<p>LOL, worknprogress. My dad was a social worker and years ago attended the funeral of one of his “clients.” The deceased had two ex-wives, a current wife and a mistress all boo-hooing loudly around his coffin. I guess some guys just have it…</p>
<p>You pose an interesting question, missypie. I am struggling lately with how “small” my life circle has become in the last couple of years. My mom (retired teacher) and one of my sisters (very social, old-fashioned neighborhood) have very large circles around them, and the contrast with my life is staggering sometimes. I have some health issues, my professional work (i work freelance from home) has dwindled, and my only D is 1,500 miles away in grad school. Most of my friends work full-time. I keep seeing various circles I belong to, or used to be successful in, shrinking and I feel less connected to the world in general. It’s quite depressing to me. Both my sisters have very successful careers, but I do not. I really enjoyed working part-time from home when my D was here and still in school, but now that we have an “empty nest,” I see the other side of it. I think that maintaining your career as a woman probably helps you to have a “larger” life. I keep looking back in my life and thinking I should have made different choices so that I would now have more in my life. </p>
<p>There would be people at my funeral but nothing at all like my sister, mother, or husband.</p>
<p>I hope my kids and grandkids will remember me when I am gone. I do not care about living large life and being remembered by a lot of people. If person is remembered for being a loving parent, the life is served its purpose in my mind.</p>
<p>I recall attending the funeral of a friend who died young and who was very involved in creating a sport league, coaching etc. Hundreds & hundreds of people of all ages turned out. Ever since I left that town, where I had been well-known and had been extremely involved, I wonder about that, too.</p>
<p>I, too, am self-employed, work from home, and have a smaller life. In my old town, I had had a store front business, was involved in politics, schools, sports, charity work, church, and had a wide social circle, plus all the people who we knew through our kids growing up.</p>
<p>I feel somewhat lazy now, you know? Been there, done that with all the various volunteering and I guess I don’t want to work that hard in a new place. I feel like I don’t want to start over to do what I did before. I am involved and I am volunteering, but even that has a less public face just by happenstance.</p>
<p>The other thing I think about is that I am intrigued by the thought of how many friends & had and people I knew in my old town, and yet now, several years later, how few i ma in touch with. Makes me wonder how significant were those relationships!?</p>
<p>Do not be so sure that you live a small life – no of us can know if and how we touch others’ lives. My father lead what appeared to be a small life, he worked at home at a time when almost no men did, he thought there was not single person in the world he wanted to talk to as much as his wife and kids, the highlight of his day was often a trip to the grocery store or a walk to the library. He did not have close personal friends and was not very fond of his siblings. He was a happy man, but not a man of prestige.</p>
<p>But when he died – oh my. The visitation took hours , the church was overflowing. We found out later they closed the public library for the morning because all the librarians wanted to come to the funeral (This was not a small town library, but a city library). We saw people we had not seen in ages. My third grade teacher, our pediatrician, old neighbors from thirty years ago, the man who reads the gas meter, old classmates that none of us kids had heard from in years. Everyone with a story, people kept telling us how much he meant to them in very personal ways. It was stunning. (The gas man wept in the church so hard my brother had to help him out. It turned out that when he would come to the house to read the meter he and my dad would have lunch together and talk about the world. None of us knew this). </p>
<p>So while you may think you have a small life, do not be so sure.</p>
<p>My DH does meals on wheels a few times a week and has very warm and loving relationships with his elderly clients. He has been called in the middle of the night by some for aid and comfort. He has left his bed more than once, to answer a call for help. It is almost certain that he will outlive these people and also certain that none of them will attend his funeral service. Is a potential smaller crowd really an indicator on how many people you have affected in a wonderful way?</p>
<p>That’s sweet, lololu.</p>
<p>“Some couples we just don’t like much as we get to know them well (they probably think the same thing about us!)”</p>
<p>MP- YES! I feel this, too. The nice woman I exercise with and talk with who on evening get togethers drinks to get drunk; the friendly mom I meet in a classroom volunteer situation who ends up being a vicious gossip; the woman who is so fun & friendly one on one who becomes a Danielle Steele like name dropper in situations with more than just the two of us. And so often, the situation when you like one member of the couples, but the other one, not so much! Oh, and then the friends who are divorcing and changing their focus for socialising.</p>
