I did mean that the funeral with relatives would still go ahead, but you would only attend something personal, as an extra to the traditional funeral.

this is a great idea.

the optics will be bad and people will talk shit.

no doubt about it, specially in the south.

I’m guessing the people in this thread calling similar feelings “petty” or “insane” just don’t have the same level of trauma.

correct, there is a huge bias on this thread about family, happy family, keeping up appearances… I never expected it to be that strong.

your first paragraph made me laugh.

Good luck to you.

That’s the childish response I was talking about.

then I’m childish. Note I don’t say that meaning I should change. What I’m tempted to do is to agree with mother what to do with his corpse after he dies because I have the feeling she also hates some family members pretty strongly and would prefer to be her genuine self during a ceremony like this than having to cater to visitors and see the ones that wronged her, pretending all is fine and dandy.

People are flawed.

absolutely. As you said, I’m childish and don’t want to change. My father has the good traits and also the bad ones I mentioned. Why should I only mention his good side? Because we’re family? My father cheated on my mother, my mother forgave him. This I’ll never understand.

A funeral is a time when everyone who cared for you comes together to create the last impression. You, as his son, have a lot of power to make it a good one.

yes, with the ones I care about, the ones I respect, not with a bunch of rednecks.

As I understand it from your description, you have prioritized avoiding discomfort over attending his funeral (his final wish), and you’ve prioritized avoiding discomfort by telling him that you’re going to skip instead of even softening the blow by shouldering the burden of a white lie. You chose yourself twice over your dying dad’s feelings and final requests.

Because I don’t know what’s the right call here: do I treat him like the adult he always was, being brutally honest with him when dealing with difficult issues because we all die or do I treat him like a scared child incapable of having sound decisions anymore, a person that only reacts and thinks emotionally?

If you don’t accept and possibly forgive his humanity now, when will you?

this is a very good question. How does forgiving and accepting his humanity look like to you? Because to me, now, accepting his humanity means white lying to him, lying to him to hide an unpleasant reality. But this means I’m treating him like a child, means the father I always knew is gone.

Spending 2-3 hours at the funeral home with his open casket, is a more personal way to say your farewells and honour him.

as said, I wouldn’t mind a small Christian funeral where I could vet visitors. I’m all for a personal, even intimate farewell, but he wants the crowd.

Scattering his ashes at an agreed location of shared importance for the both of you, can be a powerful final goodbye.

Things I proposed already:

• burn his corpse, use the ashes to grow a tree, small ceremony with me, mother and brother. Even with a priest.

• burn his corpse to scatter his ashes on a river of his choosing, small ceremony with me, mother and brother. Even with a priest.

• burn his corpse, put the ashes in three small containers so each of us makes his own ritual.

• not burn the corpse, simply put the corpse in a hole, plant a tree over the corpse.

he wants the Christian cross with the crowd next to his mother. And me there, even if I feel is stupid. This is to be taken literally, he has already bought a place for my corpse to be buried next to him.

I feel he doesn’t care about how this makes me feel, which I guess happens to so many families when conflicts like this arise.

Are you even ever going to see these people again?

the only ones I care about are my mother and brother.

Ask your mom/siblings if they need the support, if you like them.

this is the best answer so far. With difference.

I can’t fathom why people want you to engage with people who make your life worse for no gain. Yeah, smile for your boss because you need the paycheck, but this?

cannot upvote this enough

yours is an interesting post, I’ll try to rebut it.

I don’t want to honor an important person by having to deal with people I don’t like, that in the past stated very clearly they don’t like my mother to the point of calling her a gold digger (and worse).

Something I’ll never understand is why my father is so accommodating with people like that for family’s sake. To me that makes him weak and lets others walk all over him, even to the point of disrespecting his own wife for ‘family’. This I’ll never understand.

To me doing what you propose means turning something pure into a show, a theatrical production.

I’ll have to talk to my mother about this. If he goes first, she’s the one who’ll decide.

I agree with you, just wanted to see how unpopular this position is

I agree with you but wanted to see how un-popular my take is

He isn’t going to bar his sisters from attending his funeral

true, but my mother might. There is really that much animosity.

As a matter of fact, on one of my great grandfather’s funeral 2 brothers banded together to exclude a third one from the funeral. According to my father, this person had to leave the cemetery but then climbed up a tree next to the wall to watch the ceremony.

