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January 11, 2015 at 12:40 pm (This post was last modified: January 11, 2015 at 2:14 pm by Jenny A.)
I should have updated this. My brother went to speak with the funeral home director about our little plan for a secular funeral. We had some worries about making it work. No need. She told him that our plan is essentially what most people who use funeral homes rather than churches are doing these days. Consequently, the use of the chapel there includes audio visual equipment. And the chapel is designed to become rather unchaple-like in a hurry. There is a curtain that can be drawn over the cross, and the alter is on wheels.
We go together Wednesday morning to complete the planning.
The snags have so far vae had little to do with the funeral service and everything to do with legalities regarding the body. In New Mexico, you can't cremate a body without the consent (notary required) of a majority of the deceased's kin. So there will be no cremation until I arrive on Tuesday and signing the consent form will be the first thing on my to do list.
Oddly, while you can scatter ashes just about anywhere on public or private (with permission) property, if you bury those same ashes, why then you are creating a cemetery, and permits are required.
I am doing well. Getting teary over picking music and writing a eulogy, but otherwise good. Funeral planning and other busywork is very good for the living.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
(January 8, 2015 at 4:32 pm)Jenny A Wrote: I have never been to an atheist funeral or even a secular one before. But my father died last night, and brother and I now have one to plan.
Bro and I are both atheist and my father though he was very actively Christian until his forties (went to seminary), has neither been to church nor discussed god in the last thirty-five years or so. He has adamantly refused pastoral visits of any kind during hospital stays. There will be no other relatives at the funeral beyond bro and my immediate families (also atheist) except Dad's ex-wife who is also a-religious, though not necessarily atheist. So we don't want god-talk intruding to the extent we can avoid it. But we aren't interesting in making this an anti-theist event either. This is a memorial and should feel welcoming to everyone who attends.
Our initial thoughts were to use a funeral home and have a short opening welcome and moment of silence. Then some music that Dad loved (60's folk or Simon and Garfunkel). Then a chance for several people who knew him well to speak about him a few minutes (we'll schedule those in advance). More music and a brief closing. All followed by a reception line leading straight to a buffet.
Does anyone have any experience, or just ideas about how to handle this?
Oh, Jen, I'm sorry for you.
The way you guys are approaching is pretty much how the most secular funeral I've attended was -- personal reminisces, music that we knew Warren loved, and heading back to his old home for the reception, where the mourning of his loss turned to a celebration of his life.
My sympathies to you and your family in this time of grief, ma'am.
(January 11, 2015 at 12:40 pm)Jenny A Wrote: Oddly, while you can scatter ashes just about anywhere on public or private (with permission) property, if you bury those same ashes, why then you are creating a cemetery, and permits are required.
Wow! That's exactly what I am having done as of my last update of my list wishes. I wonder what other states require (or even how to acqure said info). My ashes would be resting in Michigan. As I write this, I suppose it's moot if said resting place is indeed a cemetery.
"For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." - Carl Sagan
January 22, 2015 at 5:59 pm (This post was last modified: January 22, 2015 at 6:00 pm by Jenny A.)
Just an update since the funeral which was last Saturday. The funeral home was very accommodating, provided we did the work. A funeral in which you provide all of the content is very time consuming, but also very satisfying.
My brother MCed it. He began by announcing that he and I are atheist and my father was a-religious and ditto Dad's ex-wife and friend. That was probably an easier announcement than it might have been elsewhere because most of the congregation were either colleagues of my brother (a scientific crowd) or my Dad's (an engineering crowd). He let people know that there would be a open mike sharing session and expressions of religion and spirituality would be welcome there. I think there were about two references to god in those.
I gave the first eulogy which was mostly about Dad the father. That was followed by two colleagues, a cello solo by my niece, a eulogy by his ex-wife, a slide show we put together of photos from birth to death, open sharing, and my brother closed with Dad's last years. We used music Dad loved for the opening, closing, and slide show.
It worked. And I think it did more for family and friends than anything else could have. We showed the whole man, mostly good stuff but also the warts. There was no mention of heaven, hell, or an afterlife. We did celebrate the life he had here and what it meant to us.
