When my mother insisted that I attend a funeral for one of my grandmother’s friends three months ago, I felt frustrated and disappointed. Three months ago, my grandmother’s family member and best friend passed away due to cancer, yet I am unsure of the form of cancer that took her life. When a person that you know passes away and their family asks your family to attend the funeral for support, you say yes. You walk into the funeral with your best attire and socialize while giving condolences to the immediate family. When people walk up to you, you introduce yourself and let them know how sad you are for their loss. Funerals are not a time to be sad, but instead they are a time for respecting the deceased and celebrating their well-lived life. Two days before my second cousin's funeral I was given the option to attend the viewing and not …show more content…
I had my mind made up that funerals were filled with a bunch of old and depressed people recovering from their lost loved one, but I also was not very close to my deceased cousin so I did not feel entitled to go. Naturally after losing these arguments, I accepted to go to the viewing to get it over with, I wanted to spend the rest of my day slouched over my sticky black keyboard and leather office chair. I spent the rest of the day attending the viewing and dealing with people I did not know or what to get to know, because I was frustrated and wanted to get home to play with my friends. After the viewing, I was told that the following day I had no choice and had to also attend the funeral, which struck my last nerve and made me very disappointed. After attending the viewing and funeral for my second cousin I realized that they weren’t as bad as I pictured them in my mind. At the viewing I just talked to my parents and siblings without any more interaction with strangers. Before I went to either my
A freelance attorney in Brooklyn, Deirdre Sullivan, who wrote the essay “Always Go to the Funeral” talked about a valuable lesson that she learned from her father. Her father told her even simple gestures of kindness when it is inconvenient for you may have a outstanding or massive effect on someone else.In her essay, Sullivan says that, ‘Always Go to the Funeral’ means that she should always do the right thing even when she doesn’t want to, “I‟m talking about those things that represent only inconveniences to me, but the world to the other guy”(Sullivan 236 2006). When she was sixteen she says she was almost “forced” into going to her old fifth-grade math teacher's funeral. She was only only kid there, and when she went to the condolence line she was unchaperoned. After giving her condolences, is when she
The funeral was supposed to be a family affair. She had not wanted to invite so many people, most of them strangers to her, to be there at the moment she said goodbye. Yet, she was not the only person who had a right to his last moments above the earth, it seemed. Everyone, from the family who knew nothing of the anguish he had suffered in his last years, to the colleagues who saw him every day but hadn’t actually seen him, to the long-lost friends and passing acquaintances who were surprised to find that he was married, let alone dead, wanted to have a last chance to gaze upon him in his open coffin and say goodbye.
After she passed away in 2006 I visited her grave one more time and that was the last time I went. It took me nine years to be able to go back, because I just didn’t want to remember the last days I spend with her. The last time I was at her
James Agee's A Death in the Family is a posthumous novel based on the largely complete manuscript that the author left upon his death in 1955. Agee had been working on the novel for many years, and portions of the work had already appeared in The Partisan Review, The Cambridge Review, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar.
She says that she has been blessed to not have to go to many funerals in her lifetime yet, but the ones that she has been to have been mostly for supporting the family while they’re suffering and to remember the person’s life.
A moment in time that I hold close to myself is the funeral of my grandmother. It occurred a couple of weeks ago on the Friday of the blood drive. The funeral itself was well done and the homily offered by the priest enlightened us with hope and truth. But when the anti-climatic end of the funeral came my family members and relatives were somberly shedding tears. A sense of disapproval began creeping into my mind. I was completely shocked that I did not feel any sense of sadness or remorse. I wanted to feel the pain. I wanted to mourn, but there was no source of grief for me to mourn. My grandma had lived a great life and left her imprint on the world. After further contemplation, I realized why I felt the way I felt. My grandmother still
Individuals who struggle with complicated grief may engage in avoidance behaviors as a way dealing with the distress caused by situations connected to the loss. Behaviors may include avoiding family gatherings, isolating during certain times of the year, avoiding certain family members, avoiding places that have a connection to the loss - the list can be long or short. Avoidance behaviors carry two big price tags, the first being that they make the distress related to the situation worse in the long run. To understand why this happens it might be useful to understand the culprit behind the behavior namely, faulty thinking.
