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Well, my mother died several months ago. My sister and brother took the lead in planning her celebration of life (politically correct name for a funeral). It was made easier by the fact that my mother left behind a program for what she wanted to happen at the service. It ran like a church service, with an opening hymn, minister friends speaking, family eulogy, and I gave a short reflection on her spiritual legacy and read the Christian allegorical poem “Footprints in the Sand”. There were musical selections from my brother, sister, and her family, all of whom are accomplished musicians on classical guitar, piano, violin and double bass. So am I a musician, but it’s on electric bass which didn’t really lend itself to a performance as I am more of a supportive player in a band.
I came home and started planning out my own funeral service. It’s characterized by scriptures from the Bible, Book of Mormon, and D&C. My family aren’t pro-Mormon by any means, but I figured I’d risk offending them since technically, the service is my moment.
What are your thoughts — will you plan your own funeral, and if so, what might it include? How will you navigate your LDS heritage, if you do? Particularly if you have family members who are not oriented toward the LDS church?Quote:What are your thoughts — will you plan your own funeral, and if so, what might it include? How will you navigate your LDS heritage, if you do? Particularly if you have family members who are not oriented toward the LDS church?
BACKGROUND:
My grandfather held his own funeral a good 15 years before he died.
- He had a “Putting the fun back in funeral” t-shirt.
- There was a “viewing” – complete with his gorilla suit costume that he wore 1-2x a semester to shake up his college students.
It made a lot of things a lot easier.
MY PLANS:
I have told my husband that I want to be cremated (and he is mostly OK with that).
I have asked a mutual friend of ours and my husband to let the friend plan whatever happens because my husband will likely be grieving and need the support.
I am planning to remove all temple gear from the house so that no one can put it on me. I will also let my female relatives know. I probably won’t care at the end of the day, but…
. I haven’t figured out a proper plan worthy of being my grandfather’s granddaughter – but it is on my bucket list:)
He sounds like he was a fun guy! I love the gorilla suit viewing! It sure does make light of his passing. There was a “Life in Pieces” episode where a guy planned his own funeral and it was also an amusing episode. I haven’t given much thought to my own funeral. My dad died earlier this year and I have been somewhat upset at him for not having set anything in order. I guess it just goes to show, like father, like son. I would plan to be buried (we already have the plot and headstone) and I would be dressed in temple clothes. I think this will provide comfort to those that believe but won’t be offensive to any that don’t.
Roy wrote:
I haven’t given much thought to my own funeral. My dad died earlier this year and I have been somewhat upset at him for not having set anything in order. I guess it just goes to show, like father, like son.
I am bugging my parents to get their stuff in order too. With the number of family skeletons in the family among us 9 siblings (1 with severe disabilities), it’s going to be a nightmare to get that sorted out amongst us without our parents using their clout to write it all out. One of my siblings wanted to put together a summit/family reunion last summer, and I was like, “Why?” followed by, “This, This, and This would need to happen for it to have a chance – and did you remember about this little detail?”. It’s downright amazing that we 9 siblings and our parents gather together for a video chat around Christmas as a way to pay tribute to our mother (who is delusional and wants a huge family gathering). It alternates between being bitingly sarcastic (in a fun way) and overly literal – and I am sure that several of the siblings join in a buzzed state to make it through it.
[NOTE: I know that the comment, “Well, every family reunion is like that” is likely floating in the air and yet… With the trauma and drama in my family tree, the normal boundary would be 2-3 sibling camps that don’t interact with each other – so a cross between a standard family reunion and the company office party is probably pretty impressive”].
SD, I’m sorry for your loss. For some reason, Mother’s are a harder loss than Father’s. I’m not sure that’s universal. Just my own experience.
As far as funerals go, I haven’t planned mine. I’m not sure if I will or not. It’s one of those things I don’t want to
face or consider.
The funeral for my mother — called a Celebration of Life — was actually kind of hard on me, but not for the reasons MM gave. My mother had a ton of people who came to her funeral, and there were a lot of people who were positive about her impact on their lives — many people she served, people she worked with, people with whom she volunteered, and so on.
I was also really surprised at how hard it was for my sister. I didn’t realize they were so close. They would talk multiple times a day, I learned, while I would talk to my mother every few months, and normally only if I called her.
Amidst all the adulation for her, I sat there only capable of remembering how incredibly hurtful and damning she could be about me and my personality. And how she beat me regularly when I was a child — “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as she used to say. To her credit, she apologized for the beatings, as she said that was the philosophy of the time — to beat your children when they misbehaved, so she thought she was doing the right thing. She never did apologize for some pretty harsh judgments and verbal abuses when I was an adult though. I will simply have to forgive.