I wrote my little speech out instead of outlining it the way I usually do speeches for fear of crying, but I ended up using it as an outline anyway. I didn't choke up until the last two lines. The written version is here if anyone has any interest:
I think one of things that all of us learn growing up is that our parents are people. And more importantly that they are not the same people. Every semi-intelligent child learns that somethings are better brought to one parent than the other.
I learned very early on that Dad was easily irritated parent. Forget your coat in the car, and want it now? Get the keys from Mom. Really, it's better that way. But, crash the car, now that's a job for Dad. Because if the problem was big enough, Dad would never ask, how the heck did you manage that? He'd just set about dealing with the aftermath. Large problems didn't phase him, only the little ones. And those only irritated him.
I think this was in part because of his parenting style. He saw his role as a father mostly as a provider. He saved for our college educations. And in his last years he saved for his granddaughters' college educations. His was mainly the big picture parent.
But when he did turn his mind to hands-on-child-raising, he was great. My best memories of Dad are all outdoors memories, because it is on vacation that Dad invested the most hands-on-time with us. It was because of Dad that our family took long happy vacations across the mountain west, to the west coast and up into Canada and once in 1976 south and east to DC, West Virginia, and Philadelphia to tour our nation's Revolutionary and Civil War past.
When I visited him with the girls shortly after he began dialysis, it seemed only natural that Dad took me and all three granddaughters to Bandolier. It's what he did with us, even when on dialysis. It was only when Dad ceased to hike and merely gave us directions to a good trail head, that I knew he was reaching the end.
His older brother, once told him that the way to get your family to camp, is to make sure that they are warm, dry, and comfortably housed (or more accurately tented). Dad took that advice seriously. There was always dry wood (even if it came with us in the car) and plenty of Boy Scout juice (otherwise known as lighter fluid). We always had warm clothes, including down coats that he sewed himself from kits. We brought warm hats and mittens in all seasons, summer included. Even when sports gear cost a small fortune and we were growing like weeds, we had good hiking boots that fit.
When we hiked, he carried a day-pack full of rain ponchos, extra dry socks, emergency rations, lunch, and of course OFF and sunscreen. If we got rained in in a campground, Dad took that as an engineering challenge: digging earthworks to prevent the tent and even the campsite generally from flooding; and constructing elaborate covered walkways from the canopy over the picnic table to the tent and beyond to the outhouses if possible, using rope, tarps, ponchos, and trash bags and anything else that came to hand. When he ran out of materials, he patrolled the fortifications emptying the rain from pockets of tarp with the shovel handle.
He really wanted to get us backpacking early and he managed it as soon as my younger brother turned seven. He trained us by taking us on hikes with packs loaded with books to the recommended weight capacity for children of our age and size. And he carried a huge amount of weight himself in order to make what we carried adequate. And we did fine, enjoying even the trip in which we got snowed out and ended up in Sand Dunes National Park the next afternoon with our tube tents looking odd and small between enormous RVs.
He not only took us camping, he taught us to camp, hike, and backpack wisely, teaching us: to pace ourselves; to bring sunscreen, mosquito repellant, wood, fuel, to bring maps, to wear bear bells, and to plan ahead. Much to my family's discomfort he also taught me to leave in the wee hours, and if possible drive straight through. But he also taught me to get information, read in advance, and plan multiple options for each day and place including at least one rainy day option. I still do those things, though I use the power of Google more than the power of writing away for information or books.
He was a good teacher generally. He was an excellent driving instructor, clear, calm and ready to push me to do more than I thought I could. And though I thought he was crazy asking me turn onto a busy narrow street on our first lesson, he was right, I could do it and do it safely. That too typified his parenting style. He was sure that given a nudge we would learn for ourselves. And so I learned to swim by being tossed out into the pool. He was right there waiting for me to swim to him. But I did have to do the swimming.
And it was empowering. When he took me along on a D.C. conference, he suggested over breakfast that I spend the day touring the Mall on my own. He gave me a little money, told me I could use the credit card and pointed me in the general direction of the subway entrance. I was fifteen and had never ridden the subway anywhere before. But he was so matter-of-factly sure that I would do just fine on my own, that it never crossed my mind that I couldn't figure out the subway.
