I shared your opinion until I attended my first funeral as an adult. They are very important for the grieving process, at least to me.
That doesn't mean much money needs to be spent, I've only been to scaled down funerals where there's a short ceremony and a meal afterwards.
Eh. For children of less than stellar parents, a funeral is:
- A bad person gets celebrated in a way that is not aligned to your understanding
- A bunch of people who don't know about the less than stellar bits offering what feels like performative grief
- Others who enabled the less than stellar bits angry their applecart has been upset, looking to lash out at a scapegoat.
Obviously not everyone has this negative experience, but narcissism is in about 6.2-7.7% of the population; other "dark traits" are also around in a long tail. So it's not unreasonable to expect around 12-15%? of people risk a potential increase to trauma at an already complex time of their lives.