It made it hard to understand how everyone was so positive about her impact on others. Perhaps you’ve experienced it — you have a quasi negative view of someone based on what you know about them — in a way others don’t — which makes it hard to be around people who are so positive about the person.
Now, when my father dies, that will be different. I was much closer to him, and he did many inspiring things. So, for me the loss will be much harder for me when my father dies than when my mother died. I felt a bit envious that she had that level of love from my mother, who rarely talked to me as we both got older.
I tried to put together a service for myself recently. My focus will be on helping people who attend to believe in, or reinforce their belief in God. There will be an instrumental song, hopefully performed by my sister and her family (piano, 3 violins and double bass) where everyone uses the time and music to reflect on their life and receive inspiration from God.
I plan to have some songs played by Afterglow — I Know He’s There, and perhaps Example to the World while everyone listens to the words, which I will probably have printed on a program.
And I plan to have a few scriptures shared from the Bible, BoM and Doctrine and Covenents. So, I will be covertly Mormon but the focus will be on one’s relationship with God. Christ will be mentioned so people don’t get the idea Mormonism is void of Christ. But that won’t be the focus, the focus will be on God and spirituality. I plan to put money aside to have a friend travel to whereever we are holding the funeral, and he, as a Mormon, will give the eulogy and his wife would read the LDS scriptures so I don’t make that reading awkward for my non-believing families. Don’t want to force scriptures on them they don’t believe.
But back to the topic — your thoughts on planning your own funeral?
I’m sorry for your loss, my condolences to you and your family. I haven’t given much thought to my own funeral, either. I actually don’t want one, and I have briefly expressed this to my wife and it’s been met with resistance. Her point of view, which I do agree with, is that funerals/memorials are for the living, not for the dead. I think the point is valid – when dead, I could only be there spiritually at most and I’m not sure I actually even believe that. I think the most meaningful funerals I have been to (and I actually avoid them, I honestly think their mostly pointless wastes of time and money) tend to focus on the dead person’s life and things they liked to do.
My wife, on the other hand, is somewhat obsessed with with funerals. For example, she recently attended one for her brother’s classmate/friend who she hasn’t seen in 40 years and her brother wasn’t all that close to him any more either. She also recently went to one for a long inactive ward member who had made it very clear to his family that he didn’t want any kind of service, but they did it anyway (although it was not actually a formal service, just a “gathering to remember”).
Back to the question. I don’t think I would go so far as to plan my own funeral (the service itself, especially since I don’t want one) but I might be inclined to offer some idea of music that I would like which would be meaningful hymns. It’s actually a conundrum for me since I don’t really want a funeral but I get that it’s really for the living and don’t care if they do something. I am not quite at where Roy is at with already having a plot, etc., but I consider that wise and will likely do so when I get around to it (and I probably should before it’s too late). I’m not opposed to the pre-paid account stuff. I also think that if my wife were to die before me (and she has actually expressed none of her thoughts to me) my kids would honor my request for nothing special.
DJ (and everyone). When we say these services are for the living and not the dead, I think there are many purposes for the living: a) To give the surviving family members and friends a sense of finality and closure that the person has passed on.
b) To motivate and inspire them to emulate the good aspects of the person’s life.
c) To give the living a chance to show their respect for the person who has died.
d) To bring families together. One person said that death is the last gift a person gives to their family, given the unifying effect a funeral has on the surviving members.
My own funeral will try to bless the attendees with inspiration to serve others, to believe in God, to think about how they can be an example to others, and to receive revelation during the meeting about their life in general.
In encouraging these outcomes for attendees, this also gives them a sense of my personality and being, which I would like to pass on.
I am working on a personal biography as well, whose working title is “The Book of Dad”. It goes into my autobiography, my life’s philosophy as well as practical tips for living one’s life. Talking about the church and religion is going to be sticky for me because I am not an example of textbook Mormonism, and I don’t want to encourage people to be half-milers or think negatively about the church.
It will be a kind of autobiography. Too many people die leaving little behind as a legacy. For example, there are a few grainy black and white, deteriorating pictures of my grandfather, and a few similar pictures of my mother. Anything left behind is accidental and not purposive like my own autobiography will be.
First of all, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m also sorry for the mixed and complicated feelings that have arisen in the wake of it all. I know that can be hard. Most of the funerals that I’ve been involved in planning were last minute throwing things together in a panic. I feel bad about that, the deceased deserved a better sendoff than I was capable of planning for them. On my list of things I’ll never live down.
That said, I don’t want a big production. I don’t know many people or have a large family, so big productions aren’t on order anyway.
