Mine was a great aunt about 1963. Folding chairs in the funeral home followed by the burial. Now a days seems like a 15 k 2 day process. My cousin that died at birth was a grave dug by her father and my grandfather. A simple ceremony. Why does it cost so much to die????

Doesn't have to.

Mine won't.

My Grandfather in 1957.

Same here, grandfather 1957, at a country church and cemetery built by my great grandfather.
Mine will be very simple and low cost.

Same here. Burn my ass and dump me below my deer stand. No funeral, just a heck of a drunken bash and hopefully strippers.

Society used to deal with their dead as a family process and saw it through, literally from cradle to the grave. Now death has been made taboo over the past 60 years and the funeral industry has swooped in like vultures to fill the void.

Our local funeral director is a heck of a nice guy (and gun nut too). Every time I see him he asks if I still smoke and when I say Yes he says "Thank you for the business".

I have 14 deer stands at the moment

Bring a teaspoon

I intend to be torn apart by wild dogs while my friends sit around and drink beer.

A friend of the family, about 1979. Creeped me out!

Duh f uc k you saying? 😂

Fish camp...

Mine was my 6 year old cousin. Kissed his
head as I saw him for the last time.

Make your kids wear life jackets.

Grandfather, 79'. First one of the four to go.

My plot is paid for since 1983 when a Great Aunt bought a double plot next to the Grand Parents. When she passed she willed the extra space to me just incase I needed one as I was single at the time. Tia Amelia was a hoot, never married. She was always traveling around the the country taking care of family when they got sick.

Told the wife if she goes first that's where I'm sticking her. She was not amused.

I plan on being cremated, if I know I am about to die, I am eating a bag of unpopped popcorn, should be epic.

There are no requirements where I live to involve a funeral home, have body embalmed etc to be buried on your property.

Highs cost to die are driven by the funeral industry, 100%.
I wll be cremated and have my ashes scattered in the Superstition Mountains. I've already done this for a friend (scattering the ashes, not the cremation. Some things are best left to pros).

The three year old sister of a kid on my hockey team. I was 12 and that was a rough one.

In the dirty south, funeral homes weren’t used.

Dead were brought home, usually the main room ( living room).

Someone stayed with the body around the clock.

Called it “sitting up with the dead”.

Also burned smut pots out in the yard so passer bys knew what was going on.

This was the scene when my paternal grandfather passed.

The best thing about your own funeral will be that you won’t be there. I believe there are a bunch here that would be disappointed when they found out how few care, it’s probably better you fantasize about it while you are alive…

My first funeral was for my Daddy, I was 6 years old.

I like the idea. Always wanted to go out with a bang.

G23

Maternal grandfather, Jan 1961. It was cccooolllddd that day in Fremont, NE and snowing.

A great aunt, they called her an old Maid school teacher.

First for me was my maternal grandfather around 1949 - '50.

I just barely remember a little bit about it as I was only a toddler at the time but can still visualize my grandmother sobbing uncontrollably and having to be restrained from trying to climb into his casket with him.

And in other uplifting news…


Osky

First funeral for me was my grandmother on my mom's side, 1966, I was 6 years old

My older brother when I was 5. Pretty much my first long term memories. Prob why I have a dark sense of humor.

My grandmother, in 1961. It was a typical small-church funeral, with the graveyard out back of the church. Most of my ancestral relatives are buried there.

When it's my turn to go, I want to be cremated, and my ashes installed into high-cost fireworks.

I always think of funerals of others as an opportunity to reflect and ask whether I’m living with my end in mind. Don’t care how many people show up to my funeral but I’d like to know I’m not being a selfish prick.

My first funeral was my great grandmother’s. My maternal grandfather’s mother. I was really little… 5 yo at most. She was Roman Catholic and I remember the beauty of the church and that we sat toward the back as we weren’t participating in the supper. That’s about all.

I dont know but my mom has already paid for hers in advanced and I have to do is show up with the body. Out spot is right down the road from where we hunt, maybe a turkey will swing by and gobble sometime at the cemetary.

Me too, I was 4, remember him having heart attack, them hauling him out. My grandmother died in the same spot in that old house on the same day 30 years later.

Yep.
I scrolled like two posts.

Not necessarily a deer stand, but a special place that I shared with the most loved people in my life.
It would definitely be hunting or fishing related.

Ok rewind the tape

160 user says yo bury him under his deer stand.


