Post: #1

My local website had this article run across it today:

https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/wa/a/3...der-grief/

For the click-averse, this quote basically sums it up:

Quote:The growing trend towards funerals that “celebrate life” may interfere with people’s ability to grieve, according to the body that handles Perth’s burials and cremations.

Metropolitan Cemeteries Board WA chief executive Peter Deague said changes in the way funerals were held and a lack of organised religion meant the average Australian was “rudderless” when faced with the death of a loved one.

...

“People aren’t dealing with grief particularly well and what we’ve found over the past 20 years or so is this whole celebration of life around funerals, it’s not really allowing people to grieve,” Mr Deague said.

“It’s something that the MCB is looking at doing with the other 11 crown cemetery authorities in Australia and we’re looking at funding research — whether that’s funding a PhD student or Masters student or researcher — to really see if there’s a link between not dealing with grief and some of the other societal issues.

“We deal with people who are extremely angry because of losing a loved one and they’re blaming us but really it’s just the frustration of the whole process: ‘I’ve lost someone I love and how do I deal with this?’”

This piqued my interest thanks to a Last Psychiatrist article in which our well-known booze-swizzling anti-narcissism crusader probably sounds his most angry:

Quote:The funeral is attended by 30 people. It's a military funeral because he was in Korea, and in the front chairs are his wife and two grown children, and they are quietly crying.

When it ends, people disperse hesitatingly, after all, they themselves aren't sad, they didn't know him, they knew his kids. So they are unsure of what they're supposed to do next, but the answer is you keep going, there's nothing else to do but that. That's the point of a funeral.

The deceased's wife has mourned her part, for now, and accompanied by her adult son walks away. The adult daughter approaches the coffin, sobbing. She is pretty, which unfortunately is relevant. Her husband hugs her, and then takes their two little girls away from her, down towards the road, giving the woman the required freedom to be someone's daughter one last time.

She kneels at the coffin. She cries. Everyone can hear it. It is sad.


II.

But some people are unsatisfied with a system that's been in place for more millennia than years they've been alive. They don't trust that it's effective because when the funeral is over people are still sad. What kind of stupid ritual is that? These people want to change the system, they believe they know a better way.

Most people instinctively turn away and give her some kind of privacy, but about ten of them move forward to surround her: what's this? A woman crying? At a funeral?? They huddle around her in a semi-circle, hyenas waiting for a signal. One hyena steps forward, tries to hug her from behind; and you can see the surprise in that dummy's face when he doesn't get the expected hug back, when it doesn't seem to help, the grieving daughter doesn't stop crying, she doesn't even get up. The hyena is caught awkwardly, so he rests his paws on the woman's shoulders, and now the sobbing woman must associate her last chance to be with what is left of her father with the stale breath of a sycophant waiting for his moment to be relevant.

And while that's going on others are whispering to the quivering back of her coat, "oh, I'm so sorry", "I'm sure he really loved you", "are you ok?"

Why did any one of them think they had the power, the right, to interfere with another person's mourning? This was between her and her father and God and no one else. Did no one notice that even the husband had given her space? Did they just think he was being a jerk? "I just wanted to comfort her." No, you didn't know what else to do, so you did that. "I didn't want her to be alone." That's because you are a terrible person.

They do not know how to stand in the presence of grief because they can't help but make it immediately a judgment of themselves-- how can you see a woman crying and not do anything? Purposeless hyperactivity to cover up one's impotence and lack of empathy. "But I'm not the one grieving, I can't fake being sad." Don't fake it, just be silently and unobtrusively available. I know you don't think you're the most important person there, but you are also not the second most important. Or the third or tenth. Get out of the way.

Last Psychiatrist does tend to diagnose narcissism as the root cause of most of society's ills, but these two articles, years and thousands of miles apart, do seem to indicate that in the West we're having not only a problem with death, but also a problem with grieving. I think it's generally pretty important to talk about the subject of grief, and secondarily the subject of death.

Yes, I do think death is the secondary consideration. You're only going to have your own death once, but odds are on you're going to experience serious grief at least twice in your life when your parents pass, and probably more times if you keep up your health and your friends and family die before you do. And more importantly, our narcissistic society fears death even more than the average medieval peasant did, not because we understand it better than said medieval peasant, but because it's the ultimate narcissistic injury, the one event that says unequivocally that it's not all about you.

(Sidebar: TLP makes one penetrating observation, albeit a bit tongue-in-cheek, that the Sopranos ended with Tony Soprano's death, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a narcissist. The reason being that death's arrival in life is exactly how it happens in the show: one moment you're there breathing and living, and the next minute, bang, black, all over, done. Narcissists cannot handle that because they're the protagonist of a play in which everyone else is a supporting character, and there was no climax and no end credits.)

As said, though, dealing with grief is a pretty important thing to master, and it might be worth discussion here. I am a big supporter of the idea that a funeral's rituals -- specifically, those of organised religion -- are essential things. They are like the process of muscle growth: in order to become stronger, you have no choice but to physically hurt yourself, or go through the ritual of lifting that allows you to make micro-tears in your muscles, which then allows you to heal and become stronger. Pain is a part of the process, an inseparable part. So it is with grief.

I don't know what the head of the Metro Cemetries Board is talking about with "Celebrate Life" sorts of funerals, having never been to one, but at an educated guess I'd say what's wrong with them is that they behave like the person is still here. I would guess the willing and/or unwilling victims of such a funeral are bombarded with images of the person performing activities, talking to others, and generally looking as if they're still fucking alive. I can see how that would fuck up the grieving process, because you're never allowed to realise the person is gone, and thus never allowed to actually feel the loss.

