I’ve long had a theory that the less $$ you spend on a goodbye, the better it might be. It’s so easy to just buy stuff as a way to either mollify your grief, assuage any guilt you might have, or just as a way to feel like you’re doing the right thing, somehow. You’re not analyzing why, you’re just buying. It seems a safer choice than not buying.
But what if you decided to spend as little as possible? And not to be cheap, and certainly not because of any lack of love for your dearly departed. Just an intentional decision to not spend any needless $$. Here’s some reasons behind such a drastic, frowned-upon, and socially-incorrect move:
• You deliberately don’t want the goodbye to be about expensive merchandise, ’cause… well, it’s not your thing
• You want to actually to be physically involved as much as possible, e.g. making or decorating a plain box, putting together a video yourself (instead of paying the funeral home do it), or hand-making memorial keepsakes for people rather than order some stock item
• You’d rather spend $$ on experiences for all of you survivors, or donate that $$, or earmark it for something else that is unique to your family
I don’t know if there’s any correlation between spending less on funeral home merchandise and feelings of peace and fulfillment. But I suspect that if you replace so many cash expenditures with home-made and/or personally arranged designs and engagements, you might have deeper and more profound feelings of having really, truly honored and celebrated your person.
Just a thought. Anybody with me?