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Comment by elvis10ten | Hacker News Reader

Personal opinion: I find funerals to be a waste of time and money.

Especially, coming from a culture where they are a big event. People spend enormous money on funerals —- money that they wouldn’t help you with while you are alive and struggling.

Maybe attending one in a less flamboyant culture will change my mind.

But I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.

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I shared your opinion until I attended my first funeral as an adult. They are very important for the grieving process, at least to me. That doesn't mean much money needs to be spent, I've only been to scaled down funerals where there's a short ceremony and a meal afterwards.

Eh. For children of less than stellar parents, a funeral is:

- A bad person gets celebrated in a way that is not aligned to your understanding

- A bunch of people who don't know about the less than stellar bits offering what feels like performative grief

- Others who enabled the less than stellar bits angry their applecart has been upset, looking to lash out at a scapegoat.

Obviously not everyone has this negative experience, but narcissism is in about 6.2-7.7% of the population; other "dark traits" are also around in a long tail. So it's not unreasonable to expect around 12-15%? of people risk a potential increase to trauma at an already complex time of their lives.

The funeral industry is also very predatory. They know full well they have people in grief making decisions and they end up getting pressured into buying a casket that's just going to be buried in the ground in a few days, but they will be paying for for the next 10 years. That a family can come out of a funeral tens of thousands of dollars in debt is just absurd.

I feel much the same. I hope that when I die, the people around me will remember the many times that I have asked to have my body disposed of as quietly and cheaply as possible, and to not perform a funeral for me, and if they wish to use my death as an excuse to gather, to make the event as joyful as possible and as little about me as they can.

Memorial rituals are universal to every human culture. It's a need in (almost) all of us.

> ... I wish more people in general don’t wait for terminal events to do or say nice things.

I agree, but whatever you did earlier, that's not a reason to not do something now.

It probably depends on one's culture. In the Philippines, it's customary for funeral visitors to give a small donation to the bereaved family members (typically, around 20-40 USD). And since funerals are considered a big social event, it's not uncommon to hear of fmilies who were able to recoup (or pay off) their funeral expenses through the donations alone.

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