anyone else not like the way we deal with death as a species?

we have a church service, a wake, a funeral... everyone wheres black, we actually watch the body go down into the earth. we drag the situation out as long as we can. especially when its someone famous, we plaster it all over everything and it becomes the "it" conversation of the month. i get that its a tragic thing but i dont constantly need to see things and attend gatherings of people crying that remind me of it. it sucks but seeing all of this doesnt help what we really need to do, which is just moving on. maybe its just me but i dont really like the way we deal with death as a species.

edgecrusher said:

it sucks but seeing all of this doesnt help what we really need to do, which is just moving on. maybe its just me but i dont really like the way we deal with death as a species.

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Has someone that you cared for deeply ever died? Maybe tragically?

It's easy to say that taking a long time to grieve isn't good....until you LIVE it. Not everyone can get over it that easily...so maybe you should just respect that most people need that mourning time to get over the death and maybe come to understand it. Here's the most important question here: Does it harm YOU if someone takes a while to mourn?

There are SOME who don't let death go, and let it rule their lives for years and years after the actual death of a loved one....but MOST people DO get on with their lives.

Besides...death is a different thing to different cultures. The ancient Egyptions loved to talk about death, joke about it, and plan for it...treating it as a natural part of life's path. Viking kings and warriors gloried in their deaths, seeking the most epic, manly death that they could find....and for their funeral, they held parties to celebrate that death. Even today, many Christian denominations have similar "party" funerals for their recently departed, to celebrate the dead person's entry into Heaven. So it's not like everyone in the world faces death the same way.

So if you were in charge, edgecrusher, how do YOU think that we should all mourn?

the only close death i had to deal with was when my dad died when i was 10. i guess i was too young to think of it this way. my grandparents, atleast my grandfather anyway, dont have that much longer i dont think, they are in their upper 80s now. maybe ill think differently when they pass, who knows. i just dont like the big show of it all. we turn it into a multi ceremony event where everyone wears depressing clothes and i just dont get all that. if someone wants to make a big thing out of one of their family members death thats fine, they have the right and no it doesnt harm me. i just think its weird to drag it out in that way. right now i can say that for me i dont want it to be like that when i die. ill put it in my will that no one is allowed to wear black at my funeral or i dont want one, lol. celebrating the life is one thing, that can be a good ceremony. all the funerals i have been to havent been like that though.

edgecrusher said:

we turn it into a multi ceremony event where everyone wears depressing clothes and i just dont get all that.

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The ceremony and the black clothing...while not absolutely necessary, do serve an important function. A funeral is a mark of FINALITY. It's a defining end-point to a life...and that's something that a lot of people need to finally accept that a death has occurred.

I've seen it plenty of times. A woman's husband would go to work a happy man...and never come home. He died at work. And the woman, while she understands in her mind that her husband has died, she refuses to accept that fact in her heart....until the funeral. When they finally close that lid on the coffin and lower it into the ground, there's no turning back. No one can argue that the person isn't dead. There's no question about it.

So that's really what a funeral represents in today's society. The grieving begins before the funeral...and most times will end far beyond the funeral. But the funeral acts as a mark of finality in the matter.

And human beings need finality when it comes to accepting and understanding death. That's why it can be so hard for those whose loved ones have simply disappeared. The families of missing soldiers, for instance....there is no finality in a situation like that...and it can be very difficult for the family to accept that their loved one is actually gone.

*shrug* Maybe you will feel differently when someone close to you dies. Personally, I don't like funerals at all. For me, the grieving process/acceptance of death is fairly rapid, and definitely not done in public. But I do respect the fact that others need that ceremony, and I do what I can to make the funeral a good one when I'm involved in it.

death should be taught in schools and every angle and belief should be covered..I'm glad when funerals are done and dealt with so I can just remember the person in my own way..I want my own funeral to be held in a nudist camp..

The thing about public ceremonies like a funeral or a wedding is that they create a sense of solidarity among those attending. We come together to celebrate the memory of someone or the union between two people, and we feel the emotional energy (grief or happiness) which marks the event as a collective body. If you don't feel part of the group, then it makes sense that such ceremonies would be alienating. But in general I think rituals like these are an important way in which the members of a community can renew their social bonds to one another. I don't think it's peculiar to death - all the milestones of life are usually marked by some kind of ritual (birth, adolescence, marriage, parenthood, retirement, death).

edgecrusher said:

it sucks but seeing all of this doesnt help what we really need to do, which is just moving on.

