Why Do We Have Funerals and/or Life Celebrations
" Every culture known to man has devised rituals and ceremonies to deal with the troubling facts of mortality: that love hurts; that a death in the family, like a birth, must be observed; and that grief is the price paid on that love."
We have some type of ritual because someone lived and their life was worth remembering. A ritual provides the following benefits for everyone:
Helps confirm the reality and finality of death
Provides a supportive environment for mourning and the expression of grief
Allows the sorrow of one to be shared by many
Is one of the few times love is given and not expected in return
Is an opportunity for the community of friends and family to pay its respects
Encourages the affirmation of religious or spiritual faith
Is a declaration that a life of value has been lived and insures that the memory will live on through some type of permanent memorialization.
Please Remember: " A funeral is not just for you…..its for those that loved you."
A service can be arranged to provide these benefits in any number of ways. Although different religious communities have created set formats or rituals that they follow in conducting funeral services, there really is not a right or wrong way to do a service or a life celebration. A well designed service should try to accomplish four things:
- To Remember – Through stories, photo collages, music, eulogies, and video tributes, family and friends have an opportunity to reflect on the loved one’s impact on others. Most people influence others more profoundly than they realize, and services of some type can give us an opportunity to reflect on those contributions. Our funeral directors can help you select and display memorabilia to help you remember life’s special moments.
- To Reaffirm - A personally-meaningful ceremony helps us identify the spiritual principles that anchor us in the midst of loss, allowing us to reaffirm some basic beliefs and values. For families who are connected to a faith community, the clergyperson and familiar customs of your faith will help shepherd you through this experience. Families who don’t consider themselves religious often ask for a member of the clergy to lead the service. And if you don’t have someone, one of our directors can help you find just the right person to lead the service – someone experienced in working with bereaved families.
- To Realize - We live in a world that frequently denies death’s reality and thinks that the sooner we get it over with, the better things will be. Unfortunately, that’s not really how our emotions work; feelings denied don’t go away….but rather manifest themselves later in negative, unconstructive ways. Selecting a casket and/or urn, seeing the body after proper preparation, attending the service, and going to the cemetery or other final resting place all help us realize that death has occurred, and that the world has now changed for us. Whether choosing burial or cremation, you can have a formal visitation for the family and friends, an intimate family-only viewing, or something in between. Even if choosing cremation, you can have the body present for the service. The cremation can be performed at any time during the service period.
- To Release - The final need we all experience in grief is the need to say goodbye to our loved one. Of course, we never completely “recover” from the loss, nor do we ever finish saying goodbye. In many ways, our loved ones continue to have an impact on us for the rest of our lives via the memories we shared together.
"As unlikely as it seems right now, there will come a time when the pain of grieving will be less than the joy of remembering. It will come."
Services or gatherings of some type help us begin the healing and renewal process. Our funeral director’s job is to work with your family, faith community and friends to craft a personally-meaningful funeral or memorial gathering, a gathering that can help your family and friends with the long, often painful journey we call grief.
