My Christian, old republican southerner father wants me to attend his Christian funeral with all of his surviving relatives present. I don’t believe in any god, he knows that. He needs a religion to give a meaning to his life? Knock yourself out.
Religion is not the main problem here. The main problem is how close minded and fake people are in a southern small town in GA and above all, relatives. 2 aunts love to pretend everything is fine, they excel doing that on funerals and weddings, then stab you in the back as soon as you’re not within ear distance, either need drama to feel important or have way too much free time.
I wouldn’t mind a small Christian ritual with my mother, my brother, a priest and nobody else, but these women and their husbands? They drag everyone down with their stupid grudges about yard sales and business deals made in the early 2020s and seem to be envious of those who left that place and found something better. Last time I saw them, 7 years ago, they complained I don’t call them. What for?
I’m better off without them and don’t have the bandwidth to deal with them.
Family seems to be an identity issue for my father, the idea that his whole family won’t bury him together scares him. I told them I will honor him my way, with luck on the hospital bed where he dies or at home, that mother and brother are welcome to honor him with me, that I won’t attend a funeral with people I don’t like but he is not listening: he is now retorting to manipulate me (it would be so good, wouldn’t it be nice…?)
My father is not cognitively impaired. The easy way out would be to tell him ‘sure, I’ll come to your funeral with all those assholes you care so much about’ and after he dies, ignore it. I suspect my mother would agree, because she wasn’t born in GA and these aunts always felt superior to her, something my father always downplays because ‘we’re family’.
I like treating my father like an adult and want genuine conversations with him. To me, placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old who needs to be lied to so he doesn’t start feeling sad or feels I’m attacking him. It doesn’t feel right.
But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.
So what do I do?
You go to your father’s funeral to honor your father’s memory. He isn’t going to bar his sisters from attending his funeral, that would be wildly out of the norm. When your dad dies, go to his damn funeral. This beef you have with his sisters is immaterial.
placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old
Your father expecting you to attend his funeral is pretty fucking standard. It’s a colossally large dick move to not attend your own father’s funeral just because you have a grudge against his sisters. Be a fucking adult and bear the presence of a few people you don’t like for a few hours.
+1
Funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living. People should feel free to commemorate or memorialize their loved ones how they see fit. Demanding they do it your way is shitty and self centered.
Funerals are to please the spirit of the dead so they don’t come back and spoil your crops.
His request seems reasonable, and from the information at hand, it seems you’re being a bit selfish.
If you care about your father, you can tolerate some insufferable people for a couple hours to honor him. You don’t even have to socialize. You’re there for him, not them.
Assuming you love your father, I advise you to reconsider your position and go to the funeral. It seems to matter a lot to him. Be kind to him, go, ignore your aunts. Sometimes, it is not that hard to make the world a better place.
But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.
It is even worse.
In my opinion, your stance is madness. You say you’re treating your father like an adult, but you aren’t acting like one yourself.
Adults tolerate minor discomforts to honor the ones they love. Adults make small talk or avoid people they don’t like at important events while still successfully showing their attendance.
Children prioritize their own small emotions and grievances over the needs and dignity of their parents because they don’t know any better or have any perspective.
So, which kind of son/daughter are you going to be?
I sort of agree, weirdly. Funerals are weird, OP, as is family. As someone with a horrendous family and a very bad social brain, I totally empathise with saying you have ‘no bandwidth’. But you only get one father, and one funeral for him. This need not be a long and drawn out event.
In your position, I’d tell him you’ll go and you’ll have a shitty time and you’ll really hate it and let him know you’re doing it for his sake. That way you’re not lying, you’re just agreeing, in the worst case, to waste a few hours of your life with some unpleasant people.
Even better, tell him you want a nice time out now, like a nice dinner, as payment for enduring his funeral when the time comes.
This isn’t about religion, even if you’re trying to make it about religion. You want to get out of your father’s funeral because it makes you uncomfortable.
Life is full of uncomfortable things, you’ll need to get used to it. There’s thousands of times you’ll need to suck it up and be around people you don’t like because it’s the respectful thing to do.
I’m agnostic, used to be atheist. I thought the same thing. Your fathers funeral, family dinners, respectful times, you’re not “making a stand” you’re being whiney and immature. Atheists celebrate Christmas, go to weddings and funerals. We just sit there silently and respectfully. That’s how we actually want to be viewed outside of a religious context.