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It actually does help in the moving on process because it gives us a specific rite of finality. However, the actual process of mourning goes on for much longer than the observance of a wake and a funeral. There is no set time to grieve.

It is very easy for people to talk about just moving on with things, but it is another thing entirely to DO it when it feels as though your world has been shattered by the death of a loved one.

It may sound melodramatic, but what is the alternative, to toss people out with the trash? Treat them as if there was nothing special about their life? If we do that, we lose our humanity and we are no more than animals who leave the remains of the dead to rot after they've been partially devoured.

maybe i just think like that because funerals have that uncomfortable feeling for me. i already dont like being in large groups of people as it is. or maybe its because i have never really been too close to anyone in my family. i guess only time will tell.

Badjedidude said:

I've seen it plenty of times. A woman's husband would go to work a happy man...and never come home. He died at work. And the woman, while she understands in her mind that her husband has died, she refuses to accept that fact in her heart....until the funeral. When they finally close that lid on the coffin and lower it into the ground, there's no turning back. No one can argue that the person isn't dead. There's no question about it.

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Some family members know their loved one is dead and subconsciously still experience them. I had a man tell me ,"I know shes gone but, when I woke up this morning I thought I heard banging and I said to myself, Thats just Rachael making breakfast. Then I realized she was gone." We get used to having certain people in our life and it is surreal when they die. It;s one of the hardest thing any of us will go through. I think you did a great job in explaining it.

I once watched a skeleton being exhumated. I did not fear it, I did not feel sickened, I did not found that any gruesome, I did not have any nightmare in the night after... I just felt sad for the once alive person who was now reduced to a skeleton, and having the bones removed from the rotten coffin as if the bones were mere objects.

I feel sad for dead people. Sometimes I wonder how much people have died frustrated, after having endured a whole life of hard times and very few (if any) pleasant times. I wonder what they were thinking in the last months of their lives, when they knew death was on the corner and they knew the were going to die frustrated for not having had 99% of their dreams come true.

And it's difficult to believe in a hell when I think about that. Poor dead people. There must be a Heaven for everyone.

Mausolos said:

and having the bones removed from the rotten coffin as if the bones were mere objects.

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lol they were just objects.

When you break it down, the human body is about $26 worth of chemicals and compounds. I believe that it's the mind/spirit that makes a human a human.

edgecrusher said:

we have a church service, a wake, a funeral... everyone wheres black, we actually watch the body go down into the earth. we drag the situation out as long as we can. especially when its someone famous, we plaster it all over everything and it becomes the "it" conversation of the month. i get that its a tragic thing but i dont constantly need to see things and attend gatherings of people crying that remind me of it. it sucks but seeing all of this doesnt help what we really need to do, which is just moving on. maybe its just me but i dont really like the way we deal with death as a species.

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funerals should be like a rock concert with a band and alcohol id like metallica to play at my funeral and play "i disappear" hehhaha

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at my auntys funeral her church chior sang a song which inspired everyone she was a catholic teacher it depends what you believe ive been to sad funerals notably one of a childhood friend everyone deals with it differently and i dont really like the way our species deal with anything to tell the truth

You're way overgeneralizing humans 'as a species'. Different cultures have lots of different ways of mourning and handling death. You're really only complaining about white, westernized methods, not humanity as a whole.

^^^That's true. Good point.

I like the Viking way. Go out on a blazing ship and all my family/buddies get drunk and have wild parties celebrating me!

If I were to commit suicide I would drown myself in amber.
Preserved beautifully and displayed in some 20,000th Century Museum.

edgecrusher said:

we have a church service, a wake, a funeral... everyone wheres black, we actually watch the body go down into the earth. we drag the situation out as long as we can. especially when its someone famous, we plaster it all over everything and it becomes the "it" conversation of the month. i get that its a tragic thing but i dont constantly need to see things and attend gatherings of people crying that remind me of it. it sucks but seeing all of this doesnt help what we really need to do, which is just moving on. maybe its just me but i dont really like the way we deal with death as a species.

Click to expand...

I don't like it either. I think we should learn to celebrate our departure to whereever it is we are going. I don't think it's tragic at all. Maybe I'm just too weird.

Chaos said:

If I were to commit suicide I would drown myself in amber.
Preserved beautifully and displayed in some 20,000th Century Museum.

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In the future they'll extract your DNA, add some frog genes and make a theme park. Then something will go wrong, terribly wrong.

^^^OMG!!! But at least we'll have Sam Neill to help us through it.