schummjm Posted October 29, 2013 Posted October 29, 2013 Hey guys - I have my first funeral on Saturday as an Atheist. My cousin died (at 22) and though I wasn't too close to him recently, that side of my family is very close knit. They are also very Christian. Does anyone have any experience with this (it will be at a church) and do you have any tips on how to handle this? My current plan is to follow along with what happens and not say too much - which may be the best approach? If you can point me to any of Stefs or other relevant work on this I would appreciate this as well Thanks! Jonathan Also it pays to note that I have told my immediate family, much to their dismay, that I am an Atheist. My mother, her mother, and my sister are very Christian, while my dad doesn't care either way.
JSDev Posted October 29, 2013 Posted October 29, 2013 Pretty easy case for not talking about atheism at a funeral. If your family wants to being it up, be the bigger man and just tell them they're being inappropriate.
schummjm Posted October 29, 2013 Author Posted October 29, 2013 Hey JSDev - it probably is just that easy. Appreciate the input.
MysterionMuffles Posted October 29, 2013 Posted October 29, 2013 Yeah it's no big deal. I'm an atheist and went to my neice's baptismal, and I'm even her God father now because of it. You can think of me as the Atheist God Father lol. But anyways, you don't have to pray along with them they won't notice. And whatever rituals they ask you to take part in, if any, just do them as they are to honour your cousin's death and not an attack on your beliefs.
JSDev Posted October 29, 2013 Posted October 29, 2013 But anyways, you don't have to pray along with them they won't notice. haha... exactly, they all have their heads down. My parents and my whole extended family are religious. My kids aren't religious so when we're at family gatherings and we pray at a meal, I always just look around and occasionally see me 11 year old looking around too. It's awesome.
wdiaz03 Posted October 30, 2013 Posted October 30, 2013 Sorry to hear that, To loose someone so young must be hard on the family. Just go through the motions, this is about helping the family deal with the loss..
schummjm Posted November 3, 2013 Author Posted November 3, 2013 Appreciate the feedback guys! Everything went well (as well as a funeral can go I guess). Definitely kept my focus on the family and tried not to let the religious delusions distract me from that. This was actually the first time I had been to church since giving up religion. Looking at it now, I find it amazing how I could have actually believed in that whole mess.
tasmlab Posted November 7, 2013 Posted November 7, 2013 I just buried my mother last week. Very painful. The funeral through FDR-eyes was pretty abysmal. The religious service was complete nonsense, and I don't mean like "this isn't objective reality" I mean what comes out of the preachers mouth does not even make sense as English sentences e.g., "Come hither unto god with rod and stone, for he who sense the butchered cast into shadow..." for a half hour. Everybody nodded along and nobody really understood a word. The random gathering of family was tough too. So arbitrary. As the son, I was sort of the main guy at the funeral (along with my sister and mother's long-time boyfriend). It was a real collection of familial nut jobs, and too many people I barely knew either hugged me or told me deeply personal information. It was the worst day of my life for a lot of reasons. Only once did my atheism come up, I heard another group talking about it, wondering if I would be OK with the religious stuff. My sister is full-on evangelical go-to-church three times a week religious crazy. But, yea, my strategy was to keep my mouth shut and not use the event as a springboard for a metaphysical debate. There was already enough grief and insanity in the room without it. (I was going to start my own thread on this topic, sorry if I made my post too much about me)
MysterionMuffles Posted November 7, 2013 Posted November 7, 2013 tasmlab that is hilarious...people just nodding along into submission of jargon. Good strategy by the way. I believe it was you who educated your parents and your wife's parents successfully? I thought they were onboard with Atheism? Unless I'm thinking of someone else. Also...you did not appreciate the deep personal things people brought up? Did you not appreciate their vulnerability?
Pat Logan Posted November 7, 2013 Posted November 7, 2013 We buried my father last weekend. This topic is a fresh one for me. I would have "preferred" to have not been exposed to the magic spells, rituals, and mystical musical "contemplation periods" of my youth. I tried to focus on the fact that most, if not all, of my immediate family found them comforting (so be it). It was an exhausting week... I'm now free to pursue my aesthetics, my preferences, and my interests after showing respect for and honoring the life of my father.
tasmlab Posted November 8, 2013 Posted November 8, 2013 tasmlab that is hilarious...people just nodding along into submission of jargon. Good strategy by the way. I believe it was you who educated your parents and your wife's parents successfully? I thought they were onboard with Atheism? Unless I'm thinking of someone else. Also...you did not appreciate the deep personal things people brought up? Did you not appreciate their vulnerability? Nope, I managed to do that with my wife's parents and her family. My sister and I clashed on this brutally and my mother would appease whomever she was talking to at the moment. To your last point, there wasn't much of that in that sense. More accurately, people I didn't know would tell ME how I should personally feel or would try to describe my emotions. They didn't reveal their own (I was unclear in my earlier post). A few speeches at the podium but they were rehearsed. My mother's boyfriend was genuine and crushed and we empathized a lot with each over the two days, as much as anybody. We buried my father last weekend. This topic is a fresh one for me. I would have "preferred" to have not been exposed to the magic spells, rituals, and mystical musical "contemplation periods" of my youth. I tried to focus on the fact that most, if not all, of my immediate family found them comforting (so be it). It was an exhausting week... I'm now free to pursue my aesthetics, my preferences, and my interests after showing respect for and honoring the life of my father. Sorry for your loss. My week with death was brutal. This is the first person who I really cared about that died. I guess the religious stuff is comforting to the family, it maybe seemed that way with mine. But it would be easy to imagine comfort without it too.
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