September 30, 2004

• What's the point of a non-religious funeral? Surely, a funeral is about as religious as anything can get. Without wishing to be insensitive, isn't a funeral, for somebody that doesn't believe in an afterlife, effectively a party for a piece of meat? I don't really buy the 'dealing with grief' argument. In my experience, the period between a death and the funeral is a horrible time, where everything feels like it's in limbo. If anything, it postpones and magnifies the grief. Personally, I'm not having a funeral, or anything akin to it. When I go the way of the Norwegian Blue, my nearest and dearest are under instructions to have the carcass wheeled away, to let the medics rip out any organs that they may have a use for, and pass what's left to the medical students.
• Party for a piece of meat? Sounds like fun to me. Personally, I will refuse to die until I can book a suitable band for my post-death party. I tend to view funerals more as celebrations of people's lives.
• A funeral is just a farewell ceremony for a dead person. As a matter of fact, one can be religious without believing in an afterlife, and one can be a materialist atheist yet still love people and think them special enough to deserve a ceremony. Oh, and it isn't atheists who think dead people are 'pieces of meat' - that's cannibals.
• Well, I think dead people are pieces of meat, and I'm not a cannibal. Unless scabs count. How is it possible to be religious and not believe in an afterlife?
• Personally, I'm not having a funeral, or anything akin to it. Yeah, yeah, anything to stop me dancing on your grave, you callous bitch.
• A funeral is probably an act of closure that friends and family need in order to begin the process of rememberance. It's harder to begin that process without first saying goodbye to the physical form of the person. It's like when kidnap victims are eventually assumed dead, families desperately want the remains of their loved ones to bring closure and to begin forming concrete memories which gives them comfort.
• Oh, shit, sorry some wander. I thought my Mom posted that comment.
• Apparently, my personal philosophy isn't popular. And now I'm scared.
• Well... in my experience, grieving for a beloved friend or family member is a very long-term process, not just a temporary sadness that goes away if you ignore it. My personal belief is that some type of funeral ceremony, whether secular or religious, is an essential step in the process of saying goodbye to a person you love. It makes the death feel more "real." And it's a way for friends to give support to those who are grieving.
• Sorry if I seemed hostile, swbm (may I call you that?); I've really got nothing against your personal philosophy, honest. If you want to follow your sensible utilitarian principles and get the best possible use out of your corpse, then good for you. But non-religious people don't necessarily feel that way. One way to be religious without believing in an afterlife would be to believe in God but not Heaven, as I believe some Jews do, for example.
• After all the work we've done planning your funeral, some wander - the cake, the dancing girls, the clowns - now you say you won't even be there? Oy vey ismier ...
• Plegmund, no probs. It's weird, but reading the posts here, I get a certain sense of disconnection. My views on this aren't particularly different to most other people I know IRL, but here they seem completely at odds with others. Mind you, a certain sense of disconnection isn't exactly a new experience for me.
• quidnunc, send the cake and the dancing girls around to my place, it's a shame to waste them. Not the clowns though. I don't like clowns.
• Don't send in the clowns? But they're already here.
• I am definitely doing the "piece of meat" theme for my next party....SO many possible interpretations! I was at a funeral (and my first burial) about 6 weeks ago. It was most certainly about celebrating the life of the "piece of meat" and for me, was the first chance to meet many of meat's friends and family (she was in my hub's family). it was in many ways a wonderful, if sad, experience and I certainly hope that whatever friends and family are around when I kick the bucket will have a big party and laugh and cry and get drunk and appreciate each other (!)
• and I am an atheist who does not believe in afterlife and is aggressively anti-religion
• You entertain the clowns. I'll entertain the dancing girls. With the cake. Is it chocolate?
• It's poison cake. We didn't want to go on living after you'd gone.
• Anyway, Jacob, the site is great. I'm a little embarassed about how upset I am that this season of Six Feet Under is over.
• Medusa, I'm not advocating wrapping up the dear deceased in a rug, leaving them by the side of the road, and then pretending that they never existed. What you've described, though, it seems to me, could just as well be conducted without a body, and thus isn't necessarily specific to a funeral. It seems to me, from my anti-religious perspective, that the whole thing becomes a lot more pleasant, and in my humble opinion a lot less macabre, when the body is removed from the equation. Yup, my 'piece of meat' statement, in retrospect, was insensitive, and for that I apologise. It wasn't intended to be in any way malicious, but it was inappropriate, given what I now know about the audience to which it was addressed. In my defence, however, it's a common sentiment expressed freely amongst my peers, whenever a subject such as this arises, with no negative connotations whatsoever.
• The whole concept of poison cake disturbs me on so many levels. Nice sentiment, though, and one of which I thoroughly approve.
• Dead or alive, we're all pieces of meat, once ye start looking at living organisms that way. Hey! maybe Laura Bush, aka Mme "Lump-in-the-Bed" was actually onto something! Pieces of meat have birthdays, pieces of meat go to the beach, pieces of meat move in mysterious ways reconciling the ends of their family and friends or getting married or harried or finally buried. /cut-up, me!
• some wander, your comments did not offend me! I don't intend the "pieces of meat party theme" comment as a dig, but um, seriously...(hee) we ARE pieces of meat and funerals are an expensive exploitation of our grief and confusion in the wake (pun!) of death. however, death is often so difficult to handle, even among those of non-sentimental, atheist or pragmatic natures, that these symbolic rituals can offer a lot of relief, or closure, or whatever... I am stronly anti-religion, but ritual can be a vital expression of group emotions.
• To me, the meat jokes seem a whole lot more "macabre" than does the burial of a dead body that once belonged to a friend or family member. But macabre jokes are a coping mechanism for some people, just as funerals are for others. Although, you know, if we're going to be totally honest about this... dead people who have been embalmed are not so much pieces of meat as, well... GIANT BLOODLESS PICKLES!
• The whole concept of poison cake disturbs me on so many levels. Nice sentiment, though, and one of which I thoroughly approve. I wholly recommend David Sedaris' short story "The Last You'll Hear From Me", which is in his book Barrel Fever. Nice little twist of revenge at the end.
• This is awesome. Does it have an RSS feed? I always have trouble figuring out if blogger sites have them. I think they do somewhere ...
• spackle wins.