How is a funeral important to my family's grieving?

Funerals help give meaning to life
Every life is a rich tapestry of memories, emotions, and experiences. Each of our lives has a story to tell; a meaning to uncover. Funerals help us express the importance of a life lost. They help tell your loved one's story and pass it on to future generations.

Funerals help you acknowledge and express feelings of loss
Acknowledging and expressing your feelings of loss is an important stop in your journey of resolving grief. Funerals provide a prime opportunity for you, perhaps with the presence of concerned others, to confront your loss and express your feelings.

Funerals help family and friends give vital support
Funerals are social rituals that strengthen the relationship between the living and dead. The support and compassion from family and friends provides you with vital validation to your feelings, spiritual sustenance to your soul, and the courage to continue on in your life's journey.

Funerals help stimulate the recollection of the loved ones
As family and friends gather at a funeral, the past becomes alive. With the telling of each story, the remembrance of each incident, the sharing of each memory, your relationship to the deceased is strengthened.

Funerals help reconcile the changed relationship between you and your loved one
As you mourn for the deceased, your relationship with them changes.

Funerals help you review your relationship to your lost loved one. They also may serve as a separation and switching point from a relationship of presence to one of memory.

MFDA: Celebrating Life Since 1880 | Generations of Caring