During the early seventeenth century, poets were able to mourn the loss of a child publicly by writing elegies, or poems to lament the deceased. Katherine Philips and Ben Jonson were two poets who wrote the popular poems “On the Death of My Dearest Child, Hector Philips”, “On My First Son”, and “On My First Daughter” respectively. Although Philips and Jonson’s elegies contain obvious similarities, the differences between “On the Death of My Dearest Child” and “On My First Son” specifically are pronounced. The emotions displayed in the elegies are very distinct when considering the sex of the poet. The grief shown by a mother and father is a major theme when comparing the approach of mourning in the two elegies.
Most people dismiss anything having to do with death out of fear. The uncertainty some associate with death has caused Funeral Service to be a particularly taboo subject in society. One may assume funeral directors are the sketchy personalities enthralled with death, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Over the years, Funeral Service has progressed and become a larger industry. Funeral Service has changed in its history over time, affecting the education required, and the job they do today.
Death is something that no one wants to go through or have to deal with, especially concerning the loss of loved ones. Unfortunately, it is not possible to go through life without experiencing this loss. Throughout the past several decades, the way that we view death and the funeral industry has changed significantly. Recently, it has seemed much more apparent that funeral industries are using death as a means of getting rich. But why?
I, of course, knew my mother as a mother. As I have reached adulthood and become a mother myself, I have also known her as a friend. My mom shared much of herself with me, and I saw sides of my mother as she struggled with her cancer that I had never seen before, especially her strong belief in positive thinking and the importance of quality of life. I was privileged to know so many facets of my mother, but certainly I did not know all. There were parts of her life that I didn’t see, relationships that I didn’t know about. Last night, at the wake, so many stories were told to me about my mom’s strength, courage, humor, kindness, her quietness, her loyalty as a friend. It was so special to hear of these things that my mom said and did, to know some of these other parts of her life. I hope that her friends and family will continue to share these stories with me and with each other so we can continue to know and remember my mom.
I can’t begin to express how hard it is for me to stand here before you and give my last respects to my loving mother - name here. From the biography that was handed out you can recall that during the her early years in the united states she studied and worked in New York where she met and married my dad, the love of her life. They spent the rest of their days loyal and in love with one another. Unfortunately, one day my father passed away with cancer at a young age. My dad was the one who suffered the most, but my mom suffered right along with him. She felt powerless, and for my mom- powerlessness turned in to guilt and grief, a painful distress she lived with on a daily basis for the next six years. When he died part of her died! Life for her was never the same again. I was not able to completely understand her loss- until now…
I have been very fortunate to have known my maternal and paternal grandparents and great-grandparents. We enjoy a close family and always have. Sadly, my first experience with a close death was when my paternal grandma died at the age of sixty-four of colon cancer. I was in the ninth grade when she died and hers’ was the first wake and funeral I had experienced. I remember having nightmares for weeks after the funeral. As I grew older, I lost my
When I think back to my childhood I don’t have compelling memories of death. I remember a classmate’s parents passed away and the whole school attended the funeral. I am from Ireland this was an obligatory act to show consolidation with the family. All schools and state are intertwined and religion is a forced act, I suppose. I wasn’t
In my life time, I have experienced many deaths. I have never had anyone that was very close to me die, but I have shed tears over many deaths that I knew traumatically impacted the people that I love. The first death that influenced me was the death of my grandfather. My grandfather passed away when I was very young, so I never really got the chance to know him. My papaw Tom was my mothers dad, and she was very upset after his passing. Seeing my mom get upset caused me to be sad. The second death that influenced my life was the death of my great grandmother. My great grandmother was a very healthy women her whole life. When she was ninety three she had