Here’s a sort of funeral etiquette question about blacking out the name of the deceased on return address labels used by widows. This didn’t show up in the online Dear Abby column, but it ran in today’s Albuquerque Journal.
DEAR ABBY:
In years past, I have lost three friends. Because we lived far apart, I learned the sad news when their widows informed me by letter of their deaths.
In each case, the widow had blacked out the name of her spouse on the return address labels. My mother-in-law did the same thing when her husband died.
What prompts these women to eliminate evidence of their loved one so quickly?
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
DEAR GONE: Pragmatism.
——————————————————–
Do you think it’s a good idea to black out the deceased’s name and keep using those existing mailing labels? If so, when’s the right time to start erasing the deceased’s name? There’s no evidence of the time frame in the above question. Wouldn’t it be life affirming to make up new labels with one’s own name?
Filed under: Funeral News Bits | Tags: funeral planning, memorial services, funerals, funeral etiquette
Etiquette expert Thelma Domenici’s latest “Ask Thelma” column includes a query about the organization of funerals. The question is not about funeral etiquette, but the changing structure of the memorial service itself.
The writer is uncomfortable with the growing trend of inviting attendees to stand up and speak off the cuff about the deceased. There’s often an uncomfortable silence after attendees are asked to share impromptu stories. This person is more comfortable with “traditional” funerals.
Thelma makes some very good points about how rituals related to death are changing, and there are no right or wrong formats. What is most important is how the family and those closest to the deceased want to honor the person.
Of course, it helps enormously for the family to have a conversation about the best way to honor that loved one before there’s a death in the family. All together now: Just as talking about sex won’t make you pregnant, talking about funerals won’t make you dead – and your family will benefit from the conversation!
Here’s the full letter and Thelma’s answer.
Dear Thelma:
I’ve had occasion to attend some funerals lately. As I’m in my late 60s, I suppose they will now demand my attention more frequently. Funerals seem to be more informal than they were some years ago.
I notice that often there is less predictable ceremony and more ad hoc asking of attendees to stand up and share “stories” about the deceased. Sometimes there is an uncomfortable silence until some brave soul gets up to share. It surprises me that attendees would be expected to ad lib at a time like this.
Does it not seem better for the organizers of the funeral — the family or friends of the deceased — to arrange for three or four people close to the deceased to lead off the sharing? And for some kind of master of ceremonies to exert control over the process? Another issue is that sometimes a windy relative or someone with an agenda will get going and make for a rather uncomfortable situation.
By comparison, I attended a “traditional” funeral earlier this year and found myself to be relieved when the event was well organized and went off without a hitch. I wonder if, at such emotional times, all might be better off with better organized, more predictable ceremonies?
Answer:
Funerals are entirely personal, and there is no right or wrong format for them. The service in which you found yourself comfortable, others may not.
It’s true that rituals surrounding a traditional funeral in most instances follow a format and are organized in such a way that people are asked ahead of time to participate. That can relieve tension.
However, that’s not the only way to celebrate a person’s life. Spontaneously shared memories can have their place too. For me what is most important is how the family and those closest to the deceased want to honor the person. My role as an attendee at a funeral is to participate in that honor and support the family through the process they’ve chosen.
Proper honor and good manners never go out of style.
Today’s Non Sequitur is another delightfully creepy visit with The Graevsytes. The ghoulish family includes a man who carries his head on a tray and a blue-toned woman with long purple hair.
They get a note through the mail slot. “It’s another grievance from the neighborhood association,” she says. “Sigh,” says the man, “Okay… I’ll go take care of it.” (You can only imagine what the neighborhood association is complaining about – graves in their front yard, perhaps?)
He goes down, down, down to a dungeon. He opens the door, and all you see is a chain flapping in the air. He says “Good Boy, Mongo!”
When he emerges from the dungeon he says, “See? I told you it’d pay to have a lawyer on retainer.” She says, “I know. I just hate giving up the rec room.”
Filed under: Field Notes | Tags: Create a Great Funeral Day, facelift funerals, funeral planning
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephanie West Allen, the creator of Create a Great Funeral Day. We had a wide-ranging conversation on how she started the funeral planning “holiday” in 2000, the benefits of discussing one’s wishes, such as becoming aware of one’s legacy, and “good” funerals versus “bad” funerals.
A full-fledged article will come soon. She has some very insightful views on the importance of talking about our values and the value of having some sort of “good goodbye” ritual, even if the person who’s dying says he or she doesn’t want a funeral.
She spoke about the idea of a “facelift funeral.” This harkens back to Dr. Maxwell Maltz and his book, Psycho-Cybernetics, which was first published in 1960 and went on to become a big best-seller.
Dr. Maltz was a plastic surgeon who noticed that the patients who came to him for a new face were actually seeking to change their personalities. While patients had their exterior features changed, often they still had emotional issues that plastic surgery could not address. He discovered Cybernetics as a key for changing self-image from within. He found that self-image is the key to human personality and behavior.
A facelift funeral goes through the motions but does not address our emotional need to mourn the loss of someone we love. Facelift funerals are not emotionally fulfilling for the participants. These events might have a “rent-a-minister” who didn’t know the deceased and might only speak of that religion’s views of heaven, hell, the afterlife, or other theological musings.