<p>my mom lived a “small life”. she died at a relatively young age (68) and I was stunned by the number of people who came to her funeral. she was quietly kind, caring and generous, and had evidently touched many more lives than we, her family, were aware. so missypie, I wouldn’t measure the size of your life just by the number of names in your address book; you are undoubtedly touching many more. especially here on CC. like LTS did - talk about a virtual funeral!</p>
<p>I volunteer as a tutor at a youth shelter and I listen on a suicide/crisis hotline. These activities are small in the number of people they immediately affect, but there is room for them to be large, very large, in the magnitude of the impact.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s awesome. Even if you never meet the people on the hotline, you know you are helping.</p>
<p>Both my parents lived “small lives,” but they had huge wakes and funerals, mainly because they were relatively young when they died and they had lived in their community all their lives. Also they had gone to lots of wakes and funerals in the community while they were alive, and they had large families that lived nearby.</p>
<p>In contrast, my in-laws have lived “bigger lives” and have lived their whole lives in the same community, but all of their siblings and most of their peers have already passed away. I am guessing that when they die – in their 90s or later, hopefully – their funerals will be smaller than my parents’ because fewer of the people whose lives they were an active presence in will still be around.</p>
<p>My advice: If you want a big funeral, die young; die where you have lived most of your life; and while you are alive, go to lots of other local families’ weddings, wakes, visitations, and funerals.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s the truth. Our choir sang at Greer Garson’s memorial service and the church was only about half full. Sure she was an Academy Award winner, but she was in her 90s when she passed on, so her Hollywood buds were mosly long gone.</p>
<p>In addition to putting back shopping carts, I’d like to have it mentioned that I was a very considerate driver. I always let in merging traffic. 
(It is possible that this may also be listed as my cause of death.)</p>
<p>The hard thing about maintaining friendships after multiple moves is that, while you are alone and not “connected” in your new place, your old friends are going on as a group together and don’t really need your friendship anymore. You might have left a small hole in the group, but after awhile, that is hardly noticeable. Also, there are those who just don’t like to keep in touch with people who are out of sight/long distance. It hurts to realize (and makes one feel sort of desperate and pathetic) that your friendship was disposable. These folks, who were the dearest friends I had in various places, will surely not come to my funeral. They will never call or email or even wonder where I went. Sad, but true.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>We gave my MIL an 80th birthday party in September with 107 people present. I don’t really think I know 107 people who would show up to a party for me. I agree – she hasn’t stopped talking about that party since it happened. It made her so happy. I’m sure she’d choose that any day over a large attendance at her funeral when she’s not there to enjoy it. I think my MIL probably has a larger life than I do that way, but it’s because she’s extremely social and in a number of clubs, etc.</p>
<p>Will Rogers said (about Trotsky), "I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I didn’t like." I do think there are people who really are “people persons” who genuinely like everyone. I’m probably much too critical … I’d prefer solitude to the company of some people.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t remember who said, “A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” Great observation.</p>
<p>My only hope in death is to have made the world better by being kind, and by teaching my children to be kind. They can dump my body in the sewer for all I care.</p>
<p>I was really startled to read the OP as I’ve been thinking about this very question a lot recently. I’ve attended about 8 funerals in the past two or three years and each one has been very heavily attended. After the last one, two weeks ago, I remarked to a friend that my funeral could be held in my walk-in closet, and it’s a very small closet. Like the OP, I’m puzzled by how my life turned out this way. I’m actually very friendly but I’ve moved around internationally for much of my life and now that my kids have fled, I’m not connected primarily through the schools as I was for 20-plus years. I find it a little bit embarrassing actually to think how few people might attend my funeral.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sooooooo environmentally unfriendly, mantori! :D</p>
<p>I too live a small life, practice law, but have worked from home for over a decade. I have clients and other lawyer relationships that I have had for decades, but I don’t think any would show up at the funeral. With the kids leaving I am seeing those “friendships” that were based on soccer games or other school events just drifting away. I have never made friends easily. My H and I used to joke long before we had kids that we were a pair of hermits and it still seems that way. I am at that point where I am thinking about the next phase of life and whether and how to make it more meaningful. I could easily just drift along like I am for another 5 or 10 years. But we had kids after 12 years of marriage because we thought there had to be more meaning in life than just traveling and raising a dog. Now I feel like I am back thinking about this again.</p>