Figure out the reason you don’t actually want to go and then learn from it. That’s what growing up is.
Yeah the holidays/rituals aren’t about religion, they’re about family and community. Social cohesion with those you love is the point, provided you wish to keep those people in your life.
This is a legimately awful response.
OP has already said religion isn’t the issue and that a dramatic, judgmental family is.
Calling OP whiney and immature is baseless and unhelpful. As is telling people they should just suck up doing uncomfortable things ‘because it’s the respectful thing to do’. Being an adult is realising that there is actually no ruddy obligation to go do a lot of these things out of respect, especially when, as in OP’s case, you’ve clearly run out of respect for the people in question.
Yes, there are times when we must all do uncomfortable things - When those things come up, work out why said thing is actually necessary or beneficial to your life (or those you care about), and then you, as an adult, can actually weigh up those reasons and work out if you should ‘suck it up’ or not. It is very much your own choice, not some god-fearing obligation to respectfulness.
“Agnostic” is just a more specific kind of atheist. You’re still an atheist.
“Agnostic” is just a more specific kind of atheist. You’re still an atheist.
Some people who call themselves agnostic lean atheist like you say, and might call themselves “agnostic atheists” as a more specific descriptor of their atheism. Some people who are agnostic may lean theist, and call themselves “agnostic theists” (this is usually the label I give myself). Others may not lean one way or the other, or may not care, and may call themselves simply “agnostic.” Or there could be any number of other reasons someone uses the term they prefer.
The differences might be minor or non-existent in your view, but might be important to another individual. Don’t presume to understand what someone else believes simply because of your interpretation of a term.
Like a lot of other people are saying: Go to the funeral
A funeral happens once for someone, and that’s it. There’s no other opportunity to attend. So weighing missing a single opportunity to respect your father (and it sounds like you care for him) and provide closure for yourself, versus petty squabbles from other family members doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been to funerals with family members I’ve disliked, and I just ignored them and stood away from them during the service; so I’m wondering why you wouldn’t be able to do the same? I feel like there might be something more going on. Either between you and the problematic family members; or your own mental wellbeing.
Please consider that if you miss it, you may regret it. Especially considering that the reason for missing it would be a deliberate choice, and it’s over gossip. As you get older, you may find that you will care very little about gossip; especially if it’s from people you dislike. So you may come to realize in the future that you missed your father’s funeral over effectively nothing
I’ve always been taught that attending someone’s funeral is one of the greatest good deeds you can do for someone. They’re no longer here, so they can’t pay you back; and sometimes it’s really difficult to attend both by having to stop everything you’re doing to make it, and emotionally. So there’s always been an emphasis on attending funerals in my life
I had some very choice words for my grandpa and I never apologized. Then he died. I still went to the funeral, and I still get upset that I never apologized.
OP funerals are for the living, not for the dead. Don’t attend the dumb shit ceremony and have whatever ceremony help helps you deal with your grief. If anyone has a problem with that, tell them to go to hell.
What do you want to do?
Also, should you let your aunts keep you away from your father’s funeral, if their presence is the major issue?
If your father has been good to you, and you can be there, maybe you can fulfil a request of his?
But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.
Do you have to? You could ask that you be excused from such convos and avoid them, right?
Not sure if you have some specific issues with your aunts tho, so do ignore this if there is some significant thing that is not considered
Exactly, I have these same people (the aunts) in my life. Theyre awful humans. So you can just smile and wave or tell them off. Theyre never going to change. After the funeral go no contact and let them die in their misplaced rage.
If your dads cool, just go out of respect. I’m in the same boat, hate my relatives, but I’d still go.
I mean… I’ll be the one to say it: he’s not gonna know.
Do what you want and need to in order to maintain your sanity. Placate him with a white lie - and it is a white lie - to make him feel better, if you want to. But maintaining your boundaries and avoiding people you find utterly caustic isn’t “childish”. In fact, I’d call it a consummately adult behavior.
It’s a stressful situation, a funeral. It seems insurmountable before it happens and once it gets going it becomes mostly manageable. I get why you don’t want the stress and all the family dynamics and the religious top layer.
That being said: yes, you are unreasonable. If you like going to funerals, there is something wrong with you. Nobody likes it. For much the same reasons as yours. That’s the baseline.