Check out Stephanie’s comments on the topic:
And Stephanie did a video with me about my Western skull shirt:
I’ve been hanging out today talking about funeral planning along with the fine folks at French Advance Planning. We were in the expo hall for the New Mexico Conference on Aging. Here’s a little video from the day.
Governor Susana Martinez is going to be speaking here tomorrow – that should be interesting to witness. Anyone have any questions they want me to ask her?
Today’s Non Sequitur is another great death cartoon!
A couple is dressed for a vacation in the tropics. They are standing in line, suitcases in hand, to board a boat. Trouble is, the boat has skulls mounted fore and aft, and it looks like the Grim Reaper is the oarsman.
The wife says to the husband, “What did I tell you? There’s always a catch to those bargain Internet travel fares!”
An expert who helps people arrange to speak on cruise ships told me people will listen to talks on financial planning, history, arts and crafts, etc,. but no one ever wants to talk about funeral planning on cruises. Maybe this one would be different.
At the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC) conference back in June, I met a wonderful woman from Scotland named Tabitha Jayne. She spoke at the conference about overcoming grief by communing with nature. Her talk was titled, “The Transformative Power of Nature in Grief and Loss.”
Tabitha Jayne became an expert in the field of grief and loss coaching after she developed an interest in the topic following the sudden death of her younger brother.
She says, “The death of my brother was the most profound experience and loss in my life. It made me realise that life is too short and challenged me to transform my own life into something that I was proud of. Despite all the pain and anguish, all the tears and hurt, my brother dying is one of the best things that happened to me. Peter inspired me to learn to live life fully both as tribute to him and to gain meaning from tragedy.”
At her website, www.TabithaJayne.com, she has a blog with video posts. She interviewed me at the conference, where I spoke about using funny films to start funeral planning conversations and leading by example. Hope you’ll check it out!
In Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, actor Larry Hagman had a fun Q&A with Andrew Goldman in the “Talk” column. He’s got an interesting take on funeral planning.
The online version is titled “The Rollicking Life of Larry Hagman” and he talks about a mescaline trip on an Indian reservation, being drunk most of the time he played J.R. Ewing on the TV show “Dallas” and his love of soaking in hot water.
But it’s the last answer that I love the best:
You wrote in your memoir, “Hello Darlin’,” that when you die, you want to be ground up in a wood chipper like Steve Buscemi’s character in the movie “Fargo.” Is this actually set down in your will?
“Well, it’s hard to set down chipping. I don’t think that’s allowed. But I did want to be spread over a field and have marijuana and wheat planted and harvest it in a couple of years and then have a big marijuana cake, enough for 200 to 300 people. People would eat a little of Larry.”
Check out his website: LarryHagman.com
Filed under: Field Notes | Tags: celebrant, funeral celebrants, funeral services, religion
Meaningful funerals. Isn’t that a given? Aren’t most funerals meaningful and personal? If you’ve been to one recently, you know that’s not always the case.
A recent article on Miller-McCune.com explored aspects of the services offered by celebrants.
“Families with no house of worship or clergy too busy to lead a service may resort to a “rent-a-minister,” says Glenda Stansbury, dean of the In-Sight Institute in Oklahoma City, one of the organizations that train funeral celebrants in the U.S.
Such fill-in ministers, typically meeting the family for the first time right before the funeral, often use a template service; there are horror stories of funerals where the deceased’s name is mispronounced or not mentioned at all.
One widely publicized example was the 2010 wake for author Philip Carlo. Actor Tony Danza, one of Carlo’s close friends, reportedly walked up to the priest during a long-winded soliloquy about religion and said, “Excuse me, but this is not about you. It’s supposed to be about my friend, and if you can’t do that, maybe you should let someone else speak.”
If clergy members don’t always support grieving families during funerals, it may be that they never learned how.
“You have to understand that clergy people are not trained in funerals. You would think they would be, but they’re not,” says Doug Manning, a minster and president of In-Sight Books Inc., parent company of the In-Sight Institute. “You go to seminaries, they never teach you about death, dying or funerals.”
Beyond that, some houses of worship see funerals as an opportunity to evangelize about their faith.
Today, the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys ran my guest post on their blog related to celebrants and funeral services. Here’s some of the content of that post:
The International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association recently held their summer university. I attended the ICCFA University College of 21st Century Funeral Services and came away with a new perspective on how funerals are changing.
Dr. Alan Wolfelt, a psychologist trained in life transitions who spoke there, said, “More and more people in North America are asking ‘Why have a funeral?’”
People are saying, “When I die, just get rid of me no muss, no fuss. Maybe have a party, but I sure don’t want a funeral.” “Dad said he didn’t want us to go to any trouble, so we are just going to do what he said.” “We just thought it would be easier, faster, and cheaper.”
Wolfelt said that efficiency should not be confused with effectiveness. He said, “We’ve gone from funerals to memorial services to celebrations to parties. In the process, we have lost the connection to grief and emotion.”
People are losing sight of the value of holding some kind of ritual service, a safe place to grieve and mourn. Very often, the people who don’t recognize a death with a funeral or memorial service are in a psychologist’s office six months later with problems related to unexpressed emotions.
We in the U.S. have become an increasingly “mourning-avoidant” culture, where people tend to want to avoid sadness. At a meaningful funeral, people laugh one moment and cry the next as they share stories that cause laughter as well as tears. This experience of “paradoxical emotions” results in what Wolfelt calls the “sweet spot of emotional experience.”
Visit the AAEPA blog for the rest of this post!
