
Maybe you’re one of the lucky few whose loved-one wrote out exactly what they wanted. Do your best to honor that as an act of love. Most of us, however, find ourselves looking to create a ritual from scratch and that can be both a joyful and overwhelming experience. If you are feeling this stress, consider reaching out to a celebrant, someone trained to plan and officiate memorial services, for guidance. Finally, there is no wrong ritual. As we’ve seen, various cultures embrace incredibly different rituals for a variety of reasons! One of the few upsides to living in a culture that has no prescribed death ritual, is that you are free to be as simple and/or creative as you would like. A ritual should focus on your love for the deceased and the community who will mourn with you. Beyond that, simply imagine how you would enjoy showing your love and how you would enjoy receiving the support of your community and go from there.
Blessings!
Shari Otteman, Celebrant, Chaplain, Counselor
