Advice columnist Ann Landers once advised a 17-year-old girl to attend her best friend’s funeral, saying, “A funeral provides proof that the deceased is gone. It helps the bereaved to overcome denial mechanisms.” Shortly after that column was published, Landers received a compelling letter from a widow who agreed.
“You’re right, Ann,” she wrote. “Don’t let anyone change your mind. I learned the lesson from bitter experience.”
The widow related how her grieving was delayed and intensified over a 20-year period because she failed to have a funeral when her husband died.
“My husband was declared missing in action over France on June 10, 1944. In January of ’45, he was declared dead after his plane was found. I refused to believe it,” she wrote. “News items about lost flyers who were found alive in unexpected places kept my hopes alive. Finally, I was forced to make the decision and I requested that my husband be buried in France. A flag came home.
“Almost 20 years later I took my son to France to visit his father’s grave. When the kindly custodian asked us whose grave we had come to see, my throat closed. I couldn’t speak or eat for 48 hours. I grieved as if my husband had just died. I realize I suffered all that agony because I had never witnessed the final farewell. I should have requested that my husband’s remains be sent home and had a funeral.”
That woman’s experience is not an isolated one among those who have a loss but, for various reasons, do not have a funeral service. Those who study and work closely with the bereaved understand there are psychological pitfalls and dangers when funeral services are eliminated or abbreviated.
Alan Wolfelt, director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colo., said, “The growing trend toward minimizing the funeral ritual or eliminating it altogether has resulted in many people not knowing how to mourn in healthy ways. … Clinical experience suggests that when the funeral ritual is minimized or distorted, mourning often becomes minimized or distorted. Likewise, when no funeral ritual occurs, the mourner often adopts a complicated response style of delayed or absent grief.”
The reality is that funeral services are good for people. This is especially important to emphasize today because traditions and rituals are being minimized. Here are eight benefits of having a funeral service:
1. A funeral service inaugurates the beginning of the grief recovery process. With a funeral service, important first steps are taken that lead to a healthy grief adjustment. This was articulated most effectively by Dr. Erich Lindemann while he was chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. At the time, one of the greatest tragedies in modern U.S. history took place Nov. 28, 1942.
That day, the streets of Boston were filled with football fans who had come to watch Holy Cross play Boston College. After the game, many people went to the nearby Cocoanut Grove Nightclub to celebrate. During the festivities, a fire started. The nightclub, which had around 1,000 people there that night — exceeding its 600-person limit — was immediately engulfed in flames. The fire claimed the lives of 492 people, making it the worst nightclub fire in history.
Afterward, Lindemann and his colleagues worked with grieving family members. Using data from his work and study, Lindemann published his classic paper, “The Symptomalogy and Management of Acute Grief.” He wrote, “The funeral service is psychologically necessary in order to give the opportunity for ‘grief work.’ The bereaved must be given the capacity to work through his grief if he is to come out of that situation emotionally sound.”
2. A funeral service confirms the reality that death has occurred. As strange as it may seem, those closest to a loved one who has died often need evidence that the death has occurred. For many people, seeing leads to believing. Initial impulses about death are to resist and deny.
This was something frequently encountered by Edgar N. Jackson, a minister and grief educator who served as a chaplain in the Air Force during World War II. In his book, “For the Living,” he tells of repeatedly witnessing denial from parents who received telegrams from the War Department informing them their son was killed during conflict.
“Again and again, I found relatives denying reality and clinging to illusion. … They talked about the possibility of amnesia or his being shot down in a remote region. In each instance, this was a carefully constructed denial they chose to cling to rather than accept the painful truth.”
3. A funeral service is a vital mechanism to overcoming denial. William J. Worden, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School and author of “Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy,” makes this important observation: “Whether one has a wake, an open casket or closed casket is subject to regional, ethnic and religious differences.
“However, there is strong advantage to having the family members see the body of the deceased loved one, whether it be at the funeral home or at the hospital. Even in the case of cremation, the body can still be present at the funeral service in either an open or closed casket and then the cremation done after the service,” Worden said.