Less fun, but similarly, I was alone with him a week one summer, when our basement flooded. Dad surveyed the puddles and handed me some cash with instructions to figure out how to take care of the mess and then do it. Then he went off to work. That may sound horrible to more careful parents today, but it wasn't. It was a lesson in self-sufficiency, and problem solving. And I am grateful.
I am grateful too that he really was there just in case I fell, sometimes literally, like the time I broke a ski, and he waited patiently for me at the bottom of each of three ski lifts as I made my way down to the lodge, the soul lonely figure riding down instead of up. Or when he slowly talked me through walking my way carefully around rather than over the rattle snake I never saw.
He rewarded interest and work with the equipment to do more. So I got my first typewriter, electric drill, electric saw, and computer from Dad. When I moved out, I got all weather tires, tire chains, and insulation for my hot water heater. But he didn't put them on for me. When I bought my first house, I got paint.
He didn't suffer fools, or even foolish behavior. There is a plaque in his office that describes his attitude perfectly: “At Johnson and Johnson, Stupid People Pay More.” He didn't talk about feelings very much, and he didn't tolerate drama. He was stoic himself and he didn't much like whiners. Whining in Dad's presence was the fastest way not to get something I knew of.
I never heard him swear. He was always calm, sometimes to point of driving anyone excitable up a tree. But it was mostly a comfortable calm. And though he was articulate and often talkative he was a good person to sit in comfortable silence with too.
He was a good father and a good man.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
January 22, 2015 at 8:56 pm (This post was last modified: January 22, 2015 at 8:57 pm by Tonus.)
(January 8, 2015 at 4:32 pm)Jenny A Wrote: He has adamantly refused pastoral visits of any kind during hospital stays.
B-b-but atheists and fox holes!
Sorry to hear of his passing. JWs usually just find a gathering place large enough for everyone and they have a congregation elder give the eulogy, and while religion is obviously part of the eulogy there are no specific outfits or religious ceremonies per se. I could see a secular funeral handled that way, in that the eulogy is given by a close friend/family member instead of a pastor or elder.
ETA:Looks like I checked in a bit late, sorry!
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
Sorry for the late reply, I have been working away with no access to the interwebs.
May I pass on my sympathy to you and your family, I went to an atheist funeral a few years ago and it was one of the nicest funerals I have ever been to.
Jim was a musician who always played wearing distinctive red shoes, the coffin was brought into the crematorium with the shoes on top. Friends took turns telling stories about his life, some of his music was played and afterwards we went for drinks and food at his beloved cricket club. In the evening they set off fireworks because "Jim was a rocket man!"
The whole event was a celebration of a very full life.
The meek shall inherit the Earth, the rest of us will fly to the stars.
Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud ..... after a while you realise that the pig likes it!
With respect, and I hope you won't think me presumptuous, but it sounds like your Dad was a lot like mine. It may have to do with the engineering mind and an approach to life as a problem to be solved. Your description of your father's planning and teaching sounds so very familiar.
Jenny A Wrote:Oddly, while you can scatter ashes just about anywhere on public or private (with permission) property,
In a similar vein, and in admission which demands that I never reveal my true identity...
My folks were cremated and their ashes returned. These were (mostly) interred in a military cemetery. We children (don't tell Uncle, Dad's not all there) held back some of the supply for scattering. Because of their love of travel, we thought it would be amusing to scatter their ashes as widely as feasible.
My efforts include,
Combining their cremains in a spice shaker (labeled UBIK) and shaking samples into:
1) the carpet of a jetway at Heathrow so they could be tracked into aircraft going to places in the middle east and Africa where they hadn't gotten to.
2) various engine and luggage compartments of private aircraft at an EAA fly-in, Oshkosh Wisconsin.
3) out the window of the Amtrak Southwest Chief in each state traversed on a trip from Chicago to LA to visit a grandchild (oh, and his parents too.)
They are now in a truly mixed marriage and even more widely traveled.
So how, exactly, does God know that She's NOT a brain in a vat?
