Although there are people nowadays who do not believe in the traditional funeral, who believe instead in a memorial service sometime after a person dies, Lyn felt that a traditional service with its set guidelines would be easier to cope with than any decision-making would have been. When Jenny died Lyn was still in a state of numbness...which is almost always the initial reaction to bereavement. Janet felt the same way as Lyn, she could not concentrate on what needed to be done after Brett died. It is a natural feeling for most people ~~ lack of concentration. Because they were unable to really concentrate, having rigid religious burial rules made things a great deal simpler.

The funeral home was very difficult for Lyn to handle...greeting of mourners, how can you keep greeting people when all you want to do is collapse and cry? Why do all these people come now when Jenny is dead and they didn't come before? Where were they when she was alive? So many questions Lyn asked herself. Yes, it is strange how people react to each other at this time. Hugs, kisses, I'm so sorry...some phrase said...she knew that they were trying to be there for her, but few if any knew what she was going through. She had lost one of her own...part of her life left her.

The service itself was very touching. Words were said in rememberance of Jenny...her life...whose lives she touched. The service also suggested a path to follow after the funeral ~~ to attempt to emulate Jenny and to take up life once again. In general, the Pastor's words were well chosen, but did little to comfort the parents. They were, they felt, beyond comforting. Unlike Jenny's parents, there are people who become intensely involved in planning their child's funeral.

One woman, a devout Catholic whose eight-year-old daughter died in an automobile accident, selected every psalm, prayer card, and hymn for her daughter's funeral. "I felt this was the final earthly thing I could do for my daughter's remains. Certainly, I cried for myself while planning her funeral, but I knew she had gone back to God and in that I found some happiness."

Although many people opt for traditional funerals, there are those who believe the only meaningful burial has to be completely personalized.

One woman, an American Indian whose son drowned, thought the finest tribute she could pay her fourteen-year-old was to bury him in the traditional Indian finery he used while engaged in his hobby of tribal dancing. According to her wishes, the youngster wore his breechcloth, and a beaded shirt. Following the traditional service, a member of the boy's Indian tribe spoke to mourners and told them the lad was now with Manitou, the Great Spirit, and would watch over the grieving family. Through it all, the mother said she felt a satisfaction in having arranged something that would please her dead son.

I repeat, to each his own. There is no right or wrong type of funeral service.

As more is learned about handling bereavement, however, most psychiatric personnel who help grieving families have come to view the private funeral service with disfavor. They generally frown upon this practice because of their emphasis on the need for support during all phases following the death of a child.

Most often, the private funeral seems to be the wish of parents whose child committed suicide or was involved in criminal activity. Such parents often feel shame compounded with their grief. Yes, it would appear to me that they ~~ almost more than other bereaved parents ~~ need every bit of loving and caring and kindness that can be offered by friends and acquaintances.

What would be more tragic than to have a child dead by his or her own hand? Or how sad to have reared a child who died a criminal?

To voluntarily remove oneself from caring people by holding the private funeral seems only to heighten a pain that is nearly unbearable. The private service brings another great disservice to mourners. People generally feel that, if the funeral is private, so may be the grieving afterwards. Not only will they tend to stay away out of fear of intruding but it seems also true that if they do come they will avoid at all costs discussing the tragedy. Therefore, by holding a private funeral, very often the support system particularly necessary to parents in this situation may be denied them.

Most parents cannot honestly remember who was at the funeral home or the cemetery when their child dies, but they have an overall recollection of being surrounded ~ almost cushioned ~ by people. Now, there are times when some of them go through the messages of condolence and the visitors' book signed by those who attended the funeral, and they are still grateful for whatever time people gave them out of their lives. It was not easy for them but it did an immeasurable amount of good for the parents.

Moreover, though there is a great reluctance on the part of many people in the immediate family, psychiatrists maintain it is very important for survivors to view the dead body of a loved one. They say it is wrong to follow that old saying of "I want to remember him as he was." They claim this reason for not viewing the body is a form of death denial because "as he was" was alive. But he is no longer alive.

People are often profoundly reluctant to attend the funeral of a child. They experience a great fear of inadequacy, of not being able to say or do the right thing. But their presence at this time can be most supportive.

Richard Obershaw, a faculty member of the University of Minnesota School of Mortuary Science, when speaking at a seminar for social workers, confirmed the importance to the bereaved family of people attending a funeral. He said that not only do people need comfort at this time, they crave it badly enough to advertise for it! People, he said, pay an additional sum of money to the funeral director in order to have a notice inserted in local newspapers. They are saying, in effect, I need your help and here is where I will be at a given time and place to receive whatever consolation you are able to give.

Many funeral directors as well as psychologists who have contact with people at times of grief say viewing the body is an integral part of the healing process that must follow a death. They maintain doing so lessens the length of time for the denying of death because people will not reject ultimately something they have seen with their own eyes.

