Weird about funerals

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JLCecilia

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I have a co-worker who’s son’s father just past away last weekend and the funeral’s today. She’s very quiet and private and I don’t think any of us had any idea that this man had been living with her, much less that he’d been dealing with cancer. No idea!!!

So anyway, everyone in the office is going to the funeral but me. It’s not the funeral so much, but, even though we work in a small office, I don’t feel particularly close to this co-worker. If it were me, and my husband or child died, as much as I enjoy my co-workers, it would not mean a whole lot to me for any of them to come, and I’d probably even prefer it if they didn’t. Quite honestly, I feel they don’t really know me OR my family. I’m not saying that’s a BAD thing, but I just feel private about it I guess.

This gets me thinking on the impending birth of my new baby this summer. Quite honestly, I don’t WANT my co-workers visiting me in the hospital. I will bring the baby to the office after we get settled in at home, but I feel my hospital stay is private and I don’t want anyone there besides family and very close friends. Think of it this way, if you don’t regularly keep company at my house, then I wouldn’t expect you to visit me in the hospital (weird rule, I know).

I know I probably should not think so much of myself as much as my co-worker and it’s better to err on the side of doing rather than avoiding. Wish I could figure myself out on this.
 
Personally, I would have gone to the funeral. If I didn’t feel close, I would have sat in the back and maybe not done more than signed the guest book. A couple of years ago, the younger brother of one of my daughter’s classmates died. I knew the parents, but only in the same way you’d know anyone with whom you’d made small talk at school functions. My daughter is friends with their daughter, and my daughter wanted to go to her friend’s brother’s funeral. So I took her. We sat in the back, did not attempt to talk to the family before or after, did not go to the lunch after. We signed the book, so they would know we attended. It didn’t make us parents best friends or anything, but I think the family still appreciated we’d gone.
 
You’re not weird about funerals JL! I’m the same way, and one grandfather always said that to send him flowers befor he died and not to the furerl so he could enjoy them. 🙂
 
I would go to the funeral and pay my respects. You don’t have to say anything to the family or bother them. If you really don’t feel comfortable going, you could also just send a nice card to your coworker. I think it would be really weird for coworkers you aren’t close to to visit you in the hospital after you have a baby, but I think that’s a totally seperate occasion than a funeral. A funeral is, by nature, a public event. A hospital stay isn’t.
 
I’m agreeing with you guys, I know what the right thing is to do, but my knee-jerk reaction is always ‘no’ whenever something is asked of me.

We did pass a card around at work, which I signed. We do this for birthdays too and I gotta say, I could really care less for a birthday card signed by my co-workers. Nobody really likes doing it and everyone struggles with what to write. Oh well, it’s the right thing to do, even if we know it’s meaningless.

I think on some level, this is just one manifestation of my deep-rooted selfishness.
 
I truly appreciated all the people who took the time to come to my husband’s funeral; people he had worked with; people I had worked with; school friends of my daughters and their parents; close friends; people we hardly knew. Even those who had to introduce themselves to me were appreciated because they had taken the time to support me in my grief - at least that was the way I saw it.
 
JLCecilia said:
I’m agreeing with you guys, I know what the right thing is to do, but my knee-jerk reaction is always ‘no’ whenever something is asked of me.

We did pass a card around at work, which I signed. We do this for birthdays too and I gotta say, I could really care less for a birthday card signed by my co-workers. Nobody really likes doing it and everyone struggles with what to write. Oh well, it’s the right thing to do, even if we know it’s meaningless.

I think on some level, this is just one manifestation of my deep-rooted selfishness.
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I hated those birthday cards, I would much rather throw in a dollar than have to write something clever other than my signature.

I don’t think that you’re selfish, just maybe more introverted. At any rate I don’t think any self evaluations should be made right now, you’re pregnant, you’re only human, you’re trying to grow a healthy baby. That’s enough on your plate right now.

And you don’t need any visitors other than friends and family right after you give birth! It’s probably going to be one of the last times when you can get some R&R…so, just tell the other parent to tell any well wishers one day after you give birth about the child …and that you can’t have visitors. (it’s not a lie because if you don’t allow them in you can’t have them…if they ask why not just say ‘oh it’s really personal…’)
 
Vivienne, perhaps if I had ever experienced a real loss in my life, I could appreciate this more. It’s nice to hear it from your perspective. My family is not close at all, so my grandparents’ funerals were not that hard on me. In fact, I didn’t even KNOW that my mom’s mom passed away for almost a month! She lived in Florida and never visited or sent cards or anything like that. Mom went to take care of her for her final months and even when she returned, I got the news from DAD. He didn’t go down there to be with mom, she just brought the ashes back and only just buried her a month or so ago. I might not have gone anyway, perhaps that’s why my parents didn’t invite me to the ceremony. All of my siblings live all over the states and I can tell you that none of them would have flown back for it, although it would have been a nice excuse for us all to see one another.
 
Margy1948, I will have to make it clear to DH or my nursing staff that only family and close friends will be allowed. I work off-site for the hospital where I deliver and the nurses I work with run a hospital census everyday to track their patients, so they’ll know when I go in. Will have to be stealth 😛
 
Burying the dead is a corporeal act of mercy. Even if you don’t know the deceased, going to a funeral to support a friend, co-worker, acquaintance, a stranger even, is good for the soul.
 
I don’t think that coworkers should be taking a census to know that you weren’t there nor asking you why you weren’t. These kinds of things should be voluntary and done graciously.

No one knows what to say in these kinds of events - and it is better to not think you could somehow come up with something that would make it all right. But what you do is offer support just by saying that you are thinking of them at this difficult moment.

