“Painfully Awkward”: 46 Of The Worst And Most Chaotic Funeral Stories People Have Shared

I grew up in an apartment above a family owned funeral home. When I was 5 I walked into the middle of a funeral service accidentally in just my whitey-tighties and a cowboy hat. They laughed, I laughed, my dad gave me the belt haha good times.

My Uncle died. He was gay. My Grandmother couldn't handle that.

My Uncle left a letter to be read at his funeral. I don't know if my grandmother planned it all alone or what, but gets to the part that says, "And to my Nieces and Nephews, I want you to know..."

And instead of reading what was there (I know cause me and my dad helped my uncle write it), she went on this huge, insane tangent with tons of swearing about how "none of us should be like him, commit his sins, etc. that he died of aids as a punishment." that was the most homophobic and hateful few minutes I can ever remember hearing.

It was so disrespectful to everyone, and so terrible. She was an ugly person.

A good friend of mine works in a hospital ward and has a guy who fell into his sister's grave and became paralysed! He was down there for hours before they managed to get him out!

I get this isn't an intentional bad thing but I bet it sucked and I feel sorry for everyone involved especially that dude.

The officiant, moved the partner of the deceased back a couple of rows, because they weren’t family. At least that was their initial reasoning... I’m sure it had nothing to do with the partner being same sex.

I was furious.

And then it got worse.

The officiant decided to make the entire funeral about mental health, and how everyone should get help.

Nothing about the life of the loved one. No celebration of their accomplishments, of the beauty they brought to the world. Nothing.

Keep in mind that 80% of the congregation still believed the death was because of physical health reasons. We would’ve coped with the knowledge, but telling us it was taking of one's life only as a platform for the rest of us to ‘seek help’ was heartbreaking.

Only funeral I’ve ever rung and complained about.

The father of a relative that married into my family passed. My father attended the funeral out of respect for our relative, because the man was an absolute awful person. He was jerk to his wife, controlling of his children. He crippled the people in his family - seriously stunted their development. And he was a business owner known to be shady, difficult to deal with, and he'd burned bridges in city after city for years. He managed to bully his way into some power position at the church, which he managed to have divided and shuttered. He died estranged from family.

At the funeral, many more people were there than my dad would have expected. The eulogy was very brief, factual. Then the pastor got up to speak, and he spoke about how the end of things sometimes could be healing. He told a story about how he'd had an unpleasant business deal with the man, how the church had been hurt, and how it had left him bitter for a long time, and that he'd had to pray for forgiveness when he felt relieved when the man had died. As much love as they'd shown for the man, he knew there was pain there, too. He told them all it was ok to feel their feelings, to release their hurt. My dad said that finally people began to cry, and they were getting up and hugging each other while music played.

There was no viewing line, even though there was an open casket. People just sort of left, looking relieved. My dad thought it was a fitting send-off.

My Mother in Law took a photo of a wine glass during the lunch we had after, and she posted it on Facebook. Guess what her caption was?

“Life is Grand.”

It was my mother’s funeral.

A local boy died after being hit by a car while riding his bike. I think he was like 11/12 at the time. His sister, known to all to be very attention seeking, immediately was doing news interviews which just seemed odd, considering he had died earlier that day, but whatever, people grieve differently I suppose. But then at his wake, she took a few photos of him in the casket and posted it to her public Instagram story. It was super bizarre and just bad taste.

My minister once told a story. He was waiting in a room off the sanctuary before the funeral when he heard scuffling noises. When he went to investigate, the brother and sister of the deceased had pulled the body out of the casket and propped it between them. They explained that they didn’t have a recent photo of the three of them and were delighted he showed up to take the picture.

Attendee but not so crazy as amusing. We're in the church for my great grandmothers funeral. Pastor comes in and starts going off about Madeleine this and Madeleine that. After several minutes, I had to shift and take a peek at the coffin to make sure we were at the right funeral. Great grandma hated her birth name and always went by her middle name.

The rabbi giving the eulogy claimed he knew my grandfather really well and often had conversations with him on his deathbed.

1. He mispronounced his first and last name every time he said it.
2. My grandfather spoke almost no English, the rabbi's only language besides prayer-Hebrew.

I guess compared to a child falling out of a casket during a fight, this isn't crazy, but I found it dishonest and disrespectful as hell.

My brother is a Protestant non-denominational minister who is the on call minister for our local funeral home when a family doesn't have a preferred one of their own.

He's told me some crazy stories, but the one that comes to mind is when he was called at literally the last minute for a Catholic funeral. Being Protestant he knew absolutely nothing about conducting a Catholic service and was pretty nervous. This was compounded by the fact that the funeral home didn't have time to give him any info on the deceased other than he was male and relatively young, 20-30ish.

When my brother arrived for the funeral he met the mother of the deceased and tried to make small talk to maybe get a few more details that might be useful in his message.

During his conversation he asked the mother if the deceased had been ill very long, presuming if their had been some accident the funeral director would at least have tipped him off to that.

The mother proceeded to tell my brother that her son had actually been in perfect health, but had died from a self inflicted gunshot during a game of Russian roulette.

Sharing this information with my brother seemed to reopen the wounds and the mother left sobbing in hysterics.

He went on to bluff his way through the Catholic funeral the best he could, but he said he was never more glad for a funeral to be over with.

Her ex told us about all the great things she did in bed and what a loss for mankind that is.
In present of her boyfriend.

Not at a funeral but at my auntie's wake, a dude approached my little sister and hit on her. She was 12 years old.

My great aunt keeled over at my grandfather's funeral.

She died of a heart attack in front of his casket.

At my grandfather's funeral one of the choir members essentially threw a tantrum and ended up interrupting one of my uncles who was giving a speech just because she wasn't given any food. The thing is there wasn't any food at the funeral to begin with.

2 different situations

1. When I was 10 at my grandpa’s funeral, a relative told me I was “lucky” for being so young because now I’ll never remember/miss my grandpa

2. At my Grandma’s funeral, her neighbor asked us if he could stop by the house that day and “take some stuff off of our hands”
No offer of money. Just wanted free stuff.

I had a friend that was notorious for one-night Craigslist hookups with soldiers from the local army base. When he died, a handful of men in the military, that none of us knew, came to the service. His parents have no idea he was even gay.

Not AT a funeral, but I used to work at a store that sold funeral things, like headstones, flowers, caskets, etc. A couple came into the showroom and wanted to look around. Everything was going fine, until they found a casket they liked. They wanted to know if it could be wired for a tv and radio. They wanted to know if we could repaint parts of it. They also wanted to know if we could make it bigger, as *they didn't think they both could fit in the standard size*. I (of course) had no idea, but offered to go find out. They said never mind, and that this one would probably fit the both of them. Then they asked if they could get inside to try it out. I politely told them no and excused myself to get a manager, who promptly removed them from the store.

My aunt crawled into her father's open casket.

My uncle relentlessly flirt with a funeral home employee.

While at his dad's funeral.

She was obviously deeply uncomfortable and he was so narcissistic he thought she was interested.