My family was less into one thing or the other religiously. We picked and chose religions, being Lutherans, Unitarians, Jews, atheists, agnostics, Baptists, Methodist and there was the lone Catholic. Who felt rather oppressed as we didn't take it seriously.

We were all secularists and believed in freedom of choice and thinking, but saw the First Amendment and separation of state as primary. Different days back then, I guess.

Some embraced the poetry and metaphor of religion as I did, but overall for us the message that we all followed was the Golden Rule. We saw all religions as the same and just a search for the meaning of life such as science is, according to what knowledge different times had. When these religions started we didn't have modern science as we do now. That is my view of what religion was at one time for many, and picked according to upbringing.

But it looks like your family has a definite set of likes and dislikes. We made no ceremony of funerals in my family. For us, that was it, the hereafter being unknown and individual belief.

So that is where I fall in, that a funeral is merely for the comfort of those living. The dead have no concern. Follow the wishes of the family. I didn't want to have a funeral, period. but have family and friends who want one. So it will be simple and I will be in a colobarium or as I jokingly call it the commie cemetary. My ashes will be mixed with thousands of others. At one time I wanted to have my ashes in the Gulf, but after BP, I didn't want that. Two of my relatives chose to have their ashes put in the places the wanted the most. One had her ashes buried in a garden, the other had his put in the Gulf as he wanted to be connected to his homeland of Sweden. The thinkgs people think...

I know of one family that had a very large funeral in Michigan. They all came to see the interring of the patriarch of the family and played many songs that they felt expressed what he was to them.

I used to imagine having the Eagles Desperado and few other such things played for myself, but really do not wish to have anything remarkable for myself. I wanted to be left on a mountain of old growth forest to be at peace because that to me is the most spiritual thing on Earth.

Know that I will be thinking of you during this time.