A good friend of mine had his mother die suddenly a number of years ago. I asked him if he would like me to contact our college friends to let them know. (A number of his college friends knew his mother - some of them from his high school years). He told me “No, i couldn’t bear for a bunch of people to being having small talk at the funeral”). I told him that it really wasn’t small talk that people usually did. Many times, they do share funny stories or other events that they thought of from the deceased’s lifetime, but that was usually out of love and not other things. He said it would be okay if i wanted to (and most of his friends were living out of town so were unlikely to attend anyway). Well, after the funeral, he confided in me that he was so happy that the people who came were there. While he didn’t think that he wanted them there, their stories of his mother, kept her alive and they reminded him of all the great things about his mother before her cancer.

And when my father died (over 10 years ago). A number of people were afraid to talk to me. They didn’t know what to say, so they just avoided it. But as time went by, it got worse - since they hadn’t talked to me in a few months, now they were embarrassed by their neglect. So, i had to use some kind of ice-breaker like “Oh, you probably had heard about my dad dying, I just want you to know that while it can be difficult at times, I’m handling it pretty well.” Then they could proceed with the relationship without the guilt.

And I can understand why you might not want visitors in the hospital. That’s a pretty personal thing. We didn’t even tell people until after our children were born, so that there wouldn’t be anyone in the delivery waiting area. We did get visits in the hospital, but you don’t have to feel like you need to entertain visitors - (but it might be better not to tell your coworkers until after you are back at home, so they don’t make a trip to the hospital and have to be turned away).
 
Personally I don’t care to much for funerals. I’m not planning on being at mine. I expect that St. Peter and I should be teeing off about that time. I told the wife just wheel me out to the curb. Although a requiem mass would be nice.

In the case of your co-worker, a card and a kind word should suffice, or maybe a donation to cancer research.
 
I tend to agree with the people that say it would be nice for you to go even if you aren’t close to your coworker, especially since you work in a small office and it seems like all of your office is planning to go for support. That being said, if you cannot go because you need to be home then a nice card would be good as well.

About the hospital, can you ask your nurses and spouse to keep guests out? You might be able to put a ‘No visitors’ sign up or something, and just tell the people that you do want to have over to ignore the sign, or something along those lines.

I remember being in hard labor with my first (not pushing yet, but certainly uncomfortable with certain concerns) when dh’s uncle walks in. He just started chatting. Lol, we had to politely send him off to buy something and he did not return until after dd was born.
 
Reverie, thank you for the reminder, this hadn’t occurred to me. If I’d thought of this before, I would have no qualms about going. Sometimes I just need my head set straight in order to get my will to follow.
 
JLCecilia said:
Margy1948, I will have to make it clear to DH or my nursing staff that only family and close friends will be allowed. I work off-site for the hospital where I deliver and the nurses I work with run a hospital census everyday to track their patients, so they’ll know when I go in. Will have to be stealth 😛
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Makes sense to me!!!

Also, there are plenty of people to bury the dead in this case, so don’t worry about that, isn’t there also something about comforting the mourning?
I’ve experienced a ridiculous amount of loss of people, from my mom to viet nam to every other member of my immediate family and I can testify that in the first few days of loss a lot of people are ‘there’ for a person. And I’m very grateful for the five who came to the most recent funeral especially for me, but I am also grateful for the ones who after all the big stuff was over who I could call, maybe six weeks later and cry on the phone to, or the ones who would persuade me to go out with them when I wanted to be a hermit six months later, and they did not attend the funeral. I’ll bet that there are going to be many chances that you will have to comfort your co-worker in the coming months, maybe one of them will be to allow her to hold your baby when you visit. You sound like a sensitive, intelligent woman, when the opportunity presents itself, I have confidence you’ll do the right thing, right now, you will not do anything more than to add a reluctant presence to an event that will be well attended without you anyway.
 
Margy1948 said:
I am also grateful for the ones who after all the big stuff was over who I could call, maybe six weeks later and cry on the phone to, or the ones who would persuade me to go out with them when I wanted to be a hermit six months later, and they did not attend the funeral.
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So very true, Margy. Too often people are hugely supportive in the early weeks following a death and within a couple of months seem to think you “have got over it” and don’t need anyone - often you need them more (6, 12, 18, 24 and many other months later)
 
Polycarp1 said:
Personally I don’t care to much for funerals. I’m not planning on being at mine. I expect that St. Peter and I should be teeing off about that time. I told the wife just wheel me out to the curb. Although a requiem mass would be nice.
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:rotfl:
 
I have to chime in here, just to offer a different perspective. While I am not generally an extremely private person, when I am grieving, there are only a handful of people I want to have near me. The presence of anyone else is tolerated, rather than appreciated. Several of my coworkers didn’t even know when I lost one of my siblings. They heard about it through the grapevine later, and were considerate enough to not try to talk to me about it.

Reading through this I must sound like a terrible person, but it’s just how I feel. 🤷
 
JLCecilia said:
Vivienne, perhaps if I had ever experienced a real loss in my life, I could appreciate this more. It’s nice to hear it from your perspective. My family is not close at all, so my grandparents’ funerals were not that hard on me. In fact, I didn’t even KNOW that my mom’s mom passed away for almost a month! She lived in Florida and never visited or sent cards or anything like that. Mom went to take care of her for her final months and even when she returned, I got the news from DAD. He didn’t go down there to be with mom, she just brought the ashes back and only just buried her a month or so ago. I might not have gone anyway, perhaps that’s why my parents didn’t invite me to the ceremony. All of my siblings live all over the states and I can tell you that none of them would have flown back for it, although it would have been a nice excuse for us all to see one another.
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From what you say, it seems to me that your family situation has clearly affected your interpersonal relationships. What to you seems intrusive and meaningless, is to other people a sign of respect and concern.
 
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