When Funerals Become Family Events

A funeral is an inescapable reality as we grow older in life. There is no way to steer around them because eventually a funeral will hit close to home for everybody. I have attended several family funerals over the past year as my late parents’ siblings have succumbed to illness, age and just plain bad luck in one case.

The youngest and last of my mother’s family passed away a year ago at the age of ninety. Uncle Mac (given name James) was a decorated World War Two hero and I was his namesake. This very modest and friendly man led an exemplary life and was a consummate family man. His death created an informal family reunion for all of the wrong reasons as my brothers and sisters attended his funeral and spent time with our first cousins.

It is always tough to watch the family of the departed because they are the last people to enter the church service and I have walked in their shoes all too often in my life. In our family, we know the feeling intimately when your family becomes the center of attention for all of the wrong reasons at a funeral. We learned it early and too often in our own family and, as tragic as each and every one of the events were to us, the experience developed our abilities to cope with the inevitability of death.

My uncle’s family had experienced their first very close encounter with the passing of a close family member and I felt even sorrier for them because they had spent many decades as a complete family unit. My cousins were pushed into a first time situation and I could not help but notice how it affected them. Only time will put things in perspective for them and time was not their ally at this early stage of the process. I surmised that a very long term relationship with parents must make things even worse and my cousins’ demeanor suggested that I was correct.

The other two funerals occurred this year within two months of each other and involved a brother and sister of my late father. The earlier funeral this year was my Aunt Kae’s, a very well-liked woman whose untimely passing came as the result of a fall and was not anticipated in any way. My cousins in this case were a part of a large and close family of 12 children who had already lost two brothers to sudden death at young ages, as well as their father (Uncle Hal) to illness a few years ago.

They were no strangers to tragedy, but it was still tough to watch them enter the church and know that they have also experienced too much already in their family. The sudden loss of their beloved mother was a big blow to the family and they handled it with great dignity, despite what seemed to be unfair circumstances to me.

The latest funeral was my father’s youngest brother, a decorated retired member of the RCMP and a consummate family man. My Uncle Keith had an extraordinary bond with his children and I wondered how they would cope with the loss of their dad. They were also brand new to the loss of a close family member and it was painfully obvious at my uncle’s funeral that it was a very difficult time for them.

The three family events did prove one important fact for me: we don’t get well-planned family reunions to spend time with our cousins as we get older, instead we get funerals. But the funerals are also a sign that we belong to a larger family of cousins and the fact that we have this giant common denominator of family links means that we can share in the loss with them. Their parents were also our aunts and uncles and we had forged our own bonds with them, so we can also miss them and grieve with our cousins.

All of us have stories about our intertwined lives as kids and young adults that include fond memories of family reunions and summer holidays when our families were all intact. At least we can take these experiences to the funerals and share our stories with each other of a simpler, kinder and gentler time for family events. It brings us back to our younger days of carefree fun, so I am always glad to see all of my cousins; I just wish that I could pick better circumstances for the gatherings. Every family has the same wish.

Written by Jim Sutherland (www.mystarcollectorcar.com); originally published in the Red Deer Advocate, May, 2012