American advice columnist Ann Landers once counseled a 17-year-old girl to attend her best friend's funeral. She wrote in her column that "a funeral provides proof that the deceased is gone. It helps the bereaved to overcome denial mechanisms." Shortly after that column was published, Ms. Landers received a letter from a widow who agreed: "You're right, Ann. 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 at the time of her husband's death. She explained: "My husband was declared missing in action over France on June 10, 1944. In January of 1945 [he] was declared dead after his plane was found. I refused to believe it. News items about lost fliers who were found alive in unexpected places kept my hopes alive. Finally, I was forced to make the decision and I requested that [the remains they said were my husband's] 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. Even now, as I write these words I can feel my throat tighten. 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 suffered a loss but who, for various reasons, have not had or attended a funeral service for their loved one. Those who study and work closely with the bereaved understand that there are psycho logical pitfalls and dangers when funeral services are eliminated or abbreviated.
Dr. Alan Wolfelt, director of the Center for Loss and Life Transition in Fort Collins, Colorado, says: "The growing trend toward minimizing the funeral ritual or eliminating it all together 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, that 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, in many cultures, traditions and rituals have become suspect in and of themselves. Here are eight benefits of having a funeral service.
1. Begins grief recovery. A funeral service inaugurates the beginning of the grief recovery process. This was articulated effectively by Erich Lindemann, M.D., while he was chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. On November 28, 1942, Boston hosted a football game between Holy Cross and Boston College. After the game, hundreds of celebrating fans over crowded the famous Coconut Grove night club. During the festivities, there was a sudden fire, and 492 people died in the flames.
Lindemann and his colleagues worked with grieving family members, and Lindemann published a classic paper, The Symptomology and Management of Acute Grief. He wrote, "The funeral service is psychologically necessary to give 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. Confirms death's reality. A funeral service confirms the reality that a 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 fateful telegrams from the War Department informing them their son had been killed during conflict. "It was my duty to visit families of servicemen in my particular unit who died. Again and again I found relatives denying reality and clinging to illusion. This they expressed by saying to me, 'I know about the telegram and all that, but nothing can keep me from believing that some day the door will open and our son will come in and say ... I was captured by the enemy and it has taken me all this time to get out. At other times they talked about the possibility of amnesia, or of his being shot down in a remote region. In each instance this was a carefully constructed denial that they chose to cling to rather than accept the painful truth."
3. Overcomes denial. A funeral service is a vital mechanism that overcomes 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. In this way, 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. Provides sense of control. 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 have had no way of preventing the death, now there are decisions that they must make, such as locating and calling a funeral firm, establishing the place and time of a funeral, selecting a casket, choosing clothing, and contacting and informing people. 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. Invites community support. A funeral service invites the community's 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 grievers receive empathy and com passion.
Without a funeral 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 after math, 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 stated, "We didn't have a memorial service, we moved. There was no external sign of Sam's suicide. It was a mistake."
6. 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 com fort from the reading of scriptures such as 2 Samuel 22:29, 33, (NIV): "You are my lamp, O LORD; the LORD turns my darkness into light. ... It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect." Additionally, grievers will hear prayers offered by others asking God to bless and comfort them. The funeral service allows the light to penetrate the darkness of loss.
7. Promotes grief release. A funeral service promotes the release of grief emotions. In many segments of our society, it is not permissible, or we are not encouraged, to show emotion and feeling. However, this is not true at a funeral service. There, 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. Allows the community to grieve. 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 death. The funeral service allows people to come together for mutual grieving and supporting. So basic and important is this sense of community togetherness in times of crisis 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, grand mother, 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 to this wonderful woman that Ron, her son, organized a memorial service at home the day after the funeral. For nearly two hours (captured on video), more than one hundred friends, family members, and co-workers shared their memories of this beloved woman. They extolled a woman who saw only the good in everyone, who was a great sport, willing to try new experiences, passionately devoted to her family, and who made the world's best chicken soup. It was an extraordinary outpouring, marked with tears, laughter, and the love that was Mimi's legacy.
Thus, the funeral service and ritual, properly managed, deliver great therapeutic benefits to survivors. It ought to be viewed as an investment rather than an expenditure. Augustine spoke of this when he wrote: "The care of the funeral, the manner of burial . . . are [more] the consolation of the living than of any service to the dead." And, more recently, C. S. Lewis wrote, "Those who dislike the ritual in general . . .may be asked most earnestly to reconsider the question. It [the ritual] ... renders pleasures less fugitive and griefs more endurable."