I’d prefer that my funeral not be conducted in a LDS church. I don’t want the thing to be a missionary discussion where the speakers project their beliefs onto me.
Ultimately I’d be dead, so it really wouldn’t matter.
nibbler wrote:
Ultimately I’d be dead, so it really wouldn’t matter.
I think it matters a lot. If you believe our spirit lives after death, then what happens here, without me, but ABOUT ME is very important to me. Just as if I was here. There has to be SOME communication with the earthy sphere in the next life, even if it’s through acquaintances who pass through the veil and can share news from when they were on the earth.
SilentDawning wrote:
nibbler wrote:
Ultimately I’d be dead, so it really wouldn’t matter.
I think it matters a lot. If you believe our spirit lives after death, then what happens here, without me, but ABOUT ME is very important to me. Just as if I was here. There has to be SOME communication with the earthy sphere in the next life, even if it’s through acquaintances who pass through the veil and can share news from when they were on the earth.
Remember how the transition from child to teenager took about 4 years, and how the individual became nearly unrecognizable in the process?
Or how someone will have a stroke or something and “not be the same person they used to be at all”?
I think we underestimate the impact that mortality has on our souls – and that the scope of all that our souls are going through acclimating to not having a body, or upgrading to a vastly improved body and doing whatever cosmic stuff post-mortality souls do will take up a lot of time. That’s assuming that the soul has to be wandering around in a body and isn’t an entity that uses bodies as peripherals (and can potentially design it all out).
SPECULATION:
Maybe other souls we wander into (assuming we do – space is huge and we believe that heaven is housed in some dimension of space-time) will be like, “I watched the video of your funeral from a variety of perspectives. It sucks that it was a run-of-the-mill production and didn’t capture the essence of your life at all” and that will actually be a thing – which is a plausible human being thing.
I just don’t think that the hormones will be there compelling a lot of competition and statements like that.
I think that we’ll literally have better things to do,
. Sorry for your loss, my friend. For me, whatever my wife wants. My input: A true celebration of my life with her, our kids, and my friends. No sermon; just uplifting memories – and expressions of hope in reunion.
The funeral for my mother — called a Celebration of Life — was actually kind of hard on me, but not for the reasons MM gave. My mother had a ton of people who came to her funeral, and there were a lot of people who were positive about her impact on their lives — many people she served, people she worked with, people with whom she volunteered, and so on.
I was also really surprised at how hard it was for my sister. I didn’t realize they were so close. They would talk multiple times a day, I learned, while I would talk to my mother every few months, and normally only if I called her.
Amidst all the adulation for her, I sat there only capable of remembering how incredibly hurtful and damning she could be about me and my personality. And how she beat me regularly when I was a child — “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as she used to say. To her credit, she apologized for the beatings, as she said that was the philosophy of the time — to beat your children when they misbehaved, so she thought she was doing the right thing. She never did apologize for some pretty harsh judgments and verbal abuses when I was an adult though. I will simply have to forgive.
It made it hard to understand how everyone was so positive about her impact on others. Perhaps you’ve experienced it — you have a quasi negative view of someone based on what you know about them — in a way others don’t — which makes it hard to be around people who are so positive about the person.
Now, when my father dies, that will be different. I was much closer to him, and he did many inspiring things. So, for me the loss will be much harder for me when my father dies than when my mother died. I felt a bit envious that my sister received the level of love from my mother she did — as my mother rarely talked to me as we both got older.
I tried to put together a service for myself recently. My focus will be on helping people who attend to believe in, or reinforce their belief in God. There will be an instrumental song, hopefully performed by my sister and her family (piano, 3 violins and double bass) where everyone uses the time and music to reflect on their life and receive inspiration from God.
I plan to have some songs played by Afterglow — I Know He’s There, and perhaps Example to the World while everyone listens to the words, which I will probably have printed on a program.
And I plan to have a few scriptures shared from the Bible, BoM and Doctrine and Covenents. So, I will be covertly Mormon but the focus will be on one’s relationship with God. Christ will be mentioned so people don’t get the idea Mormonism is void of Christ. But that won’t be the focus, the focus will be on God and spirituality. I plan to put money aside to have a friend travel to whereever we are holding the funeral, and he, as a Mormon, will give the eulogy and his wife would read the LDS scriptures so I don’t make that reading awkward for my non-believing families. Don’t want to force scriptures on them they don’t believe.
But back to the topic — your thoughts on planning your own funeral?
Did the church recently change the policy about how our bodies can be or should be dressed for a funeral? If someone has that link, please share it. I know I read it somewhere & now I can’t find it.
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