These people explain the funerals of loved ones who died tragically.
It Was A Fitting Burial For Someone So Terrible
“My father murdered my mother when I was four years old. He committed suicide when I was in my early 20s. By law, I had to pick up his body. I had him cremated and stuffed into a wooden box. I was dating my boyfriend (now husband) and made him do the drive from Palm Springs, California, to Arizona at night. That drive is the worst drive in the world. A whole lot of nothing for miles and miles. We drove off the road to some random spot and dug a two-foot hole. I dumped the box in and set it on fire. It was the worst funeral in the worst place for the worst person I know.”
Nobody Seemed To Care About Her Death
“A girl I went to high school with died under mysterious circumstances – nobody knew if her overdose on antipsychotics was an accident or on purpose. At her funeral, which almost nobody went to, her parents used the opportunity to merely promote their church group which was putting on a play in the next few days. That’s all they talked about for the entire service. I’m still not sure of what happened, but it was pretty obvious her parents had checked out of her life a long time ago.
Two other girls went to the funeral with me and we all debated why they would act that way. It didn’t seem like a coping mechanism to me. They didn’t seem to be upset. The girl and I hadn’t been close, and in fact were probably closer to enemies, but it was apparent that her mom and dad seemed to feel some sort of relief that she was no longer their burden. I’m not sure of the true extent of her issues but she wasn’t doing well in life, and these parents were members of an affluent upscale wealthy church, where most people were quickly scaling the ladders of success and becoming beacons of the community.
It was my opinion that she had become a liability in their carefully chosen lifestyle. However, I truly hope I’m wrong, and that it really was just a way to grab onto something to keep themselves moving forward after losing their youngest, emotionally challenged daughter.”
He Went To The Funeral Of The Man He Killed
“I attended the funeral of someone that I killed.
In short, I conceal carry, guy comes into the store robbing it. I didn’t act because he seemed content with getting his money and was leaving, and I had no clear shot when he first entered. I won’t risk innocent bystanders with my own rounds. When he was leaving he turned the weapon to a teen girl, and I feared he would shoot her. I pulled my own and shot him.
I was cleared in the shooting and ended up visiting his parents not long after. When I did they didn’t blame me but said that their son had left me no choice, and that he had lost track in his life years earlier, and that they had more or less been expecting that day to come.
They said that for as much as they needed to say goodbye, maybe I needed closure as well with what had happened. I didn’t want to kill someone. If I could have stopped him without killing him, I would have, but in the timeframe and options I had, I was limited.
I said I wouldn’t come, because it didn’t feel right, and people might find it inappropriate. His mother said, ‘Oh honey, nobody but us will be there. Michael wasn’t accepted by our family or our friends.’ I realized he had probably been on a bad path his entire life.
In the end, I did go, and I didn’t really know why at first. I kept my distance and didn’t want to get involved. It was very strange as a whole. At the end of the ceremony, his parents placed flowers on his casket and asked if I wanted to come forward. I didn’t even know that they had noticed me arriving because I had stayed at the back of the church.
I’m not an emotional person, but I started crying. It was just so surreal. I killed their son, and they invited me to pay my respects. The priest told me it’s perfectly fine if I don’t want to, and that he and our Lord welcomed anyone to pay their respects, no matter their involvement.
I didn’t approach the casket, and they came to me and asked me if I wanted to say anything. All I could think of was, ‘I tried.’ His mother gave me a look of ‘We all did’ and walked out. His father put his hand on my shoulder, opened his mouth but didn’t say anything either, then left.
I send flowers to his grave every year now. I’ve made it part of my life to try to help troubled people out of their bad lives, as I was one of them at one point as well. I related to the whole situation, because if not for a lucky break when I was 17, it could well have been me holding up that store.”
