To top off the depressing talk the Witnesses didn't talk to me at my mom's funeral in 96, I am dissasociated, that made it twice as hard. I thought when I was a JW in the late seventies they could talk to you at funerals, has that changed?
Read some responses of those that attended a jw funeral talk........
by troubled mind 43 Replies latest jw friends
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Hellrider
The depths of sickness in the JW-mentality had never really occured to me until we buried my JW-mother. She still believed the JW-crap, but hadn`t been to a meeting in many years, and in addition to that, 4 of her kids are non-JWs (one DFed). So we decided to have the service in a church. Most of the JWs were smart enough to stay away from the funeral, but one of them came, of course, to preach to us fallen-away children of hers! He walked around, talking to all of us about how something like this should "make us think", and how close the end was (he even had a scrap-book with newspaper-articles about wars, natural disasters etc, in the world, to "prove" this, ha ha). I could have clocked him there right then and there. Then, a couple of years later, we buried my grandfather on my fathers side. He had never been a JW, and didn`t have a religious bone in his body. His daughter, who was a JW, had taken him to a couple of meetings during his last months, and voilà, of course that meant he had to be buried the JW-way. I had no idea, noone had warned me that it would be a JW doing to service, and was pretty shocked at the funeral. The chapel was filled with JWs. At least I thought that that idiot doing the service would keep it "neutral", but oh no, he went on and on about Armageddon, the ressurection, etc, the whole deal. I just stood up and walked out. After this, I went to my local newspaper, was interviewed, had photos taken and everything, and they were going to run it as a story, "Jehovahs Witnesses crash funerals", but after a couple of days, the journalist called me and called it off. He had talked to the DO, and, I suspect, lawyers. So much for freedom of speech. I tell you, it`s like being up against the Matrix. But if I ever have to bury a loved one again, and they show up, all hell`s gonna break lose.
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drew sagan
I remember how all these JWs while I was studying stood so proudly by the fact that their funerals where "better" than anybody elses, and how they talked about the person, and what their life was about. Not once did I ever attend a JW funeral that fit such a description. Most everyone here knows that I can be pretty moderate in my opions of the JWs faults, but their funerals are simply disgusting. Using it as a tool to bring in new members who may have had a "change in circumstance" makes me sick.
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Bonnie_Clyde
I attended a JW funeral in 2003. The sister's brother-in-law (a former elder) conducted the funeral and it was at a funeral home. He did a pretty good job. Although he talked some about her "hope", he also had some non-jw relatives come up and share their memories of the deceased. However, at the end of the discourse, he did something unprecedented at a witness funeral. He had a non-jw friend come up and sing the "Lord's Prayer." She did a beautiful job. All of a sudden an elder and his wife toward the back of the room stood up and walked out, followed by about ten other elders and their wives. One even went back for a moment to pick his umbrella up off the floor and went back out. The personnel at the funeral home were really disturbed at this exodus. I and a few other people I knew were disgusted.
The deceased had a nephew who was DF'd. I found out that at the service meeting there was a special talk on what to do if a disfellowshipped person showed up at the reception after the funeral. In the neighboring congregation, they didn't have the talk so one of the elder's wives called up all the publishers to tell them what they were supposed to do if he showed up. Well they got lucky. The DF'd nephew's wife delivered a baby the night before and so they did not attend.