ETA: Thank you all for providing your opinion about this question. I'm contacting my mother and asking her about what she would want, I'll follow her lead and support what she decides. As said I don't believe she wants those toxic family members or her families around on a moment so special like saying your last goodbye to a husband. And neither do I.
I'd prefer a public funeral excluding them or conducting a small Christian ritual for family only where we can mourn him like we want but if she wants them around, so be it.
Funerals are for the living.
Thank you all.
My Christian, old republican southerner father wants me to attend his Christian funeral with all of his surviving relatives present. I don’t believe in any god, he knows that. He needs a religion to give a meaning to his life? Knock yourself out.
Religion is not the main problem here. The main problem is how close minded and fake people are in a southern small town in GA and above all, relatives. 2 aunts love to pretend everything is fine, they excel doing that on funerals and weddings, then stab you in the back as soon as you’re not within ear distance, either need drama to feel important or have way too much free time.
I wouldn’t mind a small Christian ritual with my mother, my brother, a priest and nobody else, but these women and their husbands? They drag everyone down with their stupid grudges about yard sales and business deals made in the early 2020s and seem to be envious of those who left that place and found something better. Last time I saw them, 7 years ago, they complained I don’t call them. What for?
I’m better off without them and don’t have the bandwidth to deal with them.
Family seems to be an identity issue for my father, the idea that his whole family won’t bury him together scares him. I told them I will honor him my way, with luck on the hospital bed where he dies or at home, that mother and brother are welcome to honor him with me, that I won’t attend a funeral with people I don’t like but he is not listening: he is now retorting to manipulate me (it would be so good, wouldn’t it be nice…?)
My father is not cognitively impaired. The easy way out would be to tell him ‘sure, I’ll come to your funeral with all those assholes you care so much about’ and after he dies, ignore it. I suspect my mother would agree, because she wasn’t born in GA and these aunts always felt superior to her, something my father always downplays because ‘we’re family’.
I like treating my father like an adult and want genuine conversations with him. To me, placating him on a thing like this means accepting my father has become a 5 year old who needs to be lied to so he doesn’t start feeling sad or feels I’m attacking him. It doesn’t feel right.
But it feels worse to pretend I respect those lying assholes or to listen to their boring life I don’t care about.
So what do I do?
Hard to say, there's not a lot given on your relationship between you and your father to go on.
But in general, you should probably go unless you have a major beef with him specifically.
I often wonder about this situation for myself tho. By the time they die (unless of course something big happens), all of the grandparents will be dead (Mom's parents already are, Dad's dad is dead (which is GREAT news) already), Mom's last sister will probably be dead, Dad's brothers family is kinda just strangers. Both of them are very Republican churchy people, Dad's brother is too, his wife has an impossibly thick accent (to the literal point where all of us just kinda smiling and nodding and try to avoid conversations with her), and my 2 cousins are much younger than me (about 13-15 years younger) and we don't have any regular contact with them other than maybe Christmas. But they're just as brainwashed as my parents, so I don't actually want relationships with any of my family at all besides my siblings and their kids.
I don't want to go to the funeral(s) because it will be at a church. I've already decided to never go to a church outside of a wedding or funeral, but that doesn't mean I'm eager to go back, especially to my childhood church. I don't want to be exposed to any of those people at all. I have no relationships with any of them, and definitely don't want to. I think they all assume I go to some other church now, and if that dam bursts it's gonna become a scene. Unless I find a way to get a grip. Religion and church... I don't know if I can even claim the word "triggers me" because I didn't experience a singular moment of clear abuse, but it sends me up the wall with some kinda of feelings, as I was ONLY exposed (outside of some grocery store trips) to people from church before Mom finally gave up homeschooling, so I had absolutely zero secular social life until just before I could get a driver's license. It took until I hit 30 before I finally had the moment where it hit that church was total bullshit. It was a weird slow ramp until that moment, but it was a very important singular moment to me.
Anyway, tldr is I don't care about anyone that would show up at all. Except for my siblings. I highly dislike almost every one of them, outside of maybe Dad's coworkers (but only because I don't know them) and my friends (from back in church days) that I would be fairly neutral with, even tho so if them (afaik) are still in the religion.
I mean if they die separately it'll be more difficult to skip out, but if they die together (and still no will documented) we'll probably just bury em and split everything up evenly (whatever there is after selling estate anyway). Even the half of my siblings that is still sorta religious have little regard or memory of any of the people at the church, and the other half definitely share my feeling on it.
But one of the religious half is a funeral director, so he might try to make something out of it, but would probably get shut down. If they put in some advanced desire thing we'll probably abide by it, but if they don't, time to toss the bodies and run, shipping the funeral process. Dad's brother can just be mad about it, fuck that conservative bastard.