Thanks for the reminder. This is a touchy one for me. I used to feel so bad not being able to go to family funerals. The last family funeral i remember attending was my cousin Kenneth's funeral. After Vietnam i stayed away from them, even my fathers and mothers deaths i stayed out of family doings. They understand. I really do not celebrate it, i respect it.

Not during a pandemic, unless you want to join them.

I do not, but I think it is special and important if someone has it.

No one in my line is sentimental about death, and cremation is routine. We interred my parents’ ashes in Puget Sound in the North Pacific because they liked to sail there, but I won’t return to visit. I do keep a few mementos of my dead loved ones around my home—my parents’ bookends on my bookshelf, my grandmother’s sugar bowl on my windowsill, etc. I use my great-grandmother's cedar chest to store tools and photo albums in my office. These things warm my heart while being useful.

We keep my brother's grave decorated year round for the various holidays and I talk to him whenever I visit. I know he can't hear me but it helps me cope with the loss.

I avoid cemeteries and funerals if I can. My mother has now been dead 14 years and I think I went to her grave 2 or 3 times. I forget what times they were, but nothing recently. Before he went into the nursing home my stepdad said I needed to visit mom's grave more often. I denied that I did and suggested maybe he needed to visit her grave more often.

My aunt is the only one I know who still does that.

I don't even go to cemeteries. Or funerals.

Yes.

wow. nice. around here they call it Decoration. it's kind of a social Gathering thing.