A few years ago one of my sisters kids, a son who was 6 years old, passed away. My own daughter is his age, and it was the biggest gut punch of my life, by a country mile. I’m tearing up just writing this.
I’m the only one in my family who isn’t Christian, and I’m a firm atheist. My family is Protestant, though. My sister had recently moved and her pastor from her old church flew down. He was a really nice guy all in all, and was a fantastic support to them during an unimaginable time.
He led the funeral service, and honestly did a great job. He talked mostly about my nephew, and about my sister’s family, and didn’t shy from the overall tragedy.
Yet despite that, I left the service with an extreme emptiness inside. I wasn’t mad at him, or at my family for leaning on their beliefs in that awful time, but the catharsis they got out of that service was completely unavailable to me. I sat there hearing all of these empty promises about meeting again in heaven, etc, that did absolutely nothing for me. I ended up having to seek my own catharsis by talking to friends who were willing to acknowledge the senselessness of it with me and wouldn’t offer empty platitudes about an imaginary person or about things happening “for a reason”.
That said, I don’t think my sister would have made it were it not for those beliefs. One of my friends even said then that she felt that things like young kids dying are why God was invented in the first place.
Sorry for the long post, and I hope you don’t mind me bringing up my own experience. It sounds like the service for my nephew was much better than the one for your grandfather, so I’m not saying that I can fully empathize, but to the extent that our experiences overlap, I do. I’m sorry that your grandfather passed away, and I’m sorry that a service filled with talk about an imaginary god and none about your grandfather was the best your surroundings were able to offer you. Thanks for sharing and I hope you can find your own catharsis the way I did.
Thank you for sharing your story and for your kindness. Losing a child that young must have been awful, for both your sister and you. I'm glad you both found ways to deal with it.
Marriages and funerals are the few occasions when non-members go to church, so the priests often use those times try to convert the people and/or get money out of them.
As a side note, Atheism@kbin.social is not larger than Atheism@lemmy.world. I suspect that you got that from looking at the subscriber count on kbin.social, which is different from the subscriber count on lemmy.world. I think they only show subscribers from the local instance, i.e. subscriber count is not federated.
Not me. I walked out. The worst part is, I’m still expected to go subject myself to this psychological torture again and again, every time somebody I love dies or gets married or has a baby. Those moments which should be the most important to us, the saddest and the happiest, misappropriated by mystical thugs for the sake of extorting protection money from the people.
Just don’t enter the church or chapel. When asked why, be completely honest: you have suffered in other occasions from having to sit in to listen to a priest taking advantage of the death of a beloved being to praise his own organization, and you do not want to take part in that. This attitude will be understood as rebellious, misguided and disrespectful. It is also the first stone for others to start questioning why they want a priest to give a speech whenever someone dies at all.
I went this time, because I was expected to and it'd make some of my relatives (my grandma especially) sad if I didn't, but now I think you're right. I can make myself miserable to appease others, or I can not subject myself to this farce and they'll have to learn to respect it. If they actually respect me to begin with, it shouldn't be too hard for them. Thank you for putting it so clearly.
Remember that you can do mourning in different ways. Even if you don’t attend the rite most people will, you can ask someone (such as your grandma) to take a walk through the cementery, or wherever the ashes were thrown. That’s also a form of mourning.
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