It's an interesting thing, this "request of the deceased" deal. I think about my father-in-law. He was a member of my congregation at the time of his death, so it fell to me to conduct the funeral--a great privilege, though not easy. One of his sons is also an ELCA pastor, so I invited him to assist, both in the planning and in the service itself; other of his children served as lectors, grandchildren as pallbearers, etc. Dad had filled out our church's "instructions for my funeral" form, and as my brother-in-law and I looked over it, one thing we noticed was that he had checked the box indicating he did not want the service to include the Eucharist. I said to my bro, "I propose we overrule him." "Absolutely, I agree," he replied. Everybody else in the family who cared agreed as well. So it was a full Eucharist, despite Dad's instructions. We chalked it up to his Norwegian piety which just wasn't much accustomed to the Eucharist at a funeral--though he had progressed greatly in his Eucharistic piety through the years, and was firmly in favor of weekly Eucharist.