I Had To Make Sure He Was Dead
NinaMalyna/Shutterstock
“My mom and I lived together with her psychopath boyfriend. He hit my mom, he hit me and further abused me while my mom was at work. Before we came into the picture, he sometimes hit his two sons so much that they couldn’t go to school because of the bruises.
Years later, we discovered that he had assaulted his ex-wife with a weapon against her head. Then he threatened a friend of his because his friend told him to calm down and stop terrorizing people. He just walked into his office with a weapon and told him to shut up or else he would kill his family.
About 10 or 11 years after we finally got away from him, this evil man died. I drove about 800km to be at his funeral. I just had to make sure he was dead and to ‘tell’ him I won. It was supposed to be an open casket but he died of a heart-attack, and his dogs started eating him after a while.
He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread on a mountain, but his sons decided to spread his ashes in the sewers instead.”
The Service Was So Uncomfortable
ambrozinio/Shutterstock
“I recently had a friend who was murdered by her husband, along with their young daughters. After he killed the three of them, he killed himself.
Both sides of the families agreed to include him in the memorial service. It was weird, but the pastor leading the service did a good job addressing the crime but said we weren’t gathered to judge his crime, only remember and celebrate their lives.”
“It Was Like Losing A Family Member”
“A good friend died about two years ago. We used to play Dungeons and Dragons with him and his brother every Sunday and Wednesday. He died after losing control while racing one night. He hit the railing at what was estimated to be 120 to 130mph.
The funeral was just pure sadness. The other seven members of our Dungeons and Dragons group were there. I personally knew him since the third grade and so did many of the others because we attended the same school or lived near each other. It was like losing a family member. During the final moments before lowering the casket, we all placed our 3D printed and painted characters where the roses are usually placed. We retired that story. Everyone lost the sensation to play. It just didn’t feel the same, we only started back play a couple months ago.”
The Two Funerals Were Vastly Different
Chere/Shutterstock
“My uncle (my mother’s brother) killed his family and then killed himself. He shot his wife and his three children (girl – eight years old, girl – 13 years old and boy – 18 years old) and his wife and then killed himself. This was in 1997. I was 17 years old at the time. We attended his funeral and then the funeral of his wife and children because of course, it was two different funerals.
There were local media outside the church and it was hard. Even though he did that horrible thing you still feel the need to honor the rest of his life before he made that devastating decision. My aunt’s family would not speak to us and punished us for what he did (understandably). It’s definitely a black mark in my family’s history.
I think the most vivid memory of the funeral, besides the media and crowds outside, was how few people showed up for his funeral versus how many showed up for my aunt’s and their children’s funeral (all in the same ceremony).
My uncle was well loved in life, but after what he did, very few people were able to see past that to pay homage.”
I Allowed Myself To Simmer With Resentment
Syda Productions/Shutterstock
“In the haze between my mother’s suicide and her funeral I hadn’t given much thought to her friends. At the service I sat in the front pews in this Nordic minimalist chapel, staring at my mom’s small coffin from behind a poorly placed ornamental Yucca-tree. One by one all these people I’d seen her share her life with walked down to the coffin and laid down a rose. All of them had bloodshot eyes, quivering lips, and shaking hands. Some of them looked just inconsolable. In that moment I allowed myself to simmer with resentment because she’d decided to take her own life.
With a suicide, there’s an added layer of anger and confusion. The person who gave me life decided life isn’t worth living. What am I supposed to do with that thought? I later told a counselor that it was as if I’d been sliced open from my abdomen to my throat. Where my organs had been there was just a harsh sub-zero wind blowing through me. (This feeling has since subsided.)
The only solace in the funeral service for me was when I stood outside on the patio. One of my cousins followed me out and wordlessly offered me a smoke. I don’t smoke, but that day I did. It was such an ordinary gesture which didn’t require me to muster much of a response. I didn’t have to pretend to feel comforted. It granted me 10 minutes of normalcy in an otherwise exhausting day.”
