When young people die of suicide, that’s a special circumstance, and the whole community feels like they failed. They come together ostensibly to mourn the child who died, but also to mourn their own loss of innocence and to deal with their own guilt. If the young person had died of natural causes, I don’t believe there would be nearly so many people out there, crying.
I also think that the number of people at a funeral really depends on the ties to the community. If you don’t have strong ties, then it’ll only be close relatives who show up. If you’re not the kind of person to make friends, then I don’t think you’ll have a huge entourage at the memorial.
Sure, I’ve seen the long funeral processions running the red lights. Sometime it seems like 50 or 100 cars. But I’ve also seen the processions that pass through the intersection in one green light. Personally, I’d rather disappear from view rather than have people mourn me. I want to climb out on one of those ice flows, and drift off to my frozen death. I don’t even want people to know I’m gone. Although, I suppose it doesn’t matter since once I’m gone, I won’t know what happens. I take it back. I just want to live until I die. What happens after that is not my concern.