Anyone ever decided to just not have a funeral for their loved one?

My aunt (93) called a few days ago and, out of the blue, asked if I was going to have a funeral/service for her sister (95) when she passes. It caught me off guard but I told her that I thought it was kind of silly to have any 'doings' for just the 4 of us. (She, my 2 uncles (85 and 75) and me).

We live in Tijuana (mother is here in a nursing home) and they are in northern California. They can't travel so it would be me traveling up there to hold a service/get-together for us 4.

I'm going to be busy with her cremation and filing paperwork for dying outside the US, then taking it all to SS, etc. so I won't be traveling anywhere. She was a bit bemiffed at my answer. I asked if there was any other reason I should go up there. She said, "So I can comfort you." I just about laughed out loud.
That from a lady I haven't seen in 3 years and who calls and is off the phone in 5 minutes! (This is the same aunt who told me to keep my retirement money and not spend it on keeping my dying husband alive in the hospital!)

I told her that I've been grieving for the last 6 years for my mother and her Alzheimer's. It will be a blessing that she will be out of her misery. I told Auntie I'd be just fine but I would have liked to tell her to "stick it".

When my Dad passed, we did not have a funeral. We live on a lot of acres and we started a cemetary, He being the first in it. There was just 4 of us, we read his favorite scriptures, and sang his favorite hymns. My Husband dug the plot, retrieved him from the hospital and buried him. It is how the Native Americans do it. Simple. My Dad always said if people don't visit you when you are living, what does it matter if they come to a funeral, your not there then. It was a sweet and lovely momentous occasion as believe he would have liked. My husband and I also made his headstone. But I know most people don't have the property to do this. But there is nothing wrong with not having a funeral. Truly a funeral is for the survivors, to have closure and support. So it is really up to the individual responsible for these arrangements, what you feel is what you should do.

Nymedicaid,
That brought tears to my eyes. What a wonderful story of your lives together. And how sweet to mingle the ashes of his beloved pet with his. How kind and thoughtful of you.

With all the negative posts recently, your sharing has really lifted me up. Thanks.

My father died of final stage Alzheimer's, my mother and I thought that there was no reason to have a funeral. There is no reason for paying for a funeral / wake / priest-preacher to say the things that we already feel. In my opinion, most people attend a funeral because they feel obligated to and dont want to be there anyway. I feel that when a person dies, it matters only how you remember them and not how many so called friends that show up just to be seen.

I have. I put my money into mom having a happy lifestyle. Bought her a 55-inch tv for her bedroom, paid channels. Magic Jack, so she has her own dedicated phone line so family/friends can call her direct. Nothing. No visitors, etc. Just me. Brother lives local and calls maybe twice a month. So I have already told myself why pay for all these people that can't take a moment to reach out in life to view her. Not going to happen.

I read theses responses and my eyes water up. Dad passed at 74 after a rough ten years of slowly losing his abilities to be independent and eventually HAD to be placed in a nursing home for everyone’s safety.
I felt he and I were both abandoned by 98% of “family and friends”. When the time came I was with him in the hospital for his last breath.
I had been mentally preparing for some time. I met with a griev counselor a year prior to his passing. I simply asked what could I do to better prepare my self to handle the inevitable.
He gave me what I think was one of the best pieces of advise I ever received. He said to first forgive each other of anything we needed to, then to remember and reminisce of our time together and when the time came to say goodbye. I’m so grateful today for that advice.
I’m grateful for the 38 years we spent together almost everyday.
Though it wasn’t always pretty and sometimes down right nasty I’m grateful I was able to care for him the last 15 years as he had cared for me during the first half of my life. After dad passed we hosted Father’s Day at home with the 2% of those I felt deserved to be there. Dad was cremated as he had wished to be and his ashes spent the next 6 months in the garage just sitting on a recliner that he liked. I thought it was appropriate since the garage was a place he would often be found. It was a “kick” to be working in the garage and to sit down next to him when taking a break from whatever project I was working on and maybe saying a few words to him, sometimes out loud. When the winter came it was time to bring dad downstairs to the “man cave” we built together. He hated the cold. When his little dog passed we had him cremated as well and mixed the ashes just as I know he would of wanted, together forever, in a place of prominence, peace and a return to dignity.

Well, different strokes for different folks..My wife, God bless her, is now in rehab after falling and breaking her hip. A new hip replacement was required at 82 years of age. As some of you folks know she is in the latter stages of dementia and I plan to transfer her from rehab to a private care center. But! This post is about funerals..Some years ago we both paid up front for cremation to make it easier on the two sons. Our funerals will be about as simple as when we were brought into this world 82 years ago.

