Rituals are meaningful ceremonies that allow us, along with our families and friends, to communicate our deepest thoughts and feelings about life’s most significant events. Baptism celebrates the birth of an infant and the acceptance of that child into the family of the Church. Birthday parties commemorate the passage of another year in the life of those we love. Weddings publicly affirm the private affection that two people share.
The funeral ceremony is a public, traditional and symbolic way of sharing our values, thoughts and feelings about the death of a loved one. Rich in tradition and full with symbolism, the funeral service makes us understand the fact of death, gives testimony to the presence of the deceased. It also promotes the expression of grief in a way that is compatible with the values of society, encourages mourners, enables confidence and belief in life and death to be accepted, and gives stability and hope to the living.
Unfortunately, the mourning-avoiding society has mostly ignored these vital goals of a meaningful funeral. Sometimes you get worried that people, families and eventually, society as a whole will suffer if we do not reinvest ourselves in the funeral ritual. This article discusses the grievance-curing advantages of meaningful funerals in Sydney and the benefits that we are losing to the trend of demutualization.
A valuable way to teach about the aims of authentic catholic funeral ceremonies is to frame them in the sense of the reconciliation needs of mourning. The reconciliation needs of mourning are the six needs that are found to be the most central to the healing of grief. In other words, the suffering people who have met these needs, through their grieving efforts and the love and kindness of those around them, are most often able to reconcile their grievances and to try to find meaning in life and life.
How the authentic funeral helps meet the reconciliation needs of mourning?
Acknowledge the reality of the death
When someone loved dies, you must freely accept the truth and intent of death if we are to move on with your grief. You can take this reality usually, in two steps. First of all, remember the death in the minds; you are told that someone you loved died and at least mentally, we grasp the truth of death. Over the next few days and weeks, and with the gentle understanding of those around us, you begin to accept the reality of death in your hearts.
Meaningful funeral services in Sydney will serve as a perfect starting point for the brain understanding of death. When we call the funeral home, set time for the service, prepare the ceremony, look at the body, maybe even select the body’s clothes and jewellery, we cannot help but realize that the person has died. When we see that the casket is lowered to the ground, you are witnessing the finality of death.
Move toward the pain of the loss
When the acknowledgement of death progresses from what is termed head understanding to core understanding, you begin to accept the pain of loss—another need that the bereaved must have fulfilled if they are to recover. Good grief means sharing your painful thoughts and emotions, and healthy funeral service helps us to do just that.
People prefer to mourn, even soberly and willingly, at funerals, because funerals compel them to focus on the reality of death and the emotions, sometimes overwhelmingly painful, about that death. For at least an hour or two—more for the mourners who are preparing a service or attending a visitation—those who are attending a funeral cannot intellectualize or isolate themselves from the agony of their sorrow. To their credit, funerals often offer the agreed venue for painful feelings. They may be the only time and place, in fact, that we as a community condone such an outward expression of our sorrow.
Remember the person who died
To recover in grief, you must change your relationship with the person who died from one of physical presence to one of remembrance. An authentic funeral helps us to begin this transition because it gives us a normal time and place to think about the moments you shared—good and bad—with the person who died. Like no other time before or after death, the funeral invites you to reflect on our past relationship with that single person and to share those memories with others.
At Orthodox funerals ,the eulogy aims to highlight the main events in the life of the deceased and the qualities most prominently exhibited by him or her. This is beneficial to mourners since it helps to give rise to more personal, individualized memories. Later, after the service itself, many mourners would informally share the memory of the person who died.
That too is meaningful. Throughout our journeys of grief, the more you can tell the story—of death itself of your memories of the individual who died—the more likely we would be to reconcile our grief.
Develop a new self-identity
Another primary need for reconciliation of mourning is the creation of a new self-identity. You are all social beings whose lives have been given meaning about the lives of those around you. When someone close to you dies, your self-identity has established changes.
The funeral helps you begin this daunting phase of establishing a new identity because it offers a social space for public acceptance of our new positions. If you are a parent of a child and that child dies, the funeral will mark the beginning of your life as a former parent physically speaking, you will always have the connection through memory.
Others at the funeral say, we understand your changed identity, and we want you to know that we really care for you. On the other hand, in cases where there is no funeral, the social community does not know how to react to a person whose personality has changed and who is therefore socially abandoned. In addition, having loving friends and family around you at the time of the funeral makes you remember that we literally still live. A statement demonstrates this question of self-identity that the bereaved frequently make: When he died, I felt like a part of me died, too.
Search for meaning
Of course, when someone you love dies, you will doubt the nature of life and death. Why is this person dead? Why now? Why this way, why does it have to hurt so much? What’s going to happen after death? To recover in grief, you must discuss these types of topics if you are to be reconciled with our grief. In reality, you must first ask these why questions to determine why you should live on before you can ask us how you are going to live on. This does not mean that you need to find definite answers, but an opportunity to think and feel things through.
On a more profound level, funerals affirm one basic truth of existence: you will die. Like living, dying is a normal and irreversible process. Therefore, funerals allow you to find meaning in the life and death of the person who died, as well as in your own lives and imminent deaths. Each funeral in Sydney, you attend serves as a kind of rehearsal dress for your own.
Funerals are the way we, as people and as a group, express our views and values about life and death. The very reality of a funeral shows that death is important to us. That’s how it should be for the living to carry on as fully and as safe as possible.
Receive ongoing support from others
Funerals are a public way of sharing views and feelings about the death of a loved one. In reality, funerals are a public place to give support to others and to be supported by sorrow, both at the time of the funeral and in the future. Funerals make a social statement that says, Come and help me. If they know it or not, those who want not to have a funeral say, do not come and help me.
Funerals also help in demonstrating physical support. Unfortunately, yours is not a demonstrative culture, but at funerals, you are required to embrace, to touch, to comfort. Again, words are not enough, so you are not showing our support verbally. This physical display of support is one of the most significant healing elements of a meaningful funeral ceremony. Look for the best Independent funeral director in Sydney who can help in performing all rituals in a right way.
At the end of the day and quite simply, funerals in Sydney act as a central meeting place for mourners. If you care for someone who died or his family members, you will attend a funeral if at all necessary. Your physical appearance is the most significant demonstration of solidarity for the living. By attending the service, you let everyone else know that they are not alone in their sorrow.