At Jenny's funeral, Lyn went to view the body. She gazed at her dead daughter for a second and literally ran from the sight of her stillness...she still looked like she was just sleeping as she had in the hospital...but Lyn knew that she was dead.

One father, upon seeing his dead son who was killed while on duty in Vietnam, threw himself onto the open casket and screamed until the funeral director finally led him to a chair.

Yes, the sight is painful...but much in the same way as cauterizing a wound is painful. Just as healing may not begin without that very painful procedure, psychiatrists believe the same principle applies to viewing the body.

Some people will not let their younger siblings view the body of their brother or sister, this right should not be denied them. The sibling cannot put their brother or sister to rest because they have not seen them dead. They are still haunted by the ghost of their sibling. A mother with a four-year-old daughter did not let her daughter attend the funeral and therefore she had even less grasp of her brother's death. She is resentful even after 19 years that she was cheated of the experience. It has taken the parents of this girl to resolve their sorrow at having made such mistakes. Many of these parents looking back at how they handled decisions of the funeral would now make changes. But they have put their wrong decisions where they feel they belong. They rest now in the category of mistakes that cannot be undone and are therefore best forgotten. That part of their life is over.

As difficult as viewing the body can be, a very good case can be made for the argument that parents of soldiers listed as missing suffer almost more than parents of dead soldiers. People believe what they see, and laying someone to rest can be impossible when there is no body to lay to rest. Many such parents believe deep in their hearts that they will see their children again. Maybe just around the next corner.... How can parents grieve and then rebuild a life when that grief is interspersed with hope that, somewhere, their child will reappear? It is not only the parents of soldiers who are afflicted with this nightmarish problem.

One father who suffered through both stages, the missing and the certainty, has his own conclusion. His son, a boy of nine, drowned while swimming on a lake. The father searched and searched and continued to look for the body of his son for more than a month until it was found by a fisherman. "His body was ugly and distorted," said the father, "but when I saw it, finally, I knew he was dead. The pain was unbearable when I wasn't searching before that. Once his body was found I was almost relieved. It was like a thousand pounds was lifted off my shoulders."

This father's intensity of feeling obviously is the rule rather than the exception because newspapers frequently carry stories of rewards and pleas of grieving families for the return of their children's bodies when the youngsters had met with the kinds of death where the bodies are not easily retrieved. Parents of soldiers missing in action are an example of this sort of searching. Somehow, without this visible and irrefutable sign of death, there is something unfinished about the state of grieving undergone by a parent, something that heightens the sense of disbelief we already feel in those first terrible days.

Also, during these first days there is an additional and important purpose to the funeral in that it gives the bereaved family a socially acceptable setting in which to grieve. And the importance of that grieving process cannot be overstated. One funeral director, who holds a master's degree in social work, recently went so far as to say that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with her magnificent public stoicism at the funeral of the assassinated president, "set grieving back a hundred years. she created an example of dignity for the world that people emulated just as they emulated her dress and little dinner parties. The only harm in emulating this brave woman arose when people did not stop to think that in private she cried and probably screamed just as we all do." "Mrs. Onassis," said the funeral director, "set a tone for grieving that people began to follow blindly ~~ and one that became expected by onlookers. Some bereaved parents actually were ashamed of their own comparative "lack of control" as this attitude filtered down to the general population. I question what kind of control should have to be maintained by the parent of a dead child at such a catastrophic time."

The question he raised is valid because too much control can be as dangerous as too little. Of course, as in all things there must be limitations. While total "stiff upper lipism" is unnatural, so, I have discovered, is an ongoing lack of self-descipline. Men, whom I consider a victim of the masculine must-be-strong ethic, shows almost no outward signs of the horror they feel. Instead they served as the comforter at the funeral. The moral supporter. Several years after the death of their child, the agony is still great for some that they require psychiatric help, and in the privacy of their doctor's office they cried. And only then did they begin to heal.

The female and the bereaved mother, almost always are given most of the support including loving shoulders upon which to cry.

Sometimes when the unthinkable is thought about in advance, good can result. This can occur when your child is sick and the chance is there that they may not make it...such as preplanned funerals...or just picking out the cemetery location for yourself and your family. There is truly no right or wrong.

Those first days immediately following the death of a child are most unsettling because of the strange mixture of anguish and numbness most bereaved parents experince. But life does go on and the taking of certain steps cannot be avoided indefinitely.

While there are parents who took great pride in the beauty of the funeral service in which their child was buried ~ they appreciated the pomp and ceremony and dignity ~ some parents feel none of the ceremonials helped. Perhaps a word, a phrase, or parable penetrated their grief, but mostly it is viewed as a hurdle ~ something to be gotten through.

The important thing to remember is: the funeral is done and over and behind you, so do not compound the problems of rebuilding your life by feeling regrets over things you wish had been done differently.