I might like to do but..uhhh…which one?? I have 14 set ups right now I rotate in/out of.

So….duh-f uck which one should I pick…how bout a little pinch at all…henceforth- bring a teaspoon, spread me around a little bit at each one..

There….sighhhhhhhh

Now…who da f uck o ly has one deer stand.

Never be a stand burner? What might you ask is a stand burner.

Tune in at another time to learn that. 🙀🤝🥨🍟🌮

My first was my great grandfather, he was 96.

I noticed a young man (early 20's I figured) standing on the road about 50 yards away from us standing at the gravesite, he stood there for a long time before I went and talked to him, I asked him if he knew Joe. He said "yes, he was a good friend of mine", so I asked him to come up and join us. Never will forget that. He came all the way from Ontario to Quebec to pay his respects.

What I want at my funeral is for all the women/lovers I have been with to attend my funeral, would be well over 100 of them telling each other what an idiot I was lol.

Cheers ~

Dad planned and paid ahead (almost 30 years) for his funeral.

County requires a cement vault. His chosen fiberglass casket was no longer available, replaced with Aluminum. No embalming. No use of chapel or service.

We gathered at Cemetary. I spoke a bit. Dad's retired Pastor and lifelong Dentist spoke a bit.

Total cost was just under $4K. I had to kick in $500 or $600 to cover cost increases since Dad had set it up. No big deal. My siblings kicked some back to me.

The Mother in Law........we shopped around a bit and discovered "Cremation Society of Idaho". They were wonderful people. Full service including transport of remains and a couple conferences with survivors came in just over $800.

Other local funeral homes quoted approximately $4K for the same service.

Dying, like marriage, does not have to cost a fortune.

The kids already know Momma and I wish to use the services of Idaho Cremation Society.

The only question is: What to do with the five deeds for plots in the local cemetary, which are sitting in my desk?

Donny! Stop posting that sh it!
Your out of your element!😂

Lemmy from Motorhead had his ashes put in silver "bullets" and had them sent to his closest friends.

Ahhh man slum….
Chill da f uck out. Stop bragging.🤪
Cheers slum🍻
Smoke a cig and smoke and stop taking yourself so
serious.

My Dad’s funeral in 62, he was only 45 I was 7

My first funeral was in 1960 when my grandmother died.

The first funeral I paid for was in 2008 when my mother died.
I could tell the funeral director was lying to me.

I will always remember the ladies at the courthouse where my mother worked. Against County orders, they locked the doors and stood alongside the highway while the funeral proccession passed. They are true Southern ladies and I love them all.

My father when I was 10
This year wife and I prepaid our funeral, ( 9K each)
We didn't want our kids stuck with the task and the expense.

Ha! Told my wife to flush me down the toilet. What do I care, I'm ded.

My brother passed away on October 16 ... my Dad, one of the greatest men who has ever lived, passed away ten days later on the 26th.

It's been tough. I miss them both every day.

Both chose cremation ... it's what we do. When we were kids Dad used-to give us books about warriors, all kinds of warriors from Romans to Vikings, Gauls, Native Americans, et al., it's the way it's supposed-to-be. Either natural decomposition or cremation. They should allow us to set funeral pyers and do it the old family way.

Dad was a master diver ... he really wanted to be put in a boat, set it afire and pushed out to sea.

Funeral homes are a racket. They've gone public, they're under corporate control .... it's a [bleep] racket. Coffins should be built by Sons and holes dug by Sons if that's the way a parent or loved-one wants to go .... even gravestones I can live with. But the whole funeral home, embalming, $6k caskets and $4k plots and $4k to dig a hole and hold a service because they're pushing this thing about God is going to raise the bones .... [bleep] that. Ashes to ashes dust to dust.

I just went through it twice this month with two men I love ... God Bless funeral homes I guess, they come and take the bodies away but when they set you down in the room the next day when you're holding onto memories and they try to up-sell you on caskets and burials ... even urns ... funeral processions, hearses, etc., etc., etc., ... it is absolutely obscene.

I’m truly sorry for your 2 loses, especially so close together. That’s gotta be tough especially since it sounds like you were raised by good and loving parents that taught you how important family is and how special those bonds are.

You and your family are in my prayers Sir.

To the OP….

