What Are We Really Doing When We Say Goodbye?

When someone dies, we do some curious things.

We gather in rooms together. We tell stories. We play particular songs. We look at photographs. We bring flowers. We touch a casket. Sometimes we sit beside the person who has died. Sometimes we wash them, dress them or place something meaningful with them.

Humans have created rituals around death for thousands of years.

But why?

As funerals change, and as more families choose simpler cremations, smaller gatherings or sometimes no funeral at all, perhaps there is a more interesting question we should be asking.

What is a funeral actually doing for us?

Not commercially. Not traditionally.

Psychologically.

First, our head and our heart don’t always arrive at the same place together

One of the strange things about death is that we can know perfectly well that someone has died and still struggle to comprehend that they are gone.

There is the factual reality:

Dad died yesterday.

And then there is the much larger emotional reality:

Dad isn’t coming back.

Those two understandings don’t necessarily arrive at the same time.

This is one reason some people find spending time with the person who has died important. For others, simply being present when the casket arrives, attending a gathering or participating in something tangible can help make an almost unimaginable event more real.

That doesn’t mean everybody should view someone who has died.

They shouldn’t.

But it does mean we should be careful about assuming that protecting someone from the reality of death is always the kindest thing to do.

Sometimes gently encountering that reality is part of beginning to understand what has happened.

Ritual gives shape to something that has no shape

Death is chaotic.

The person has died, yet breakfast still needs to be made. Phones still ring. Traffic continues outside. Someone asks whether you want tea.

Your world has fundamentally changed while everybody else’s appears to have carried on.

Ritual creates a marker in the middle of that confusion.

Psychologists have long been interested in the role rituals play around bereavement. Research doesn’t support the simplistic claim that having a funeral automatically means someone will grieve better. Grief is far too individual for that.

But research does suggest that funeral rituals can provide opportunities for meaning, connection, expression and transition, particularly when those rituals feel right for the people involved.

And ritual doesn’t have to mean religion, a chapel or a particular order of service.

Lighting a candle is ritual.

Carrying Dad’s casket is ritual.

Playing Mum’s favourite song is ritual.

Putting a handwritten note beside someone is ritual.

So is raising a glass around the kitchen table.

Perhaps ritual is simply our human way of saying:

Something important has happened here.

When we can’t change what happened, doing something can matter

Death leaves us extraordinarily powerless.

We can’t fix it.

We can’t negotiate with it.

And for people accustomed to solving problems for those they love, that helplessness can be particularly difficult.

Yet there are still things we can do.

I’ve seen families wash and dress someone they love.

I’ve seen grandchildren draw pictures to place with a grandparent.

I’ve seen someone carefully choose a piece of music because “that’s the song he always played.”

I’ve watched people carry a casket when initially they weren’t sure they could.

None of those actions changes the fact that somebody has died.

But they allow us to participate rather than simply have death happen around us.

And sometimes the smallest action becomes one of the most important memories.

We tell the story because a life is bigger than a death

Something else happens at funerals.

We tell stories.

Often very ordinary ones.

The terrible jokes.

The fishing trip.

The burnt Sunday roasts.

The song they played far too loudly.

The saying everyone in the family can imitate perfectly.

Psychologically, storytelling can be important because bereavement isn’t simply about accepting that a death occurred. We also have to work out how this enormous event fits into the story of our own lives.

Psychologist Robert Neimeyer’s work on meaning reconstruction describes grieving, in part, as the process of rebuilding meaning after loss has disrupted the world we understood.

Perhaps that’s partly what we’re doing when we tell stories after someone dies.

We’re moving the focus from:

How they died.

towards:

How they lived.

The death remains part of the story.

But it doesn’t get to become the whole story.

Grief also needs witnesses

There is another part of funerals that we probably don’t talk about enough.

Other people turn up.

That sounds ridiculously simple, but psychologically it can be significant.

When people gather after a death, they are doing more than filling chairs.

Their presence says:

I know this person mattered.

I know something significant has happened.

I know your world is different now.

Grief can be intensely personal, but human beings are social creatures. Research into bereavement continues to recognise the importance of social connection and support, although what is helpful varies considerably between people.

Sometimes the most valuable thing somebody does at a funeral isn’t anything they say.

It’s simply that they came.

Perhaps we don’t actually “let go”

For a long time, grief was sometimes spoken about as though the ultimate goal was detachment.

Accept the death.

Let go.

Move on.

Our understanding has become much more nuanced.

Contemporary grief research includes the idea of continuing bonds, that our relationship with someone doesn’t necessarily disappear because they died.

It changes.

We might keep their photograph on the wall.

Cook their recipe.

Wear their watch.

Tell their stories.

Visit somewhere they loved.

Talk to them when nobody else is around.

Hear their voice in our head when we’re about to do something they’d consider ridiculous.

A systematic review of continuing-bonds research found these ongoing connections can be associated with comfort, identity and meaning reconstruction, while also recognising that they can sometimes be complicated or distressing. In other words, there isn’t one correct way to maintain, or not maintain, that connection.

Maybe grief isn’t always about leaving someone behind.

Sometimes it’s about discovering how to carry them differently.

So, do we actually need funerals?

Perhaps that’s the wrong question.

Because everything I’ve described can happen at a traditional funeral, but none of it requires one.

A funeral might involve 200 people in a chapel.

It might be ten people standing somewhere beautiful.

It might be a family spending an hour privately with someone they love.

It might involve washing Mum’s hair, playing Dad’s records, telling stories over a beer or scattering ashes months later.

And for some people, choosing not to have a ceremony at all will genuinely feel right.

There is no psychological rule that says grief must look a particular way.

That’s important.

Because the value isn’t necessarily in having a funeral.

It may be in understanding what human needs sit underneath the funeral.

Do we need to comprehend what has happened?

Do we need to participate?

Do we need to tell the story?

Do we need other people around us?

Do we need to mark the transition somehow?

Do we need to begin finding a different way of carrying our relationship with the person who died?

Once we understand those questions, the conversation around funerals becomes much more interesting.

And perhaps our role as funeral directors changes too.

It isn’t to convince somebody that they need a funeral.

It isn’t to tell a family what saying goodbye is supposed to look like.

Our role is to understand what might matter to them, explain what’s possible and create the space for them to make informed choices.

After all, there are countless ways to acknowledge a life.

Perhaps the better question isn’t, “Do we need funerals anymore?”

It’s, “When someone we love dies, what do we need, and how might we create space for that?”

Tong & Peryer Funeral Directors — serving Hawke’s Bay families since 1878.