[font style="font-family:'Georgia','Baskerville Old Face','Helvetica',fantasy;" size=4 color=teal]This does not make one way any better than another, just different.

I have never cried at a death of a family member or funeral. Not even when my biological father died when I was 9 years old. I miss him. I miss my grandmother. I miss all the people who have passed on...but I have never spilt a single tear for them.

But when my pet rabbit went missing, I was bawling like mad. The moment my parents admitted to me that it died, my tears stopped. When my mother had seizures and we thought she had an brain aneurysm (she didn't) I cried and cried thinking I might lose her.

I don't really get it. I can cry for the living, but not a thing for those who passed on. But that does not mean I don't miss them. My way of mourning is just different.

The Biden's obviously express their mourning in sadness. The family and friends of the atheist you speak would rather remember their joy. But, I think, the important thing is that they remember and honor their dead.[/font]

I tend to have "an event" and then I can move on and remember the good times.

and that's fine. I wish them well. I just hope no one says anything dumb to the kids. I was ten when my dad died and a relative said to me"god needs him more than we do." Well I pretty much hated god for that, then, as I grew older, I lost what little faith I had.

I feel like Stephen Fry who responded to a question about dying and meeting god as a lifelong atheist.

“Suppose it’s all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and are confronted by God,” Bryne asked on his show The Meaning of Life. “What will Stephen Fry say to him, her, or it?”
“I’d say, bone cancer in children? What’s that about?” Fry replied.

I would say.. you couldn't wait to take my dad until he was old? What's that about?

But in my experience, religious funerals are far more depressing than secular ones. I know, just a personal experience, but I've never attended a religious funeral where everybody was genuinely happy and upbeat that their loved one is now in Heaven.

"They don't really believe it either", is the sentiment I usually come away with.

That said, my father once attended just such a funeral where everybody was just delighted at the happy event.

It left him badly shaken.

But I just can't. I hope family and friends find comfort, but it is very depressing to me.