Upon death, straight to cremation in a cardboard box. The ashes to be taken to our old farm, where we have enjoyed life to some extent for sixty two years, have a short prayer by one of the three of us, my two sons and I, and then scatter the ashes over the green or brown pasture.

Neither of us want a lot of fan fare. We have outlived most of our friends and like I say.....simple entrance into this old world....and simple out.

God bless...

Ren

my husband and I have decided on just short graveside services for the family members who live nearby. Most of our friends are gone now, and neighbors aren't interested in visiting while we are still alive.

I personally don’t want a traditional funeral. I want to be cremated and then the handful of people who cared about me can do as they will.

My parents have a huge stone already sitting in the cemetery waiting for them. I used to think that showed a healthy acceptance of death but now that their time draws near, they are anything but accepting it.

When we found my 92 year old uncle had vascular dementia amoung several other serious heart and lung issues, we talked to him about a funeral. Five years earlier he had lost the love of his life and had her creamated without a funeral or ceremony. He wanted the same, a direct creamation with her ashes. So despite the mild disapproval of some family members he will get exactly that. He has stopped eating just this week and I believe his time is small. I have told the family if they want and need a memorial service it is on them and for them. I will attend but honor his wishes. The family will respect his wishes. Do what your heart tells you. I Wish you both peace.

With all due respect, this topic has to be the best one yet. So many caring, insightful responses but also a few funny ones...all spoken from the heart, weary or not. I added mine earlier. But do wish to thank all of you for taking the time to share your feelings.

YES!

My father was Jewish and Jewish law states his body had to be interred within 24 hours. No funeral, but I managed to get him interred with 20 minutes to spare.

It was so much less stressful that I asked my DH if I could do the same with him - he's 30 years older than me (we've been married 32 years now) and he gave me the go-ahead. While I'm in no hurry to bury him and become widowed, I did want to follow his wishes. He's 96.

For me the savings will be a bonus. What I would like to avoid is the "so sorry's" from complete strangers. A simple graveside service will put him to rest just the same.

I don't believe in embalming but the church cemetery requires a vault so this is no longer a problem. DH said, cremation is ok too.

BTW, I have noticed the trend for only graveside services in our area.

These days?

I agree that beyond the decencies all that matters is remembering your loved one in your own way. But funerals are not a modern commercial invention. The pyramids? The Taj Mahal? Rituals surrounding death are as old as civilisation itself.

People feel the need to have a funeral because its what society deems appropriate these days, funeral homes are a business and they want to make money, that's it. The only thing that matters is how you remember your loved one, not what a preacher or your 5th cousin says you she do

AuntJane, may I offer a different perspective than the one you shared? I don't think that "caregiver fatigue, depression, seeing no value in life in general" are the bases for no funerals or gravestones or other commemorative issues.

From what I've gained here, caregiver fatigue shouldn't be blamed for no funeral or other activities. Caregivers are challenged enough during someone's lifetime and shouldn't be blamed for a fatigue which they often are unable to control.

A funeral hardly negates the "value" of "life in general". Individuals create their life value, as do their friends and family. Some of that value is created by society. And those values begin the process of creation either from inception or birth, depending on how the family feels about the child. Nothing can negate the value of life IF the individual and family value it.

Not having a funeral might be appropriate in many circumstances. Funerals are really for the living anyway. If family and friends have been close, they're aware of the last years, months and days of someone's life. If not, is it really important that they know?

That's how I feel. I'm not going to spend money, post an obituary that anyone can read (especially crooks who in our area have been targeting empty homes after reading an obituary notice and knowing exactly when the relatives will be gone), or even worse yet, post an obituary online and available for any one to read, on a funeral home's website that may or may not be secure.

It has nothing to do with negativity; it's an issue of privacy, not only for the deceased but also for the living, who may not want their loved one's life and family information shared (or commoditized).

It doesn't negate anything the deceased has done; those activities are remembered by the people involved who matter, or who may have forgotten because of time, but death doesn't negate the worth of any individual.

And on that subject, consider how many famous people are remembered if not revered - Kennedys, for example, as well as poets, musicians, authors, scientists.....their work lives on, for existing and future world inhabitants to learn, treasure and share (or reject if that's their choice). How many medical and scientific people have discovered cures for disease? Does it matter whether there was a funeral or there's a gravestone? Their legacy will outline their physical existence.

The brilliance of Beethoven, Handel, Brahms, Bach and more have and will be remembered regardless of whether or not there was a funeral when they died. I've never seen Beethoven's grave but am so inspired by his music. Not seeing his gravestone has no effect on the value of his life.

One of my aunts was cremated; a memorial service was held. But the fact that her physical body wasn't present doesn't in any way lessen the role she played in our family's lives or in the lives of others.

Times are changing, deaths are celebrated differently. People can design their own services before their deaths, or family members can choose burial in a way that commemorates their lives.

