Laughing at Funerals
When Elder Pino started talking about a sweet family’s day at the beach and then, bam, their daughter drowns, he had our attention.
We read Elder Pino’s talk again last night. I came to this passage that I had forgotten, quoting Spencer W. Kimball:
‘there is no tragedy in death, but only in sin.’
It reminded me of some talks by President Packer, e.g., talking about a happy Latter-day Saint family at a funeral, rejoicing that their loved one is gone from the world to heaven. This idea–that our funeral attitudes should be unfunereal–is pretty common among the Saints.
I have not been a vocal opponent of the idea but I have welcomed recent correctives that grief is natural and right and I haven’t always thought too charitably about the people who held it.
I gained a little bit more charity this morning.
My youngest hates to see me leave in the morning. She has put on shoes and tried to climb in the truck. She has cried and screamed. She’s clung to my leg. She’s better now, though. We taught her to stand at the glass door and wave and blow kisses and I wave back to her as I pull out. She’s okay because she has some way to respond to my leaving.
We went through that today and as I drove something suggested to me that there was an analogy to funerals. I realized that having some kind of response to a death is probably more important than what the response is. Struggling to be happy at a funeral because that’s the thing to do is better than being left to your own devices to come up with your own “authentic” form of grief.
Filed under: Deseret Review | Tags: death, departure, grieving, mourning
Agellius
June 15, 2009
I object to the idea of funerals being celebratory because, under Catholic doctrine at least, we can’t know who is in heaven, except in the case of canonized saints. To act celebratorily at every funeral is to assume that everyone goes to heaven, which is false, and is not a good thing to encourage people to think lest it cause them to stop “working out their salvation with fear and trembling” and thereby endanger their souls.
So in my view funerals should be, on the whole, very serious affairs. Not that it’s a sin to smile or even laugh at a remembrance during a funeral, but that should not be the main tenor of the thing.
G.
June 15, 2009
True, Agellius, but there are lots of things that we cannot really know for a moral certainty, but its still appropriate to rejoice. Weddings, for instance, can turn into divorces later. Still OK to be stupid happy at a wedding.
My real objection to celebratory funerals (recognizing that the term is an overstatement) is that just as the intrinsic quality of a wedding is a good thing, no matter how it later turns out, the intrinsic quality of death is that its a bad thing, no matter that it well might lead to the reunion of the soul with the Almighty. The witness of the scriptures is uniform that death and sin are evils to be overcome. And just as sin can be an occasion for repentance and the wonderful atoning blood of Christ, but still should not be celebrated, so death can be an occasion for entering a better world but is nothing to smirk about.
That’s my thought, anyway.
Agellius
June 15, 2009
A good point Adam. But the salient point of my post is not that we shouldn’t celebrate because we don’t know who goes to heaven. But that in assuming that everyone does, you act as though death and sin are not evils needing to be overcome by working out our salvation with fear and trembling. A celebratory funeral gives the impression that death is a good thing since everyone goes to heaven, and for the same reason there is nothing to fear from sin.
madhousewife
June 15, 2009
After my mother died, I was talking with my sister’s daughter, who was 5 at the time, and she said, “My grandma is with Jesus now.” I said, “Yes.” She asked, “Are you sad?” And I hesitated because I had this thought that I “shouldn’t” be sad about Mom/Grandma being with Jesus, so I said, “I’m a little bit sad.” My niece said, “I’m a lot sad.” And I said, “I’m a lot sad, too,” and I felt really stupid for thinking I should pretend otherwise. Not that I needed to be wailing and gnashing my teeth in front of a 5-year-old, but the fact is, death is sad. Yes, it’s nice when people are no longer in pain and go to live with Jesus (assuming that’s the case), but that’s nice for them. For us, it’s sad. Bearing in mind the doctrines that are comforting doesn’t make the fact of death not-sad.
Incidentally, my husband has informed me that if I call his funeral a “celebration of his life,” he will haunt me.
Bookslinger
June 15, 2009
A few years ago, the 50-ish non-member son-in-law of an elderly ward-friend of mine died. I went to the funeral as support to my friend. He tried to fix me up with his widowed daughter (who is about my age). I _assume_ he wanted me to wait an appropriate time, but he left that unspoken.
John Mansfield
June 16, 2009
My father was unwell his last few years, not in pain, but pretty uncomfortable most of the time. When he died, my wife observed, “He’s past his discomfort now. Past pleasures, too.”
Also, as the closest survivor of my father, along with my sister, it was interesting to experience the role I needed to assume for other mourners. Many people had feelings great or small about his death, and being allowed to console me was a place for them to experience and express those feelings.
G.
June 16, 2009
JM,
I experienced the same thing. Having to play a role was painful at the time, but I later realized that anything would have been painful at the time and having a role to play was better than being left to my own devices.
GST
June 16, 2009
Madhousewife, your husband is my kind of guy. I don’t want my funeral to be a celebration of my life–hopefully it will be a celebration of my glorious death.
http://en.infogalactic.org/wiki/Alonzo_Cushing
When I read that, I was mostly sad that I’ll likely die in a hospital.
G.
June 16, 2009
Alonzo Cushing–and, quite possibly, MadHusband–are now on the list of people I admire.
Vader
June 16, 2009
Indeed. The Angle was a good place to die.
Man SL
July 27, 2010
Agellius,
I think death and sin are bad and should not be celebrated even if every single person repented and was guaranteed to go to heaven when they died. Our culture is incapable of judging a thing good or bad apart from its consequences in the future, but we Christians should reject that tendency. Death in itself is an evil.