It Really Shouldn’t Have Been Open Casket
“I had a cousin (didn’t know her well) who was addicted to illegal substances. She got into a fight with her boyfriend, who was also addicted and who was the one supplying her. He tried to drive off, she tried to stop him, he then ran her over and it killed her. The funeral was super awkward because they insisted it be an open casket and you could tell that there had been a lot of ‘reassembly.’ It just didn’t look like her which made everything sadder.”
He Couldn’t Believe What People Were Saying
sharpshutter/Shutterstock
“My father’s good friend committed suicide two years ago. I went to the funeral with my father and the rest of my family. I kept hearing people whisper how selfish it was for him to leave his wife and kids like that. If it wasn’t a funeral I probably would have chewed their ear out but I kept it to myself.
Later on, after the very Christian service, outside I heard someone say ‘We all know where people who commit that kind of sin go…’ implying he was going to hell. Now I’ve never been a religious man, but anyone who thinks that you deserve eternal punishment for succumbing to depression is a piece of garbage in my books.”
People Treated Her Mother’s Death Like Hot Gossip
Kzenon/Shutterstock
“My mom committed suicide. All the family and ‘family friends’ who hadn’t given her a passing thought in years (or decades) just materialized out of the woodwork. I could just feel them feeding on the drama and the horror of it all. It felt like a circus. It felt like she was some sort of sideshow freak and it was exciting for them to speculate on how it had happened, what sent her over the edge. All the cooing and fake sympathy for us ‘poor kids.’
I bitterly wished it could have been only those that truly cared about her – who would have experienced grief alongside me, instead of treating it like this month’s great entertainment.”
She Is Still So Angry
KieferPix/Shutterstock
“I had a boyfriend in my early 20s who committed suicide. I was really surprised that at his funeral it appeared that either no one really knew him like I did (including his family) or they were all entirely being untruthful in their motives. No one mentioned his grossly mismanaged mental health issues. No one brought up his numerous breakdowns, trips to the emergency room (which I personally took him at least half a dozen times myself), no one seemed to have a clue about his rampant substance abuse.
In fact, his mother somehow managed to completely convince herself that he had overdosed on vitamins, claiming that he had body dysmorphia and he had overdosed on creatine pills. I couldn’t tell if she was lying to me, lying to herself, or genuinely did not know and I was not going to be the one to shake her back into reality. If it was my son, I’d want to imagine he overdosed on vitamins. I don’t think I’d be deluded enough to convince myself of that.
Basically, no one really talked about him. They appeared to be talking about someone else. Someone who was a dedicated student and talented artist who had this really successful life ahead of him that was cut short by the evil vitamin industry. It felt really fake, and he hated when people were fake. I could feel him rolling in his grave. I wanted to do him the solid of getting up in front of everyone and telling them all to screw their sap. He would’ve given a standing ovation. He would’ve been smiling down on me as I told them all what deluded pieces of trash they are, sitting around talking about him when they obviously didn’t care about how he was actually doing or they really didn’t know him at all and should go away.
But, I didn’t. I was 21 years old and extremely upset and didn’t even know what to do with myself, so I just kept my mouth shut, but yeah, it was like being at a funeral for a complete stranger. It wasn’t even about him.”
No One Would Speak About Her Death
“It was a suicide of a sorority sister, who was barely 21 years old…
No one – I mean no one spoke of her death. I read the obituary and showed up, but nobody would tell me how she died. Standing in the midst of over 200 people and I had no idea what put her in the casket. It was days before I found out from someone out of state. It felt very weird and cold.
This is a stark contrast to a friend of mine in high school three years earlier. Everyone knew, spoke of it, we stood there in front of his body and discussed what we could have done differently – trying to not let each other feel utterly responsible for not seeing he was in such pain. It was ugly and emotional but felt healthier.
Grief and bereavement drives people to a very intimate response, no matter how they present. Then there are the cultural and social filters. I think I’m more candid than some people are comfortable with when faced with the reality of death.”