So there is already a precedent about excluding unwanted visitors from a funeral in my completely normal family 🤣

That doesn’t make any sense.

if what I described happens anywhere, why even change jobs?

Why is this such a big deal to you. So what if your co-workers enjoy their work. That has nothing to do with you.

because I feel this is a trap where I’m supposed to say that I love my job more than anything, because I think this is how managers search for the ones who only want a paycheck and to leave work stuff at the workplace, because I work to live, not live to work, because I only want to do my hours and enjoy my life away from my coworkers, because managers actively search for the ones who drink the kool-aid and believe they will get a promotion if they just try harder, because the ones who ‘enjoy’ their jobs are the ones happy to work for the manager for free, because the ones who ‘like’ their jobs are the ones less likely to establish boundaries (and enjoy being exploited).

Trying harder just means you get a pat on your back and a bigger shovel, not a raise.

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your answer is some kind of zen level wisdom I still need to master.

Happy that you can, but apparently I cannot (yet?)

are you sure you didn’t mean to say ‘you are’?

does this also work with women? most nurses I work with are women and are simply incapable of being silent more than 2 minutes.

they may be offended in short term. but in the long you will have more respect.

they WILL be offended and proceed to furiously talk behind my back and destroy my credibility

I’m very introverted and to me any kind of question about me is a prying one: my age, where I was born, how long I’ve been living where I am. I simply don’t get why I have to tell my coworkers about this, nor I understand why they get offended if I don’t answer the question. If I’m fired or I quit I’m not going to see them ever again. Who cares?

I’m a nurse and at my hospital there are rituals that bore me but anyone else finds, apparently, great: after report, talking time, usually 30 minutes. They talk about boring stuff, are loud and obnoxious, I simply don’t understand why adults act like this. I read to pass the time, but have to be there with them because we’re officially working. This happens at least three times per shift: once more to have lunch (for whatever reason we ALL must have lunch together, even if it means not having your own chair) and after charting, where, once again, I must remain with them because that’s officially working time. If I leave, have a seat in the pause room and start reading, I get yelled at, no matter than I can also hear the bell from there.

It gets very boring. God my new job cannot start soon enough.

I don’t have the luxury of having my own working station.

I’ve started to do extra chores just not to have to hear them. It also reduces the chance of them asking me about me.

Yeah every single one of your coworkers is childish on an elementary school level, sure.

I guess I should’ve written ‘my coworkers sometimes behave like elementary school children’ which is every time they have nothing to do. This is what I feel. I guess to them, they ain’t being childish but engaging. To me it still feels childish.

You either work with a ton of real weirdos, or more likely are way overemphasizig to get people to take your complaints more seriously.

I don’t believe I’m overemphasizing. This is how perceive reality. And I haven’t even started with the patient population

Your perception of yourself and your coworkers is not as objective and devoid of emotion as you think.

you are right, everything I wrote is how I perceive reality, which is, mostly subjective, but to me it still feels objective, if that makes sense. I don’t believe my post (the one that started the thread) is objective, it’s how I perceive my coworkers.

They demand authenticity and complain that people express emotions in the same sentence.

wait, you are right. My coworkers are authentic and they get along among themselves, whereas my way of being authentic seems to be the complete opposite. They are authentic being silly, loud and childish, I am authentic reading a book and not yapping.

We are simply incompatible. I mean its sad people believe a workplace is like an elementary school, but, what can I do to change it? Nothing. I’m glad I’m leaving. In future, I’ll look for jobs where I don’t have to endure silly people like this, a work with as less human contact as possible, or at least with no needy patients that demand you listen to their rants and become their therapist for 4 hours per shift. God I hate that.

The whole post can be summarized as “Life would be so much better if other people’s thoughts and behaviours were organized around me and my preferences”.

while true, I’d suggest ‘Life would be so much better if other people’s thoughts were left unsaid and coworkers let me work’

this is a chance to start looking for better fitting jobs.

I’m in my 50s, always feel like an alien, and still think I’m 19yo.

don’t let anyone take your inner child away. Don’t let society change this about you.

I’m guessing that wasn’t what you wanted to hear.

it’s ok, the book is already helpful. At this point I have no expectations about society anymore. It’s survival mechanisms what interest me.

I’ve at some time adjusted my field of work to be 100% remote, and now I’m seeing how to change even that. I’ve eliminated Interactions with undesired people almost completely.

then “all” I have to do is to keep looking for jobs where I almost never interact with people…