We all have the right to misbehave. Using it responsibly is helpful to the rest of us.

@Dwight If I want to talk about my mother and the harm she did to her family, her ill temperament and manipulative nature and emotional abuse, that's my prerogative. I don't give a rip whether that offends you or anyone else.

@resserts Stand your ground, even if it means being a surly old bastard. You are my brother.

My thought exactly. The dead don't care, but I would consider the feelings of a living person. Although, maybe those people don't deserve much concern either, personal call for each of us. For example, I will never say one nice thing about a hypothetical woman's dead rapist son. Fuck that guy.

yes -well said - I think i would be muttering/chunnering , my comments to myself anyway

totally agree.

My grannys funeral was massively attended, along the streets as she was so well known in our small town., she talked to everyone, It was also for respect of the relations who owned shops as lots of people knew them too . I was in the black hearse procession with my youngest Uncle and Aunt and all the way to the crem they were telling hilarious granny stories, because they lived with her, so we had to keep straying form hilarious laughter to straight faced and back again for the whole journey. I love that We laughed I think it helped our grieving process too.think My Granny would have cracked a smile too!

yes you said that for me too thanks -

That could be part of it. I knew a miserable old cranky guy that even made his wife glad when he passed away. Everyone in the neighborhood cheered... No word of a lie...

@Hominid now that i like!

I’ve met plenty of people just like that. @Hominid

I think you’re wrong. People suffering from grief want to view their loved ones in the best terms. @sarahjustme

Yes. All our death rituals are to support the living. Casseroles being one of the most practical.

I'm not going to my mother's funeral. My sister gets to deal with all of it.

Good grief that's horrific.

Yes, they are not able to defend themselves.

What if they couldn't defend themselves even if they were alive because they were so hateful, spiteful, abusive, selfish, and psychopathic? It's not that the living have to "get over their anger", it's that the person was a POS in the first place. So, to me, there's no reason to change tunes and talk of them as though they were a saint.

@Hominid If it makes you feel better do it. That doesn't make it right for me. My personal preference is to bury the hatchet along with the dead, They can't harm me anymore.

The living don't need to carry the weight of the dead. They are gone, let them go. You punish a corpse.

What if they were a dick that made everyone around them miserable? For some reason, all their sins are wiped clean... I don't get it.

@Hominid The sins are best forgotten along with the sinner. Talking about them doesn't change things, time will do that.

@Hominid Those people need to be forgotten as soon as possible. Help them become forgotten. Ignore them.

@Dick_Martin @Dwight - I'm not defending that we should go on about how bad they were, but rather that we shouldn't speak of them as though they have somehow achieved sainthood through death.

@Hominid that's what I am saying, Just let it go. Our silence can speak louder than we can.

@Hominid My father-in-law would make a point after the funeral of going to the grave and pissing on it.

This is something I identify as a largely midwestern US reserve (though I'm sure it exists elsewhere and in particular individuals) usually identified as "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say it". While admirable in a way, I think with no qualification at all I can't really agree with it, as it amounts to a conspiracy of silence about ANYTHING negative, if you take it literally. In practice, people regard this as a taboo and no one communicates and no one is willing to call out bullshit. Granted some people are too hair-trigger about that, but I have seen too many families perpetuate dysfunction because they refuse to talk or work things out and go around demanding that they read each other's minds so they don't have to say anything uncomfortable.

When my mother died I wanted to Honor her request of final words on her headstone (Dark/Black Humor) "I have PROVEN cigarette smoking is hazardous to your health!"
My siblings saw it as Sacrilegious and would not assent.
YET, at her service they had the sheer audacity to have FLOWERS!
Which I saw as sacreligious as she ALWAYS SAID "Give me flowers when I can smell them, not when I am dead and they are useless" since I was a small boy.

I insisted, on her behalf, that each person take one and smell it in her stead, since they did not recall her words, which I repeated.

We all greive differently, and what you see as Honoring the dead might well offend another.