Although I don't know the individual, someone who does told me about a surfer who loved the sea and was buried in a ceremony at sea off California's coast. Why shouldn't he or she be buried in an area loved during his/her life? It's not as if it's a human body is a hazard like so much plastic, e-waste and other toxic junk that's thrown into river bodies and contaminates the water and sometimes kills the sea life.

And funerals as we know them are traditions of certain civilizations. Some ethnicities have their own methods of honoring their dead, ways that I think are characteristic of their lifestyles and beliefs.

My feeling is also that if people didn't bother keeping in touch with my family during our lives, I could care less if they know when we die. And only those who were supportive will be guests at a private luncheon. I'm not interested in hearing comments from people who couldn't or wouldn't take the time to be involved when my family needed help.

Many of these reponses sound as if you can just be done with the dead; no funeral has deteriorated to no obituary, no body (cremation), no headstone or marker, as if there had been no life, well lived or not. And it sounds as if this comes from a place of negativity; caregiver fatigue, depression, seeing no value in life in general.

We cannot know how many of Grandma's or Grandpa's friends, and family members we never knew of would go to great lengths to attend a funeral service based on a death notice or obituary in the 1, 2, or 3 locations where our elder spent most of their lives.

Likewise, we cannot know of those who will later want to know, even be desperate to know the correct spelling of the deceased's name and their dates of birth, death, marriages, their children and more as they research their genealogy. What is well known or immaterial to you in the present can be vital to someone else.

If taking care of the dead is beyond you at the moment or in general, please see the help of a friend or a funeral home professional who can see the bigger picture and has the energy to care for all the living around this family member, now and in the future.

I don't plan on having one for my mom. I will honor her wishes to be buried with my dad, but not sure I will even attend burial. If the grandchildren decide they want a small service, then I can arrange that as a private affair with a dinner and celebration of mom.

It's personal for each family. For me, I'm the only one spending time with mom over the last couple years and agree if others aren't visiting or communicating what's the point?

my mother's brother & sisters gave me only grief & no suuport while my mom as in nursing home. they were less than 2 miles away from the home. did not visit her. my husband was in hospital dying but they expected me to make 50 mile trip to handle every thing.
her sister constantly called & harassed me. when mom passed i did no have a service.
her sister even had funeral director call me.

Veronica - I'm curious - how did you feel about finding out about your Dad's death when it was too late to say goodbye or even attend his funeral? My stepmother did the same exact thing when my father died and my siblings and I were all beside ourselves! None of us were estranged - my siblings and I had visited my father in the hospital just a few months earlier, but we hadn't realized he was so close to death. We would have been there at the end, and certainly to attend the funeral. We all felt my stepmother had cheated us out of something we could never get back, and none of us ever forgave her for it.

I see many obits in the local paper that say no funeral, celebration of life at a later date, or no calling hours funeral private.
i also see that funeral homes have started to tell people to send their condolences to the funeral homes website. Don't know how I feel about that.
Calling hours were a new concept to us comming to the US.
I don't see myself being able to go through two hours of that unless heavily sedated. Hubby's parents had nice service and then moved to the cemetery for buried. Afterwards there were refreshments at local hotel but not many people actually came for the food. We did the same for my Mum who was cremated. My Dad had remarried and his widow sent me the news by mail after everything was all over

Myself? I have a handful of friends and relatives who would say, 'Oh, what a shame, she's died' and go on with their lives. I have a husband and a grown daughter, and if either of them outlive me, I have told them repeatedly, a funeral is up to YOU, but I don't want one for a dozen people. I am fine with cremation (though I would like my urn put in a wall in a cemetery for that kind of thing. Not scattered.)

My mom does not want a funeral. Most of her friends are sick or already gone and she has no other family but me and my brother who lives out of town. She was raised Jewish but not religous so she see's no reason to have a funeral service. My brother and I will probably have a gathering so that our friends can pay their respects to us but nothing big.

I know this is an old thread, but it popped up on my 'feed' today. Sometimes we do not know who our parent was important to during their life. By publishing an obit and holding a service those people can pay their last respects.

A very personal example, when my former fil Lloyd, died, there was not service and an old war buddy heard through the legion that he was gone. He was incredibly upset that he missed the opportunity to tell the family the story of when fil saved his life. Yes they had lost touch over the years, but Lloyd was never far from his thoughts.

