A cousin died in UT. I don't live there. Although I grew up there.

We all saw each other frequently. I wasn't close to him, age difference. In adulthood I thought he was a jerk.

About a decade ago his youngest sister died. She, my older sister and I were all in our 50s. I felt her loss a great deal. I was living on the coast and estranged from my family. I did nothing to mourn her and her loss bothered me for years. It still does to some degree.

So there's a graveside service for the recently deceased cuz that we can zoom into. I figured it would be a welcome and a dedicatory prayer.

Oh hell no. It's a full fledged Mormon funeral in a cemetery. I bailed after the first talk. At an hour and a half its still going on.

Thanks for listening.

Sorry that you're dealing with this. Family can be toxic, and have no respect for boundaries or people who think differently.

You can't just assume people will believe you have faith, ya gotz ta prove it!

How merciful that his family will have the tape to prove their faithfulness, not to mention they can watch it over and over.

Maybe they think something like this is useful so that you can use this video to, like, wallpaper over the shitty memories they have of him doing shitty things?

Yes. An hour and a half and still going. Geez. That turned into a who's the most righteous speaking contest.

I filled my quota on listening to Plan of Salvation talks at Mormon funerals. Last one I heard was in the dedicating the grave prayer that lasted a full half hour and I had already heard a lengthy one from the SP during the funeral.

Gives the phrase "enduring to the end" a new meaning.

We had a graveside service for my wife
It was about half an hour and covered all the salient points.
Her body inside the casket was then lowered into the grave and covered over.
I miss her and mourn her loss

Sorry to hear DesertRat.

Funerals are confusing things. The only thing we take from them is the bill from the mortuary and our memories.

I choose to think there is a purpose for the experience of it all. I think there is something to be said for growing into better people and that we each get a chance at that.

Here is to hoping you are feeling somewhat better with time.

I dont know what it is about mormon funerals but mormons make it a cringeworthy experience. The leaders take over. Like nails on a chalk board.

Good thing you can Zoom in and out.

Sorry for your losses. The final whistle can be stark and decisive. Emotions can be tangled. Relationships are complex. And sometimes our feelings can surprise us.

Yes, it was much easier to step away from zoom than walk out on a funeral.

Oddly or perhaps not so oddly, 20 minutes of the zoom funeral helped me resolve my feelings about my cousin who died about 10 years ago. A Mormon funeral would not have been a comfort to me.

And DesertRat, I'm sorry for your loss.

Do you remember how Boyd KKK Packer taught that we were to use funerals only as a missionary tool, and not waste time talking about the dead person or his/her family?

Cludgie, that is one of the very issues that I have always found so fundamentally wrong about Mormon funerals. The last one I attended, long after I had left the church, was a neighbor who was never a member though his family was. I went to pay my respects to a good neighbor, the kind who was always ready to help someone in need of a hand. I sat through more than an hour of Mormon talk by ward leaders in charge of the service who clearly knew nothing of the man, but plenty about salvation and such. Since I was Xed from that ward, the only way to get out back when I left, I would have caused a problem had I tried to speak but I desperately wanted to say something to honor the man instead of all the worship of church. .

Sorry you had to go through that, Kentish. That's a real shame.
It's definitely indicative of a cult that the family members,
although they are apparently TBM, can't respect the non-member,
even in death. They've certainly "done the work" for him too.
It's too bad that it's not just pathetic, because it's also
hurtful at times. Ironically, death and other tragedies are often
exploited by them to reel in the unsuspecting, and in a situation
like this, where they have a chance to actually do the right
thing, and possibly even make a good impression on a nonmember,
they squander it with all their B.S.