In other cultures that is exactly how they do it, and that is even how some American families react to death. It's not as though I don't expect them to feel sad, I just don't want them to wallow in it and make it worse than it has to be. In our culture people put so much emphasis on the pain of losing someone that it is ten times more traumatic than it has to be, I don't think it's healthy to make death even more depressing than it already is. If we didn't focus so much about how awful we feel, the bad feelings we do have would be much more tolerable.
I was actually totally fine with my friend's dad dying. It was sad, but not traumatic--to me, anyway, it was for my friend. His funeral damn near broke me though, who wants to stare at a dead body in a dark, solemn funeral home and talk for hours about how sad you are and sob, when you could be celebrating how happy you are that that person LIVED. Life is a miracle that should be celebrated, even in loss. I have felt the same way when it was my family who had died. I would just much rather we not concentrate all our agony in the mourning process, it just makes things worse. I'm not saying they shouldn't be sad, but I don't want them to spend three days in a dark, creepy funeral home mourning. That is a big waste of the last chance I'll get to be relevant, I'd rather they focus on the happy parts of my life and let that guide them through their mourning.