They Still Don’t Know Who Did It
Syda Productions/Shutterstock
“I was only four years old at the time (it happened in 2000) and it was my grandma’s funeral. She had been a clerk at a 7/11 in Kansas City when two masked men came in and shot her multiple times and walked out without taking a single thing.
I don’t remember actually receiving the news. However, I do remember the funeral quite well. It was fairly large because my grandma had a big family and since it was big news at the time other people (I assume strangers who heard what happened) came as well. There was crying, but not as much as other funerals I’ve been to. Thinking about it now I think that everyone was still in major shock about what happened. One of the very very few memories of my grandma was my mom lifting me up so I could see her and lay a rose across her chest in her casket.
I wish I could have just one conversation with her. I hope one day they will find who did it so I can forgive them. However, 17 years later and we’re still waiting for any answer we can find.”
Nobody Knew How To Feel About The Driver
“There was this ‘challenge’ where kids would drive from one town to the other in a certain amount of time, something like nine minutes when it’s normally a 15-minute drive. This meant you’d probably be doing around 75mph on this windy country road in the dark and with kangaroos and wombats all over the place. I always thought it was an urban legend kind of thing like there was no way people actually did that, especially a lot of them having drank too much.
Inevitably, there was a huge car wreck one night. They were all very o including the driver, and they went into a tree. The driver was killed on impact, the girl in the seat behind her lost her legs and became a quadriplegic. Luckily, the people in the other two seats walked away with relatively minor injuries.
It was a huge deal. It even made a national current affairs show, where the mother of the girl who lost her legs trash talked the girl who was driving. She was saying it was all her fault, even though they all willingly got into the car knowing what the driver’s intentions were.
The funeral for the girl driving was pretty wild. She was well known in the area, pretty popular, known and liked by a lot of people. She was only 17 years old, so she was really young too. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the entire church and everyone was a bit torn between ‘the poor girl lost her life so young for no reason’ and ‘she was overserved and driving a car in a stupendously idiotic way, so it’s expected right?’ Crazy.”
He Wasn’t Innocent Like People Wanted To Believe
Ollyy/Shutterstock
“When I was about 19 years old, my cousin was killed while breaking into his employer’s house, attempting to recover money he thought he was owed. The employer shot my cousin several times, much more than necessary in self-defense. However, at the funeral, the family blamed the employer. They were exclaiming things like, ‘How could he take away a father?’ because my cousin had a pregnant girlfriend. Everyone was crying and saying he didn’t deserve to die and he did nothing wrong and how was such a sweet man.
Mind you, I grew up with this ‘sweet’ man. He was in no way innocent, maybe at one time in his life but illegal substances change people and you start to do stupid stuff. Anyway, I felt little to no emotion on his death, but in regards to the grieving family and friends, I felt for them. He made very poor decisions and it cost him and the family dearly.”
He’s Haunted By What He Remembers
“My older brother committed suicide when I was 10 years old, so I didn’t have too many memories from his funeral, just a few pieces. It was my first and only funeral until now. My grandparents died in the years following my brother, but I refused to go to theirs.
I think it was just terrible for everyone. I remember seeing my dad crying, and because he was so strong all the time, it terrifies me a lot. There’s a picture in my head where I see the open coffin a few meters away with some family members around. In that moment I decided that I don’t want to see my brother dead, and I’m glad today not having him like this in my thoughts. But later in life, when the door bell rang I hoped sometimes it’s just him and they identified another guy dead. At the end of the funeral, we just stood there and cried. I remember crying, too, but I was like, ‘are we done with crying now? It’s annoying.’
Later, the adults went to this funeral meal while I went with an older friend and her family to her home and I played some video games with her. Unfortunately, there are no memories of what my family or people said or how I felt all the time, maybe it was a mix of unbelievable, paralyzing sadness, anger (but not against anybody) and some kind of dissociation.”