Compare that to the Catholic funerals I've been to: coffin front and centre, a photo upon it, flowers atop it (which I suddenly realise is not symbolising the love that the various women in the family had for the person, but simply that the person is -- quite literally -- pushing up the daisies). Three eulogies from the remaining relatives. Six men to carry the coffin out - my mother once said, at the side of my grandmother's body in the funeral home, that "Preparing a body for burial is women's work; pallbearing is the work of men." She was burying her second parent. And she was one of the more narcissistic women I've met.

Yes, there are the sermons of comfort and promises of life everlasting, but it's qualitatively different: they again and again emphasise that this life has unequivocally ended. Respectful silence as the coffin leaves the church. Music (made by old, white, wise, dead men) that's been played for hundreds of years at such occasions. And at the graveside itself, nobody fucking hangs around once the service is over; everyone departs, a little slowly, a little regretfully, but they depart. They leave the person in peace. Everything about the ritual is meant to carry the congregation through the loss, not stop the loss or fool you that it hasn't occurred.

I realise there'll be a lot of guys here on the site who are younger than me. I understand if this conversation seems a bit morbid or if it doesn't quite resonate, and it's not a problem if it doesn't: 42 has a way of forgetting what 22 was like, and likewise at 22 you might not think you're immortal, but death has yet to really announce itself beyond the odd near-miss on the highway. You're still in the prime of your lives and I suspect your brains are built not to think too hard or too deeply about death, because that's against the genetic impulse to procreate.

Nonetheless, grief is going to rear its head at some point in your lives. When it does, I heartily endorse adopting ritual as you adopt the ritual of lifting in a gym. In both cases you are working and conditioning your heart. Remember, the ritual of grief is not there to remove it. As with weightlifting, the rituals of grief are there to help you learn to cope with it and make you better able to deal with it. And the last priests of the West - the morticians, the funeral directors, the gravediggers - seem to endorse it too.

Post: #2

Why do I see this character The Last Psychiatrist come up so often? There are always long quotations from his "blog" and these texts are always convoluted and unusually difficult to read.

This guy sees "narcissism" everywhere but he likes the sound of his own voice far too much for my taste.

And someone who is a very obvious atheist should never say shit like this:

Quote:This was between her and her father and God and no one else.

It sounds impossibly false -- far more false than all the supposed fakery he decries.

Post: #3

The more salient point may be to focus on his observation or his conjecture about what the people in the funeral are thinking: "What's the point of a ritual about death that does not leave me feeling happy afterwards?"

For what it's worth, I've browsed TLP for a while now and I do think the guy needs to be taken with a serious grain of salt. Delve too long into his archives and you just wind up feeling depressed about life in general. There's plenty of commenters on the blog who identify that the guy might as well be a narcissist himself the way he behaves.

The only reason I linked his article in was because it's looking at the same problem the Metro Cemetries Board over in Western Australia is seeing, just from a different angle.

On one hand, TLP is at best a psychiatrist and therefore dealing with mentally sick people (when all you have is a hammer, the whole world is nails and all that). By contrast, the MCB by definition deals with everyone. If they're making observations about societal mental health, I think you have to at least respect the quality of their survey sample.

Post: #4

Paracelsus, I feel that sometimes the worst thing of all is chatter -- explanatory chatter of any kind, whether it's done by TLP, or the Perth Cemeteries Board, or other experts, self-appointed or otherwise. It's just idle chatter; it bakes no bread.

There is no such thing as a "correct" funeral, that is a very dumb idea. These forms evolve; and the best thing to do about that is: nothing. An organized return to enforced "traditions" would be far more false and stilted than the excusable awkwardness of tentative new forms.

And people are not wrong in their instinct to reject and dismiss the insult of death. They sense that life may have new facts to offer that will displace the old solemnities born of helplessness. If they are a hurry to turn away from paying their obeisance to grief and toward what may seem like an obscenely premature celebration, it may be because they inchoately feel the presence of these new facts in the air.

Post: #5

In the Jewish tradition there is a funeral and then a "SHIVAA" (seven day grief).
The family does not come out of the house, and people come to pay their respect and be with them.
The main idea is that grief is a process.

When your relative dies, people come to be with you. You are not alone.

As per funerals - they are simple and modest. You do not "celebrate" life or death. You part from your loved one, you may have a speech but it is quick (never been in one that lasted over 30 minutes unless it was a famous person).

Grief is a process - And one will have to go through it many times in his life, including death of loved ones.
Avoiding it is being childish by wishing you "get results without putting in the effort".

Post: #6

Death is a part of the process of Life and grieving is a healthy coping mechanism to deal with this reality. Most people give death little attention until they are faced with it on a personal level such as the death of a loved one. Being present physically is the most basic support for the grieving. You are saying I am here during your time of need and the person who has passed had meaning (at some level) in my life and is worthy of my attention.
In its authentic sense it is a form of altruism and is contrary to narcissism; as you are giving your presence and expecting nothing in return. This can assist your grieving process as the attendee. If your intent is narcissistic in attending, your healing process will be stunted and the richness that the opportunity presents will be lost. My point of reference is from more experience than I prefer to have. Going through this process repeatedly presents the opportunity to live life more fully.