#funerals

Funerals consist of older generations initiating the younger into another adulthood. Filling spaces of the one passed. ↗

— Darnell Lamont Walker

#initiation #death

Sensei says funerals are not really for the dead. They are for those left behind. "The dead are long gone by the time a funeral is held," he told us. "Who would wait when the doors of Heaven are open? Only the living would be foolish enough to still hang around on earth. ↗

— Sandy Fussell

#funerals #life #death

They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that I'm going to miss mine by just a few days. ↗

— Garrison Keillor

#days #few #funerals #going #i

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#funerals #rituals #social-functions #death

I never go to funerals. To me a person is dead when he breathes for the last time. After that, your memories should be personal. ↗

— Hedy Lamarr

#breathes #dead #funerals #go #i

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading, my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure, I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#anything #away #bar #before #book

I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living. ↗

— John Green

#funerals #mourning #death

Elaborate burial customs are a sure sign of decadence. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#death #decadence #funerals #death

Funerals, I had decided, are for the living. ↗

— John Green

#funerals #true #death

Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals. ↗

— Clarence Darrow

#church #closer #depressions #funerals #may