With apologies to any of my (two? three?) readers that are sick of me talking about funerals and/or Humanism, and with apologies to the author, Greg Epstein, for the blatant plagiarism (I'll take it down at your request), I wanted to post a few paragraphs from Good Without God regarding funerals that I found rather profound. I'm almost done with the book, so the random quotes about Humanism should slow down a bit after this.
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As much as I try to give religion and religious people the benefit of the doubt when possible, it is almost always a bad idea for a nonreligious family to stage a religious funeral for a nonreligious loved one who has died. At those moments when we are feeling most vulnerable, the last thing we need is false comfort. "I'll pray for you," even nominally believing people suddenly begin to a dying friend. "He's in heaven now," we are told by people who haven't been to church in a decade, about a husband, brother, or son who has just died in pain. If you are among those who do not believe such words true or effective, they can add insult to the pain, because these are not theological statements. They are the words of people who cannot bear to participate in your pain.
For a Humanist, the mourning process begins with accepting that death is real and final and that, with apologies to Epicurus, we fear it. Our fear of death is not only normal, and not to be dismissed, it is part of the motivation we feel to live a good life now, while we still have time. But when the moment comes for for someone we love to die, there are almost never good answers for our questions: Why? Why now? To what end? The raw feeling of these unanswered questions is so strong because they are the sign that we care about life, and without our ability to care, sometimes to the point of great pain, we could perhaps continue to walk and speak and chew but not really live. And so we do not try to find words that will wish these feelings away - we tell no stories of worlds or reunions or rewards to come - because the mere suggestion that our feelings can be magically washed away is trivializing. And we do not speak of God's presence in the mystery. We acknowledge that no God, no one, no thing can take the pain away except for time, and never entirely.
But there is something else we do - the most important thing. We offer our own presence. A funeral is about people who cared about a common loved one, and who care about themselves and each other, coming together to be present with with one another despite the tension and the ambivalence. It is a time to recall the significance of the life that has ended, no matter what it may be - to share stories and memories, meaningful readings and songs, and to express love in the form of laughter and tears, hugs and just sitting. It's amazing that just sitting in the room with a grieving person, neither running away nor wishing his or her pain away, is the single best thing we can do. This is why secular Israelis, with their tradition of building a secular nation from the ground of traditional Judaism up, do not say "I'm so sorry" at a funeral, or "My condolences," or even, "My sympathies." They say "Ani mishtatef b'tzarcha" - "I take part in your grief."
