The Guardian recently featured a fascinating article by Edward Collier on its website in which the author debated whether or not it was appropriate for him to attend the funeral of someone he considered a close friend who he’d recently discovered had died.
The complication was that they hadn’t ever met in the flesh – their entire relationship had taken place in the virtual world, on an online cricket forum, where they spent many lively hours in each other’s company debating different aspects of the game. To Edward Collier, this had become a very meaningful and fulfilling source of friendship; yet he wasn’t sure if the other man’s family even knew about it, much less would want him to attend his funeral. He worries that the fact it was “only” a virtual friendship doesn’t entitle him to be there.
Virtual relationships are just one aspect of the increasingly problematic business of knowing whether you should attend someone else’s funeral or not.
Social and technological changes in the modern world – not just the internet, but also the high number of divorces, and the way we now move between different homes and occupations much more often than people used to – have resulted in many of us having some degree of social connection or kinship with lots of more people than was the case in previous ages, and it can be difficult to know which connections are strong enough for you to be welcome at someone else’s funeral.
What their family would want
So when should you attend someone’s funeral? There is unfortunately no straightforward answer. Indeed, the lack of social protocol to help inform this decision is one of the things which Edward Collier bemoans in his article.
Firstly, you need to find out what kind of funeral has been arranged. If it’s just a small family affair, it would usually be inappropriate to attend unless you were very close to the deceased. Attendance at small funerals is usually by invitation only, which at least makes it quite straightforward to work out if your presence is desired or not.
Larger funerals are more difficult in many ways, because the pool of potential guests is much broader. This type of funeral service may be advertised publically somewhere, such as in the newsletters produced by organisations which the deceased belonged to, and these adverts will often say “open to all” or suchlike.
This is where the conundrum raised by Edward Collier becomes problematic – while it may say “open to all”, his problem was that he didn’t feel he could explain his relationship with the deceased to this other man’s close friends and family; he didn’t feel he could justify his presence at the funeral, or by extension, his right to share in their sense of grief.
The family members of the deceased will obviously feel the greatest sense of loss, so it is important to consider whether they would want you in attendance. No-one wants to be regarded as an intruder on such a sensitive occasion, someone who is seen as treading on the other peoples’ delicate emotions.
While there is no set protocol, members of the family will usually be expected to attend, even if they were not at all close to the deceased. Beyond that, anyone who knew the deceased well would normally be welcome, and certain people would often be expected for more diplomatic reasons, such as a representative from their place of work.
Something to bear in mind is how your relationship with the person who’s died ended the last time you saw them. If you parted on bad terms, you might think that attending the funeral could be a final chance at reconciliation – but it’s definitely best not to rock the boat at a funeral, and your presence may not go down well with the family, however good your intentions.
What would the deceased have wanted?
A very important consideration at a funeral is trying to work out what the deceased would have wanted. This can be the best technique for deciding whether you should attend or not, and it does avoid trying to second-guess the wishes of their family, whose members you may not be very familiar with if your relationship was purely with the person who’s died.
If in doubt, it can sometimes be best just to throw caution to the wind; after all, you only get a single chance to attend someone’s funeral, one chance to participate in the official ritual for saying goodbye. If the other person was very important to you, then you’ll likely be glad after the event that you didn’t let it go to waste.
To read Edward Collier’s article for the Guardian, just follow this link:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/22/should-one-attend-funeral-virtual-friend?newsfeed=true
