The home funeral - caring for the dead ourselves - changes our relationship to grieving. If you have been married to someone for 50 years, why would you let someone take them away the moment they die?
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
Bereavement is terrible, of course. And when somebody you love dies, it's a time for reflection, a time for memory, a time for regret.
How one deals with the death of a loved one is a highly personalized affair. Some people weep for days; others take a hike in the woods or count rosary beads.
There's a general impulse to distract the grieving person - as if you could.
Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn't serve anyone, and it's painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you're magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.
The biggest problem is the funerals that don't exist. People call the funeral home, they pick up the body, they mail the ashes to you, no grief, no happiness, no remembrance, no nothing. That happens more often than it doesn't in the United States.
You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.
Some women lose their husbands, and their worlds change because their financial circumstances change. All I have in common with them is a grief.
No one can tell you what to expect or can offer a guide to grief. Because every relationship is so unique, no two people grieve the same way. And you have no idea how you are going to grieve till you are grieving.
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.