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There is something uncomfortable about watching someone turn another person's tragedy into their own moment.

A funeral is supposed to be about the person who has died. Yet sometimes, someone begins telling everyone how devastated they are, how much they have suffered, how difficult this has been for them, until somehow the person who has passed away becomes almost secondary to the person still standing.

I call it stealing someone else's cry.

Grief is personal, but it is not a competition. Your sadness does not need to be bigger than someone else's to be legitimate.

There is a difference between grieving and performing grief. One is about losing someone. The other can become about being seen as the person who lost the most.

Perhaps this happens because people naturally want their emotions recognised. We want others to understand our pain, but there are moments when recognising our own pain requires us to recognise that someone else's pain may be greater.

A funeral is not an opportunity to demonstrate how much you hurt, it is an opportunity to remember the person who caused everyone to hurt.

Perhaps the greatest respect we can show the dead is to make sure their final goodbye remains about them, not about us.