What do you think about family members who override a deceased person's wishes?

[Anonymous]

If it's too complicated, I'm not doing it. I will let you die thinking I'm doing it, if that gives you comfort, but I'm not doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most relatives who go against a deceased's wishes rationalize it by thinking that the deceased wouldn't mind too much, or at all. My MIL buried her husband and youngest son - they both had Buddhist ceremonies, because they are Asian and my MIL is Buddhist, even though neither are practicing and they didn't particularly want it. But I see how they would forgive her. My FIL also wanted some of his ashes to be spread across his favorite part of the French Riviera, which is illegal in France. His surviving sons made a special trip and did it anyway.

So, eh.

I've always wondered the point of making laws like this. How are you going to track a person throwing dust? What a waste of time law. Kudos to the son for doing as his father wanted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My grandfather buried my grandmother even though she asked to be cremated. He was upset at the thought and “couldn’t” do it. My mom always felt bad that she didn’t push harder.

My ex-husband (husband at the time) told me that he always regretted cremating his mother because he didn't have a place to visit/lay flowers/talk to her. When he died years later, and his sister was making plans to cremate him to save on cost, even though we were long divorced, I made it a point to tell her what he told me. She honored it and buried him, and my kids have a place to visit him.

[Anonymous]

Instead of judging those family members, why don't you show some empathy for the likely many years they had to make sacrifices to be there for aging parents often at the expense of their own children, spouses and selves while you the outside relative or friend, probably visited a few times if that. You have too much time on your hands if you obsess about this.

If someone wants their ashes in a local park 5 minutes away that's one thing, but leaving a list of time-consuming requests says a lot about what the person must have been like alive. It's usually the kind and empathetic people who actually think about how burned out their kids will be when the end comes and are appreciative to the end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For instance, a person writes in their will that they want to be buried in a certain cemetery, pays the cemetery in advance for the spot and for employees to handle the body after death. Yet after the person dies their family try to override their wishes and bury the person in a different cemetery against their wishes.

Another example would be a family having a religious funeral for a staunch atheist.

If the atheist ends up being correct in their beliefs that at that point they’re dead, gone and beyond caring so no harm done if the closest survivors are comforted by having a religious service (provided they use their own money/inheritance to pay for it and don’t divert money from other designated beneficiaries.)

In my mind it’s worse to deny someone who wanted (and left sufficient money to pay for) a religious burial.

That makes sense. I can't imagine an atheist who was truly atheist caring at all because they believe they cease to exist at death, so would not attempt to exert their will after the body is dead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For instance, a person writes in their will that they want to be buried in a certain cemetery, pays the cemetery in advance for the spot and for employees to handle the body after death. Yet after the person dies their family try to override their wishes and bury the person in a different cemetery against their wishes.

Another example would be a family having a religious funeral for a staunch atheist.

If the deceased stipulated their burial or will issues AND pre-funded and arranged them, they should be honored.

If the deceased stipulated their burial wishes and dumped the costs, calls, arrangements, etc on survives, then cremation it is.

I say this as someone’s whose one in law wants a burial plot in Turkey, yet lives here in the States and made zero arrangements, plans or funding of it. Just his romantics vision of the homeland he left 45 years ago. Meanwhile his American wife chose cremation. No plans to be buried together or ashes spread various meaningful places.

Unless one of the sons tells him to plan and fund his romantic, fancy, dead parent-pleasing, $30,000 body prep, body flight, land plot, funeral homes on both sides fees burial in Ankara himself, it won’t be happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My grandfather buried my grandmother even though she asked to be cremated. He was upset at the thought and “couldn’t” do it. My mom always felt bad that she didn’t push harder.

My ex-husband (husband at the time) told me that he always regretted cremating his mother because he didn't have a place to visit/lay flowers/talk to her. When he died years later, and his sister was making plans to cremate him to save on cost, even though we were long divorced, I made it a point to tell her what he told me. She honored it and buried him, and my kids have a place to visit him.

Both my parents were cremated, and their urns are buried in a family cemetery plot - cremating doesn’t preclude having a place to visit. It worked out because there was only one plot left and the cemetery allowed two creations per lot or one coffin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think some people have delusional ideas about what must be done for their death.

I knew one family where the difficult father expected to have his body shipped to another state and buried near his brother and he thought anyone who wanted to say their goodbyes would travel for a ceremony.

The adult children worked full time, didn't get along, had their own major struggles, children to raise and no time for all of that.

He wanted a certain type of ceremony and assumed all his elderly friends would some how transport themselves to another state for it. Many of his friends were unable to walk and/or had dementia.

In a case like that, sorry, you have passed.

If you can't be realistic then either pay a service to carry out your wishes. The adult siblings agreed on nothing except they were not going to do backflips for a deceased father they had to bite their tongue to have any relationship with at all.

Indeed, some do. Lack of self awareness and a strong self-centeredness plus cluelessness / ignorance (wife always does stuff for me!) will do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think we owe it to our loved ones not to be high maintenance about death. Often there are many years of selflessly caring for someone, being there for emergencies, and by the end your own body crashes. It’s one thing to request a local priest, or have a chosen song be played it’s another thing to have a list of exhausting demands. Your loved ones likely have barely even slept the last weeks of your life and after supporting you through a prolonged illness, they are a shadow of themselves. Declined are much longer than they used to be. Many caregivers are rewarded with their own serious illness at the end. Have some respect for those you love and keep the requests simple.

Agree, only some Americans seem to not be a burden in old age.
My Asian and European friends elderly parents have many demands. Now and for their funerals and burials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mom is in assisted living near my brother after my dad’s death. Almost everyone they know has already passed. She has dementia. I can’t imagine flying her body in a casket to Maine for a Catholic funeral in a church in a town she hasn’t lived in for five years and where no one would come since all her friends are dead followed by a burial in a town one hundred miles away where my dad grew up. Oh, and in places where the ground freezes all winter you have to come back in spring for a funeral. Not sure what we will do. It will likely be only her children and spouses.

Same with my 95 year old mil. She has very extensive detailed demands regarding flying her from TX to VA, types of services and burial. Her children are now old and tired and she has no friends.

Oh brother. Does she have a burial plot purchased in VA? Would she alternatively like her ashes flown and spread around VA?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the executor of a person's last will and testament had to do as the will statedl. When my FIL died he also put in his will that he wanted to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery but as only one of his children lived in this area the executor of his will had to go to court to get permission to bury him in a family cemetery.

That's awful. I can't believe the court went along with it -- he earned a spot at Arlington.

Well. He had five children and four of them lived in the same state and they wanted him buried close to them. He still had a full blown military funeral.

So it was important to them to be able to visit the grave of the parent whose wishes they'd disregarded?

Urns of ashes do the same

Or store in a mausoleum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If it's too complicated, I'm not doing it. I will let you die thinking I'm doing it, if that gives you comfort, but I'm not doing it.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Instead of judging those family members, why don't you show some empathy for the likely many years they had to make sacrifices to be there for aging parents often at the expense of their own children, spouses and selves while you the outside relative or friend, probably visited a few times if that. You have too much time on your hands if you obsess about this.

If someone wants their ashes in a local park 5 minutes away that's one thing, but leaving a list of time-consuming requests says a lot about what the person must have been like alive. It's usually the kind and empathetic people who actually think about how burned out their kids will be when the end comes and are appreciative to the end.

Lol, so, so true

[Anonymous]

It's nice to honor the deceased persons wishes, if you can. But, once they're gone, they're gone, and have no say. So leave your last wishes with people you know love and trust. And, does it really matter if they won't be around to experience it?

[Anonymous]

Terrible. There is no worse person than this.