My first funeral was when I was in the 6th grade. My best friend Kurt used to invite me often to spend the weekends at his family’s beach cabin on Lopez island in the San Juans. We’d ride his 3 wheelers in the forests, fields and beaches for hours. We’d fish, ride horses and hit golf balls into the bay like 2 young boys that owned the world. One spring day we were riding the bus home when Kurt asked if I wanted to go to his cabin that coming weekend, I wanted to say yes but had committed to going fishing with grandpa for opening morning so I told Kurt I’d take a rain check.

I was outside with my other good friend Travis playing in the fort I’d built and shooting starlings with our BB guns when mom called me and Travis inside. Kurt had been killed up on Lopez while riding the 3 wheeler. He didn’t see the barbed wire fence strand and it caught him at the neck. I remember not knowing how to process that information and going back outside to play….all the while feeling guilty for playing. I had many long talks with mom and dad about death and through them began to prepare myself for dealing with death over and over and over again, too many damn times. 2 years later I buried another dear friend after a Coke machine fell over and killed him in his high school gymnasium. It seemed that I averaged a friend a year for too many years and then I got to the age where I’m burying parents and family. I thought a career with much death would help harden me to the pain of those loses….but it doesn’t.

Thank you. Wish I could share their obits without doxing myself. A couple of the guys on this forum know my family and me, they get it .... my brother had his demons he could never overcome. Dad ... he never took a backwards step. 82 years ... he fought 'till the end, I was there with him, he went out like a man. They both did. Brother drank himself to death ... Dad quit drinking 50 years ago and worked to stay in shape until his final days.

When God comes calling then it's time ... but this funeral home racket, most of them good people, I'll give them that but they're so hardened to death and it's all about sales and money ...

Everyone should do like my brother and Dad did ... make yoir wishes known, prepare in advance and don't leave it up to the bereaved ... it's an emotional time, especially for Mom. She's really struggling. Lost her baby of 62 years then her husband of 64 years ... and they still tried-to upsell.

It's obscene.

Dad left big footprints ... wish I could share his obit. He was an incredible man. The things he did, the people who have come forward since his passing to tell us of how he helped them in life and what a difference he made in their lives .... it's been incredible. He lived a good life.

He was strong. It wasn't my brother's passing that killed him ... it was just his time. I'll miss them both every day for the rest of my life ... we all do when it comes to family I think but this man was rare, this man was incredible. More people have asked me, "what was it like being his Son?"

It was great ... it was a blessing.

For my brother, it was probably an impossible set of standards ... I'll never understand that. For me ... it was like being the Son of a living breathing hero. The fairest man I have ever known, the hardest working man I habe ever known. Came from nothing ... yet he achieved so much. He gave me such a headstart, a leg up, am advantage ... and I will always be greatful to him for that.

He really loved life and this country. He was thankful for being born in this country .... he never used being born into poverty as an excuse or as a victim.

Anyways, I could go on and on.

I really wish I could share his obit and the video. But in truth, even that didn't tell a tenth of his life story.

Tell you what Aces ... check your PMs. I'll share it with you .... you may want comment here afterwards and share your thoughts if you wish. Please keep our identities private, I trust you. Be sure to watch the video at the bottom of the obit.

This here is the truth and really fuggin hurt when I buried my first wife at age 37. She did alot for people and put herself out quite a bit, even so that it sometimes caused arguments but she always meant well to help people that were down yet only family came to her viewing or the cemetery. I thought that was pretty low and it still breaks my heart.

As for the OP question, my first funeral was at age 10 of my grandma who died from congestive heart failure. My dad had kinda gave me an idea of what to expect and I was okay, outside of standard grief for losing a grandparent. My uncle Nick died shortly after her from pancreatic cancer but without going into a long drawn out story I got to stumble downstairs into the embalming room during his service. Nobody was in there but I saw all of the machines, table, equipment amd chemicals but even at that age developed a desire to do that job because I saw it as a person doing a thankless job trying to give a grieving family one last decent memory. I did later pursue that career and got along in college until a family emergency ended it for me so here I am a gun mechanic now.

My first funeral was for my youngest Brother ... killed ... a car. I was 8 at the time. He was run over in front of me by a car in Louisville, Kentucky, ... Pleasure Ridge Park just off the Waterson Express Way when my other brother and he lost control of their sled coming down a hill, hit a bush and slid out into a road where a woman couldn't stop in the snow and ice ... and that was it. It happened that fast.

Long time ago. Seems like yesterday.

My other brother never got over it. He died the 16th of last month. He had a drinking problem ... life whipped him.