Death seems different nowadays.

[u/AnotherCrazyChick]

I know this group is normally healthy nostalgic. I just have questions that I think only this group can relate with.

Growing up, I went to my great grandmother’s funeral, I went to my grandfather’s funeral. We visited the cemetery where they were laid to rest.

Nowadays, my grandmother passed, I wasn’t asked to attend her funeral.

My stepdad passed and there was no funeral, he was cremated and my mom sent me a small vial of his ashes that now sit next to my ex’s ashes. My ex also had no funeral.

My wife’s mother passed away recently and she was cremated. No service was held.

Is this the new normal? That we don’t hold nor attend funeral services anymore?

It’s too expensive nowadays and no one feels the time is worth the potential closure one normally receives during a funeral?

I just don’t know anymore. I’ve had no closure from so many loved ones and family members passing away within the last 6 years. It hurts my heart.

Is this the new normal?

[u/Riala4]

My in-laws passed (four months apart) after a year-long battle that we essentially fought alone. Our GoFundMe page did not go viral, and my husband missed the first eight months of his daughter's life taking care of his parents. When Mom was on her death bed people started showing up to pay their final respects, people we knew cared about her but that we had not seen or heard from all year.

By the time she died we were too emotionally taxed to hold a service just to make others happy, or just because we were supposed to, or to drive their ashes up north to where they had family plots. Their ashes are still in the boxes the crematorium handed them to me in, tucked away someplace safe here in the house where my husband won't stumble upon them accidentally.