Think of it as a game and try to avoid talking to all the family members you don’t like. And since it will be your father’s funeral, you have the perfect excuse to have a thousand mile stare and be monosyllabic. And then you treat yourself when it’s over.
There is no need to make your father sad now. Tell him you’ll attend. Because it matters to him. Even if you have no intention to show up, which you should though. He’ll either come back to haunt you from the afterlife (slim chance) or the only people who will maintain a grudge are your living relatives. That’s the bed you’ll be making for yourself and you can avoid a whole lot of additional shit in the future by investing half a day and attend the goddamn funeral.
First off, you can tell your father whatever makes the two of you happy, he won’t know if you go or not. But you will and if you don’t, will you regret it?
Mine wasn’t in my life so I didn’t give a damn about his, why would I honor a pos who never gave a damn for me when I was a little kid.
No the religious stuff, I’m a steadfast atheist, but when my best friend passed, I went to his service, gave the eulogy (but can’t not say it eugoogly), and went through the motions of the prayers and hymns. Went for his wife, and kids, his family and our friends, and I guess him even though he’s not there anymore.
Why are you being nice to those aunts if you dont talk to them or care ? If your dads gone and you aren’t keeping things amicable for his sake there’d be no reason not to tell them theyre pieces of shit (who no doubt voted maga). I’d still go, either ignore or tell off the assholes, and be done with them.
The worst things in this world are family and neighbors, becuase theyre forced upon you and you can’t choose them. Best you can do is go no contact.
Hard to say, there’s not a lot given on your relationship between you and your father to go on.
But in general, you should probably go unless you have a major beef with him specifically.
I often wonder about this situation for myself tho. By the time they die (unless of course something big happens), all of the grandparents will be dead (Mom’s parents already are, Dad’s dad is dead (which is GREAT news) already), Mom’s last sister will probably be dead, Dad’s brothers family is kinda just strangers. Both of them are very Republican churchy people, Dad’s brother is too, his wife has an impossibly thick accent (to the literal point where all of us just kinda smiling and nodding and try to avoid conversations with her), and my 2 cousins are much younger than me (about 13-15 years younger) and we don’t have any regular contact with them other than maybe Christmas. But they’re just as brainwashed as my parents, so I don’t actually want relationships with any of my family at all besides my siblings and their kids.
I don’t want to go to the funeral(s) because it will be at a church. I’ve already decided to never go to a church outside of a wedding or funeral, but that doesn’t mean I’m eager to go back, especially to my childhood church. I don’t want to be exposed to any of those people at all. I have no relationships with any of them, and definitely don’t want to. I think they all assume I go to some other church now, and if that dam bursts it’s gonna become a scene. Unless I find a way to get a grip. Religion and church… I don’t know if I can even claim the word “triggers me” because I didn’t experience a singular moment of clear abuse, but it sends me up the wall with some kinda of feelings, as I was ONLY exposed (outside of some grocery store trips) to people from church before Mom finally gave up homeschooling, so I had absolutely zero secular social life until just before I could get a driver’s license. It took until I hit 30 before I finally had the moment where it hit that church was total bullshit. It was a weird slow ramp until that moment, but it was a very important singular moment to me.
Anyway, tldr is I don’t care about anyone that would show up at all. Except for my siblings. I highly dislike almost every one of them, outside of maybe Dad’s coworkers (but only because I don’t know them) and my friends (from back in church days) that I would be fairly neutral with, even tho so if them (afaik) are still in the religion.
I mean if they die separately it’ll be more difficult to skip out, but if they die together (and still no will documented) we’ll probably just bury em and split everything up evenly (whatever there is after selling estate anyway). Even the half of my siblings that is still sorta religious have little regard or memory of any of the people at the church, and the other half definitely share my feeling on it.
But one of the religious half is a funeral director, so he might try to make something out of it, but would probably get shut down. If they put in some advanced desire thing we’ll probably abide by it, but if they don’t, time to toss the bodies and run, shipping the funeral process. Dad’s brother can just be mad about it, fuck that conservative bastard.
the only reason it matters is to impress the people at the funeral. if you don’t care about that, don’t go.
You can’t tell people somebody can’t go to a funeral, especially a family member. It’s not about societal norm, it’s about respect. Also, who cares if those assholes would be there. You wouldn’t be there for them, you’d be there for your father.
If you skip his funeral, you’d be doing him a huge disrespect, but if that’s what you want, in your own word: knock yourself out.