In my family we memorial services at a time that is convenient to as many as possible. In the last 40 years everyone has been cremated. When my mother's Aunty Jessie died, I had not seen her in 20 years or more. She had been moved by her family first to live with family, then to a nursing home a great distance away. I never knew Aunty Jessie's kids (Mum's Cousins) except perhaps 2-3 brief meetings in childhood. They did not know me. At the memorial, people were given the opportunity to tell a story. When I got up, her children were surprised, why would I have a story to tell? I told them the story that every year from the time I was about 5 - 16, I went to Aunty Jessie's house and baked a cake for my grandmother. It was a 'surprise' for my grandmother. Because all of Aunty Jessie's kids had moved away, she did not get to see her own grandchildren very often, but I saw her every time I visited my grandmother. We baked a cake once a year, we had tea in the garden, we found a snake in the pond. I brushed her Collie and filled a bag with dog hair. I took the dog hair back to my grandmother's house and spun it into yarn. When I knit the small ball of yarn into a square, the colours were lovely, but it smelled like dog, even after being washed.

If they had not had that memorial service, they would never have known that I had a special relationship with their mother

My love for Aunty Jessie was not impaired because I did not visit her once she was moved away by family. The opportunity was not there. Once I was an adult with my own vehicle, her dementia was so advanced that she would not have known me. I chose to remember her as I knew her, not as a she became.

I had a relative in the late nineties to pass away and there was no one left except some in the family, so there was only a graveside service. My mom has already said she wants the same. A cousin was talking about how irritated she is when someone who has never come around, or even called, suddenly shows up at a funeral. She said that if they didn't care when the person was alive, they shouldn't show up when they are dead.

We are planning no funeral for my mother, as she is decidedly non-religious and has directed that she be cremated. Also she has no money and I don't think any of us want to pay for a funeral, which few people will attend in any event. The only person who would object would be her brother I think, because he's religious and very traditional. But if he wants a funeral for her, he'll have to pay for it, because nobody else will. He's a few years younger and in much better shape than her, so I expect he'll outlive her.

I feel no need to pay "last respects" to my mother. I've been taking care of her for almost 7 years now and I think that's enough.

I am an organ donor; when my dad died unexpectedly in a distant state, he had no one but me, so I arranged to have him donated to a local medical school. The only expense was $325 for the legally required hearse to take him from the morgue to the university. Even that was covered by the $500 deposit his apt complex returned. When it was all over his cousin told me he had always wanted it that way; why couldn't he have told any of us? My mom finally decided she would do the same, but I may have a memorial service for her, since a lot of people around here like her - same with my husband, who chooses to be buried at the VA cemetery. No memorial service or funeral for me; I never go to them, so it would be hypocritical, wouldn't it?

I too believe that we honor our elderly family members when we take care of them while they are alive. I am the oldest of two girls. My sister has early onset Alzheimer's disease. We chose not to tell her.
Our father died young. There are no relatives or friends of my mother to come to Virginia for a funeral. I live and travel back and forth from Alaska. Cost: Thousands each time. My mother wanted cremation and, for the time being, her cremains came home with me to Alaska. She loved Virginia. At some future date, I will return there for spreading her ashes.

When Daddy died last month, mom had nothing, he was cremated and ashes brought home and he did have family and tons of friends who would have been there to celebrate his life, i feel he deserved more and was not happy with it but did not argue as it was how she needed to proceed emotionally and i respected that and understand it. Now that it is her going so soon to be with him, I will give her what she chose, the exact same thing, cremation and nothing further. You do what you need to do emotionally, if others don't respect that choice they should have played a bigger part in getting to the end with you.

Patooski - what a lovely send off for your dad. Sounds totally befitting of his life.

Dad was a WWII veteran. After he died (at 90), he was given a plaque by the govt - it could be put in the ground as a gravestone or mounted on a stone. I had it mounted on a gravestone. He was also entitled to a graveside ceremony.  

Before he died, I had asked him what he wanted - funeral, casket, cremation? He said - whatever's cheaper. I'll be dead - I won't care. Cremation was cheapest and that is what we did although I don't like that very well. But I went with what he said. I went to a funeral home and they arranged everything, including the graveside ceremony. Cremation is expensive up North - I didn't know - but cheaper than a funeral. 

Most of his friends his own age had died before him or were too old to come to a funeral or even a celebration. It was bitter winter up north when he died. We made a pretty arrangement of his ashes box, pictures and words about him, flowers. We had a few friends and neighbors over to the house and had some snacks and drinks. We talked about old memories and laughed. 

And then later in the Spring, we had the graveside ceremony. I bought a plastic box from Amazon to protect the wooden box that his ashes were in.  Into that box we (his daughters) put notes of gratitude and love to him and also his leather sheath with knife and scissors, that he always carried on his belt. 

We had a gathering by his stone. He was given a 21 gun salute. There was a priest and some family, friends and neighbors there. It was very serious and respectful. It was a beautiful day. The priest said a few words. We laid roses on his grave. A big deer walked up from the river and looked at us. Dad was a lover of the woods and outdoors. 

No funeral. Glad of it. And I think he is too.