By  R U Bored

The recent death of my spouse of fifty years has caused me to reconsider many things. One of them is pre-arranging plans for post-mortem services and events. 

He and I went, many years ago, to set up our after-death plans. So, when he passed, I knew who to call and we knew what he wanted. It was all set. No burden of questions and decisions for me and our children to make in those challenging days. I found this aspect of planning ahead to be very helpful. It freed up a lot of time and energy for me, for us, to deal with other things that needed to be done. In some ways, it made things easier.

But, in other ways, it annoyed me. My spouse’s directions felt demanding, confining, overly restrictive to me. Even somewhat controlling, like he was reaching back, from beyond life, to restrain people’s responses to his death.

In life, my husband didn’t like his family to make a fuss about him. He didn’t want presents, or for us to do things for him. His lifelong, oft-repeated refrains were, “Don’t bother,” “It doesn’t matter,” and “Whatever’s easiest.” He would tell us to spend our time and money on “something better.”

His final wishes were quite explicit, as he strongly expressed in the mortuary contract and in a terse note, he wrote that we found at home. He was to be cremated. He did not want any funeral services! “No visitation! No burial site! No memorial! No obituary!” Not even a death notice. Nothing. “When I die, I’m just gone.”

That’s all quite clear. Yet, for me, hard to fathom. And not just me. The person helping us make our arrangements that distant day questioned my husband repeatedly. “Are you sure?” they asked. “What about your family? And your friends? Don’t you want to give them a chance to gather, to share their feelings and memories of you? Social rituals and interactions are important in life’s transitions. They offer people opportunities for support and comfort, helping them to grieve, to celebrate, to accept, and to get a sense of closure.” It was their job, of course, to say such things; they wanted to sell us their services. But there’s truth in what they were saying.

Even though he was so emphatic, so rigidly insistent about “no remembrance whatsoever,” I was still somewhat disbelieving. I wanted to clarify, to make sure exactly what he meant. On the way home that day I said to him, “I heard everything you said just now. And I understand that you don’t want any public gatherings, or memorials, of any kind, ever. And no public notice. None. But does that mean you don’t even want me and the kids to get together for dinner, to talk and reminisce?” “No!” he said. “Nothing!” That was his reply. That was it. I asked no more. And he stuck to it. If anything, he got more absolutely adamant about it all as time went by. 

Our children and I complied with his directives. But I felt somewhat conflicted about it. And I didn’t know why. Things felt slightly out of sync, incomplete – like the last page missing from a book, or a sentence written with no punctuation at the end of it. Was I just uncomfortable because it was something new for me? I know that some people, for many reasons, don’t want a funeral. And that there are many different ways for people to connect and cope after a death. But this was the first time that anyone I knew very well did not want a funeral – or any other expression of remembrance. It felt odd to me. Was I just missing the familiarity of tradition? Was I feeling loss of control? I was struggling with something, but I didn’t know what.

As I was writing this, even though I felt that I honestly believe in everyone’s right to choose their final plans, something inside me wasn’t liking what he wanted. In my body, I could feel resistance – a tension in my chest, like a tight, tiny fist in my sternum – clenching, and clenching…

I walked around for days, asking myself questions, trying to figure out what that was, what it meant. Then I thought of asking myself, “When have I felt this before?” Focusing on the feeling, an image quickly came to me. I saw a big, long root, deep underground. Then many roots, going up into a big, old tree trunk, with long branches, and a few leaves, but no fruit.

I knew immediately that it symbolized an energy dynamic, intrinsic to our marriage from its very beginning – a pervasive pattern, affecting every aspect of it. And, eventually, for me, meaning the demise of our relationship. It was about being held ever at a distance, at arm’s length, no matter how hard I tried to get close. That tight little fist inside me was raised, in great anger, about more than half a century of intimate rejections, of being repeatedly pushed away in my expressions of care and affection. It was expressing my deep, deep, deep resentment over decades of “Don’t bother.” 

My inner ambivalence wasn’t about having a funeral, or not. It wasn’t about any of my spouse’s choices. It was about the essence of how, in the guise of kindness, he consistently resisted love. Beneath his persistent, self-effacing words lurked a very real – and, for me, personally hurtful – lack of consideration for those who cared about him. In the end, it was very clearly only about what he wanted. No one else. And I didn’t like the absence of discussion, the lack of concern and not being included in his decision-making process. That might not matter to someone else; we’re all different in what we like and don’t like. But it mattered to me. And, ultimately, in his omissions, I saw his last wishes as a final, giant “Don’t bother.” 

I see it as sadly ironic that, in going to such extremes to deflect attention away from himself, he often, most certainly, made things absolutely all about him. My husband would say, “Family is important. Friends are important.” But, in my opinion, in his final plans, as in many things, he left us all out. The only change he ever made, quite close to the end, was to finally, reluctantly, give us his consent for a death notice. “But no obituary.” 

So, he said. But I would’ve had an announcement published anyway – without his permission. Because I believe in the rights of all people to seek community, balance and peace in their times of loss, grief and bereavement. And, also, because it was – simply and obviously – a practical, sensible, reasonable thing for our family to do for all who knew him. 

But that’s all past. It’s over now. The little fist is gone. Happily, I found my peace in a simple gathering a few weeks after his death. Nine of us – our children, grandchildren, son-in-law, and I – met at a favorite restaurant for a luncheon feast and visiting and then shopping after. There was no ceremony, no particular focus on the newly departed, though we did speak of him. But it was, significantly, the first time we all got together after he passed. Sitting there, that afternoon, in the sunlight, in the midst of my kin, I looked up, looked around and I thought, “This is my family now. And I am the matriarch of this family.” I felt very steady and strong and proud. These were my moments of closure. 

Like it, or not, we humans are all intrinsically, intricately, inextricably connected. In death, as in life, nothing is ever all about one particular individual, even if the focus is momentarily on them. In reality, everything is always about all of us. So – what happens when the preferences and requests, (demands?), of one person bump up against the needs and desires of others? Perhaps, when it comes to making plans for life – and after – all it takes for everyone’s needs to be better met is a little reconsideration.