Get the Tissues Ready…

I lost a sister-in-law to cancer 4 days ago, and being the only open atheist in the family, it has been horribly lonely, and incredibly annoying to hear all the “deity-oriented”, and “after-life-place-based” comments. This is in ADDITION TO hearing “MERRY Christmas” all god-damned day! It sucks to lose a family member, and sucks even worse to lose a family member at a holiday time who WAS the “reason” the family came together for this particular holiday. We pulled it off again though, vacancy notwithstanding. I have been wondering for the last 4 days, and will keep wondering if us atheists grieve a little harder for the loss of a loved one since we do know that the best “after-life” a deceased person has, is in our own memories of them. I guess that’s why they get the “heaven” of our memories, and we get the HELL of their physical loss. 

First, my condolences.

With regard to your question about whether atheists grieve harder: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I find that I have not grieved very much for the people in my life who have died since I became an atheist.  However, this is at least in part due to the fact that they were either not all that close to me (for example, a couple of co-workers), or else they were at least in their 70s (all but one at least in their 80s, in fact).  For the ones that were so old, I found it much easier to deal with because I knew they had lived a long, full life.  I have no way to be certain, but I suspect that I would have not handled it nearly as well if a cousin or brother had died.

My sincere condolences. 
I lost an aunt last year to cancer, and while I wasn’t close to her, it still hit me hard.  If you wish to be in touch with other atheists who have lost loved ones, then may I suggest the folks at the Facebook page Grief Beyond Belief (if you’re not aware of them already)? 
https://www.facebook.com/faithfreegriefsupport

They are very supportive. 

I’ve recently lost three family members (in the last five months). A Grandfather, a grandmother and an aunt. The first two deaths happened three months apart (My Nanna simply couldn’t go on without her life partner it would seem) These were non religious ceremonies – We struggled at first to ‘fill in’ the gaps that had been left by leaving out hymns, prayers and committals. Instead we replaced this with poems, extended and multiple eulogies from a couple of different people. Photo’s of the family and favorite songs also became heavily important. There was no religion at all in these, no mention of God. The service was entirely focused on the person who had died.

Contrasting to this was my aunts funeral only a few weeks ago. It was an Anglican service conducted in a church and by a minister. I fully respect that it was a religious service and it was beautiful. But for such an amazing person, I really noticed how all of the God ‘fluff’ distracted everyone from what a good and wonderfully person she really was.

I guess, at a funeral you only have so much time to remember a person. I know when I pass, my request will be no religion, more about me. Because really thats the last party I’ll ever attend, I may as well be a little selfish.

Going to write a blog post in more depth about this (the little comment here was nothing compared to the detail I was going to involve)

tash- http://www.bethecog.blogspot.com

Thank you for the FB page reference. It has been “liked” without even seeing all the comments on it! Greatly appreciated!