Interesting Information Based on Planning my Own Funeral

[Anonymous]

In a different thread, I commented on the process of planning your own funeral before you die.

I wanted to share one thing that happened as a result of doing this. I asked my best friend in the world — someone who I talk to monthly after 30 years of moving around the planet and rarely seeing him. The relationship is reciprocal — he often calls me or asks me how things are going if he and I haven’t talked in a while. It’s definitely a two-way street. He even told me once that if I was female, he’d marry me since we get along so well (kind of an odd statement, but I get what he means, I’ve known people like that).

I asked him to give the eulogy at my funeral.

Totally negative reaction. There was that spiritual feeling you can get on the phone, like someone withdrawing or otherwise having a negative spiritual reaction to something you said. I felt it in the brief silence after I asked him. His reasons? As a Bishop he had to give a eulogy for a fallen soldier and it was hard on him, he said, to know what to say. Second, he has no way of getting to the funeral, which is about 2 hours from his house where he lives in a major metropolitan center.

I was really disappointed. He is my absolute best friend in the world outside of my wife, and it hurts that he wasn’t willing to make the sacrifice to speak at the funeral. Now, his reason about not being able to get there — he doesn’t have a driver’s license and no car. But his sons, who I know, have a car. Further, he takes trips to distant places in the world — particularly at Caribbean locations and doesn’t have a car. Sometimes he pays a church member a fee to drop him off and pick him up from camping and other trips way outside of his home town. So, if it’s important to him, he can get there.

So, this planning of the funeral has revealed to me what would happen if I had passed — he wouldn’t attend the funeral and wouldn’t agree to have a part in it.

I have decided to forgive my friend, though. No hard feelings, although I’m really disappointed.

I thought I would share this, as this is a way of predicting the future, this funeral planning. And it also tells you a bit about the extent to which friends are willing to go out of their way for you when there is a need or request.

Comments welcome (if any).

[Anonymous]

SD, I have a question: Did you just “spring” the request on your friend or did you give him the chance think it over?

If you are as close as you said, maybe he would have a hard time getting through it. I personally would be afraid that

I would get too emotional.

[Anonymous]

Minyan Man wrote:

SD, I have a question: Did you just “spring” the request on your friend or did you give him the chance think it over?

If you are as close as you said, maybe he would have a hard time getting through it. I personally would be afraid that

I would get too emotional.

This. I was once asked to give a eulogy and refused. It was sprung on me more or less last minute and it was someone I knew from our ward, but we weren’t anywhere near what I’d call best friends (I was asked by his son who was planning the funeral). My reasons for refusal were that as MM says I didn’t think I could get through it, I didn’t think I had the time and resources to properly prepare, and I really didn’t know enough about his life before I met him to do a good job – I really didn’t even know enough about his life when he died. The latter is the one I gave. Of course in this case there wasn’t time to think it over, it was a couple days away. And as I said in the other thread, I honestly don’t like eulogies. I did attend the funeral and there a fine eulogy given and that was it.

That said, I do understand your disappointment SD and yours is definitely a different situation than what I presented here. But people do have their own reasons and what they present may not be the actual reason.

[Anonymous]

He also might not want to think about losing you – or he might have a degree of fear about getting emotional in public – or his previous experience might have been more traumatic than he shared – or, or, or.

I think he probably was “honored” that you ask, but it took a degree of courage to say no to your request.

Also, a bit tongue in cheek, so pardon the humor, please, but, if you are dead, he would not be doing it for you; he would be doing it for people he doesn’t know all that well who might have different expectations than he could provide.

Maybe he has a fear of letting people down, generally, or strangers, specifically. Maybe that intimidates him.

My advice: Try to find a charitable explanation and assume it is correct. You have the right to accept any interpretation that will work for you.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the interpretations of what might have been running through his mind. He knew I was planning my funeral, so my request that he speak at it would’ve had some context previously. I can only speculate what his deeper motives were for saying “no” however, beyond what he said. It’s one thing I’ll just have to accept. My sister accepted the invitation with pleasure, so all is good that way. At least I have someone capable of giving a very good talk who knows me pretty well.

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