To Celebrate or Mourn

Making the most of death.

The mother of my one remaining childhood friend died recently. My own parents have been dead for 25 years. I’d always been slightly in awe of her parents’ longevity, I needed to know how they were each time we spoke. How are your parents, I’d ask. But now her mother was dead.

The family opted for a funeral instead of a celebration of life. Everyone dropped what they were doing to gather immediately or as close to immediately as major airlines allowed. The goal: to honour and grieve in real time. 

I was delighted. I happened to be in town. I’d be able to attend. There was a funeral home, a viewing, flowers, a slide show, guest book, family and friends, music, a minister, a chapel, live music and remarks from all three children, pall bearers, a reception, a procession by car to the cemetery for which oncoming traffic yielded, every aspect of a traditional funeral intact. We stood at the graveside, watched while the casket was placed, bore witness. Everyone in the family had dropped what they were doing, big ask though it was, to be together within days following their mother’s, their wife’s, their grandmother’s death, minds and efforts turned instantly to burying her and making her death the central, the one and only thing that was happening in their lives bar none, her death, it. 

It made me realize even more than I already do how much I miss funerals. The increase in popularity of celebrations of life means we miss the opportunity to mourn with families, to honour their dead and be part of that stage of their healing and the healing effect of age-old form and ritual, in real time. It reminded me that I’m also averse to people “passing” instead of “dying”; passing leaving the impression that the deceased has merely stepped out of the room.

Oddly enough the funeral that impacted me the most did nothing to endear me to them. It was testament, however, to a funeral’s versatility: something for everyone. My last brother died in a car accident when I was twelve. He was 16, about to turn 17. Celebrations of life didn’t exist. It was only ever going to be a funeral and because of his age it was only ever going to be a little bit more tragic. But I was not of the opinion that only the good died young. I didn’t like him. He’d molested me and treated me cruelly and now I would be safe; he’d never hurt me again. My feelings on the matter of his death were necessarily different from those of everyone else in attendance. I couldn’t be happier. But I couldn’t enjoy it. And I was slightly spooked: how many people ever got what they wished for? Had I killed him? I was twelve, an emotional and mental work in progress, unhappy and confused on any given day, and now additionally weighed under and miserable because I was unable to mourn his death and uncertain how much of a role I’d played. 

His funeral was very much like my friend’s mother’s funeral. There was a service at the funeral home, a casket, pall bearers, the 10 mile an hour drive through town, people stopping, staring, a hearse and a limousine, a graveside gathering. He was buried on top of one of my other brothers, the one I liked, for the sake of economy in a plot that was too close to the road. Maybe my parents had gotten a deal.

My mother and father and I had gotten in the back of the limousine at the funeral home, the day hot and excoriating, the sun relentless. My father cried but he had the presence of mind to know that I’d think that off-putting: we weren’t cryers. He reached across my mother to touch my arm, get my attention, and said, I’m sorry, He was the last one. The last Littlefair heir he meant. He’d had three sons and now he had none. His last son was dead, so too the surname. He felt the situation cry-worthy. But I was mortified. We didn’t talk about dead children, not even freshly dead children, not even freshly dead children who were still in a box in a car immediately in front of us. I couldn’t sympathize. I had no sympathy. But I did have a response. That’s okay, Dad, I said, I’ll keep the name.

I don’t know how long I’d been thinking about this, don’t know how long I was sure I’d keep the name, but there was no question. I knew it from my deep reading of my mother’s Chatelaine and Homemaker’s magazines and whatever Seventeen had to say on the subject. But I did know that the gesture wasn’t the same for my father because I was a girl. My keeping the Littlefair name couldn’t be the comfort to him that I wanted it to be, the comfort it would have been coming from a son. But I loved my father and I wanted to give him something and this was all I had. He had to stop crying. He was right about that, I hated it. He was right to apologize. I needed him to get back in character as soon as possible.

But even that funeral was testament to the utility of ritual: they’re designed for things to come to the surface, gently forcing the issue each step of the way, a place to find confirmation, coming together with others with the same fullness of feeling, different but full.

After my friend’s mother’s funeral I talked with her about it: funeral versus celebration of life. Thank you, I said, It was an honour to be here. The choice of funeral was deliberate, Everything involved in a funeral is what we all wanted, she said referring to her family. My friend has an unusual amount of training and personal experience in loss and grief and knew that the power of gathering and grieving in real time was the only way forward. They couldn’t miss this moment. They couldn’t let it slip by. And seeing them together I saw how true it was.

Photo by Falling Further on Unsplash