I gave the eulogy for my uncle's funeral yesterday, and since I'm no longer a jdub I kept the discourse neutral re: religion and the afterlife. My uncle didn't believe in a heaven or hell, and I knew that during the concluding song & pray, given by his friends, that would cover that subject. I spoke about what he was as a person, what he believed in, what we will miss about him, and what he would want the survives to do. It went well until the end when I let other people say a brief comment or two in his behalf. At first the comments was about my uncle and then the JDub matriarch of the family, my mother, got up to speak. Needless to say, she went on and on with the paradise rhetoric, etc. The only nice thing she said about my uncle was that he give her money. I feel her comments was way out of line - Besides the fact that he kicked her out of his house a month or two before he died for preaching that same rhetoric to him, she made it her point to witness to the audience (Hell, she might as well have given the discourse), her comments didn't even reflect the spirit of the occasion. While everyone was talking about my uncle as an individual , she starts preaching. Not only did she seemed like a process lunatic, but the audience was wondering 'what's going on?'
Many Jubs are very inconsiderate. While they know for a fact that folks don't want to hear that mess, they make it a point to spew it anyway. My uncle was no Jdub and always disagreed with them, especially when he saw how they treated me when I left the BORG. It was no secret, to me and any Jdub whom he spoke with, that he didn't care for their teachings. My mother wanted to force feed folks but when his friends started singing the church songs, most of my jdub family walked out - It was disgusting, the height of disrespect all the way around.
It was evident that his friends knew him better than his family b/c when I was talking about my uncle, they nodded and agreed with just about everything I said, but my family seemed surprise. Most of the jdub family didn't even visit him in the hospital while he was dying of lung cancer.
Just before I made my break with the BORG, my jdub family tried to discourage me from associating with my uncle. They weren't really concern about me as they were about the 'skeletons in the closet'. My uncle knew everything about my jdub family before they were jdubs and they wanted that info to stay a secret. But once I hook up with him, he told me everything. In fact, they would often say to me "what did he say about me?" I said "oh, he say plenty of things, but mostly good stuff."
They really shouldn't have showed up - I gather they were there just to say 'they were there' and to have something to talk about, because they surely wasn't a source of comfort to me.
Just based on the definition of eulogy "high praise", my Jdub mother was dead wrong. It's "high praise" for the decease, not the religion's dogmactic dogma.
Just needed to get that off my chest.
Peace - Larry