“The funeral service can be a strong asset in helping the survivors work through the first task of grief,” which is to overcome denial and accept the reality of death.
4. A funeral service provides a sense of control. Having to make funeral arrangements offers grievers an early opportunity to take action.
Funeral service preparation transforms, for the griever, feelings of powerlessness into a greater sense of control. Although survivors could not prevent the death, now there are decisions they must make, such as locating and calling a funeral firm, establishing the place and time of a funeral, casket selection, choice of clothing and people to contact and inform.
Such decision-making begins providing grievers with a sense of control over their lives. This becomes an important awareness because in the months ahead survivors will have to take further control of their lives, forging a new identity without the presence of the deceased and building new lives for themselves.
5. A funeral service invites community support. The funeral service brings the broader community of family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances together to offer support.
Consequently, the grieving begins the important movement of turning from hurting to healing as they become recipients of empathy and compassion. Without a service, grievers are deprived of the opportunity to make this important transformation. In fact, many express regret at not having had a service of some kind.
In their book on suicide and its aftermath titled “Silent Grief,” Christopher Lukas and Henry M. Seiden advise, “Early on … there is at least one thing all survivors can do that many find helpful. They can involve themselves in normal rituals: a memorial service, a funeral, an announcement in the paper. Many survivors told us that this did not occur and that contributed to the family’s agony.” They cite a disappointed family member who said, “My brother’s family didn’t want a ‘party,’ so they decided to have nothing at all. We just went home.” And a wife said, “We didn’t have a memorial service. We moved. There was no external sign of Sam’s suicide. It was a mistake.”
6. A funeral service lets the light in. The death of a loved one is a dark, depressing and potentially despairing event. The funeral service provides opportunity for those hurting the most to be reminded that God is present in the midst of pain.
They will receive comfort from the reading of Scriptures and will hear prayers offered by others asking God to bless and comfort them. The funeral service penetrates the darkness of loss.
7. A funeral service promotes the release of grief emotions. In many segments of our society, it is not permissible to show emotion and feeling.
However, this is not true at a funeral service. At a service, those present are free and even expected to shed tears, be sad, express hurt and articulate fears for the future. The funeral service becomes a place of refuge where the emotions of grief can be fully released.
8. A funeral service creates space and place for the community to grieve. People are social creatures in need of each other. This is especially true when there has been a loss to death. The funeral service allows people to come together for mutual grieving and supporting.
So basic and important is this that family members sometimes wisely override the wishes of the deceased who specified “no service” or “something very, very simple with only immediate family.”
In the book, “Midlife Orphan,” author J. Brooks relates this story about “Mimi,” a beloved mother, grandmother and friend to many:
“When Mimi died, only the immediate family attended the graveside funeral service in accordance with her wishes. But so many people wanted to pay their respects that Ron (her son) organized a memorial service at home the day after the funeral. For nearly two hours more than 100 friends, family members and coworkers shared their memories of this beloved woman.”
Thus, funeral services and rituals, properly managed, deliver great therapeutic benefits to survivors. It ought to be viewed as an investment rather than an expenditure.
This was noted by the early Christian theologian Augustine who said, “The care of the funeral, the manner of burial … are more for the consolation of the living than of any service to the dead.” And more recently, author C.S. Lewis wrote, “[Ritual] … renders pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable.”
10 ways to help yourself when grieving
1. Take care of your physical self — eat healthy foods and rest a little more.
2. Avoid alcohol and medications not prescribed by your doctor. They simply prolong and complicate the grieving process.
3. Accept and roll with tough days such as birthdays, anniversaries and the holidays.
4. Stick to a routine even if you don’t feel like it. It will bring some order and discipline to life.
5. Never make important decisions while grieving like quitting school, changing jobs or moving.
6. Use creative arts to let out your feelings — music, writing, art and dance.
7. Talk with others who have experienced loss.
8. Seek healing help if necessary from medical doctors, therapy and support groups.
9. Engage in exercise.
10. Don’t be on a timetable. You become “normal” quickly, but healing takes its own time.
Source: Victor M. Parachin
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