Does being religious make personal loss easier?

[_MishMagnet]

I've been to my fair share of funerals and have never heard hell mentioned. I have been to one funeral where the deceased's name was mentioned only one time - which I did find sad. I've also been to a few non-religious funerals that were very, very nice. A small group of people sharing their rememberances of the person. Personally I find the promises of an afterlife to be very hollow when you are looking at the deceased's 2 year old child who will spend a lifetime without their mother. I will cry all I want when a woman is taken from her children by breast cancer. I don't really care at that point what she went on to, just that there are 4 children who won't have her to come home to anymore.

(sorry for the tangent, this just happened to me last month.)

Sorry for your loss, Bond.

[_Scottie]

I have mixed feelings about this. When I was a young man of 23 or so, my two brothers were killed in a car accident. What was weird for me was that my parents and some LDS family friends told me that I needed to be the strong one, that they were leaning on my faith for support. So I felt like I couldn't grieve because I had this religious role to fill.

I suppose religion does comfort people in the idea of an afterlife that is better than this world, but it wasn't all positive for me.

This reminds me of my brothers death. I was the one that put together the funeral, spoke at the funeral, went to the temple to pray about him (which, by the way, I got NOTHING...but I told everyone that I had an overwhelming sense that God was watching over him and that everything would be ok), did his temple work a year later...

It's very interesteing, because I was thinking about him the other day, and my mind imagined him somewhere looking down on us. I guess some habits die hard.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

It helped me tremendously.

By the way, I'm not a huge fan of the "God needed him/her more," or "he/she is in a better place" approach of consolation. For the record.