Thanks, that’s what it was.
In Spain they’re usually held in a funeral home or, for important people, the coffin is “set in state” to be viewed in the church where the funeral will take place and the family keeps someone there to play host/receive condolences while this goes on. There are home wakes occasionally, but they’re rare.
Yeah, I thought in part it was due to the fact that poor people couldn’t afford the service.
I’ve never been to a home service but I know my mother’s grandfather was given a wake. He was a US Civil War vet and they had the flag and bunting up. These were definitely poor people btw.
Sorry if I missed it up thread, but the purpose of a wake/sitting up with them all night was to see if they would “wake,” right? I.e. medical science wasn’t what it is now and just in case the person wasn’t really dead, they’d give a few days before planting to make sure.
I attended a home wake in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago for my husband’s grandfather. Hubby’s grandmother was Irish, so that may have influenced the funeral planning. It was quite an unusual experience for me. It seemed rather like a cocktail party with a corpse in the back room. (Being a squeamish sort, I didn’t make it to the back room.) There was a religious ceremony towards the end of the evening. I believe that the relatives without little kids continued the party at the hotel after that. The next morning, the coffin was carried out of the house to a hearse and driven to church for a full mass. The burial was held a week or so later in Canada, which we didn’t attend.
I’ve only been to three or four other funerals in my life, but for all of those, the wake was held at a funeral home the day before the funeral and was just something you’d pop into for 10-15 minutes to express your condolences. I’m not really sure how I feel about the home wake.
Yeah you have to sit up with the corpse overnight. Well not everyone does and people take turns but there are always a few people by the corpse all night long.
Great, now you’ve instilled a weird fear in me that one day I’ll be changing clothes and totally naked and there will be an earthquake and I’ll have to be rescued and my mom will find out that the firemen saw me stark naked.
Dumb question here… Why is it called a “wake” Does the practice date back to premedical technology times as a way of making sure the departed is actually dead… (that he might wake up?)…
Sorry if this seems like a hijack… just curious.
Regards
FML
As a kid, during the 70s, and living in a small backward french village where most of the population was above 60, there were such things. The body would stay in a room (actually generally in his/her bedroom, often just in his/her bed). Almost everybody in the area would come to pay his respect, and the extended family would come in large number, those coming from remote place staying for a couple days, and some helping with preparing food, lodging, etc… in order to relieve the grieving close relatives. This meant that there was generally large family gatherings and meals before the burial, and generally at least one right after it. It was relieving. People would talk, exchange anecdotes, even jokes.
However, there wasn’t really a wake. That is, there wasn’t people staying by the corpse (and praying) all the time until the burial. I know this was done a couple generations before.
I never heard of it being done since. First, even in small remote places, people rarely die at home anymore. Second, nobody wants to take care of the body (like washing it, combing it, etc…). This was done when I was a kid by relatives. More generally people don’t want to have anything to do with deceased people. Even keeping the body at home for a couple days. Many (maybe most) don’t even want to see it. And finally, families are more nuclears, neighbors don’t know each other well, etc…
I’m pretty sure that having been brought up in this backward village populated with elderly people, I’ve seen the last manifestations in France of the traditionnal way of dealing with death and deceased people.
Actually, generally, I’ve seen the last manifestations of so many things during my childhood there that it sometimes feels like I was born before WWII. I witnessed the end of a traditionnal world and culture, sort of. I sometimes feels sad about it. Normally things change gradually, and the way of life doesn’t change dramatically (except I assumle for immigrants, but they at least can think that “at home” things go on as they used to). Or maybe elderly people have this kind of rememberances of a past, lost, world but I shouldn’t experience this at 40 (and actually I did well before 40).
Sorry, I’m ranting and entering in the MSIMS realm. I rarely use my signature, but it will be appropriate.
My maternal grandfather was “laid out” in the parlour and someone sat with him all night. That was in the late 1940s and the only one that I can remember like that.
Now where I live there is usually two hours of “visitation” set aside on the day of the funeral at the funeral home. The funeral itself is either at the funeral home or at a church. Then sometimes there is a smaller group gathered under and around a tent at the burial site itself. Generally they leave before the body is actually lowered into the ground. Later in the day they may come back to see the floral arrangements on and around the completed burial site.
But on the day of the death and in the days following the death, there is often a constant stream of food coming to the house. It’s that way in a small town, at least. And people come and go and share their memories of your loved one.
No one could keep a straight face about my dad. There were just too many funny stories.
Nope. Since the word used in french is identical, I assume it’s for the same reason. People used to stay awake and pray besides the body all night(s) long. Sometimes they would take turns. I even read that in some areas, there were women paid to do that.
Even though this practice could theorically have allowed to notice a sign of life in the supposedly deceased person, I don’t think it ever was its purpose. Especially since such a possibility would have been extremely unlikely (even moreso in “premedical technology times”, and when several people would have handled the corpse, and when there was continuously people coming to see him/her, bless the body, pray, etc… anyway). It’s rather a religious concern and a way to show respect for the deceased person. You don’t let him/her “alone”.
Very similar to my own experience on the other side of the world.
It’s becoming confusing as the usage of the words change. In Canada, the wake is becoming the party after the funeral, often raucous. The visitation is held in the usually held in the funeral home before the funeral and is often solemn. Increasingly in the States, the word ‘wake’ is coming to mean what we’d call a visitation.
Canadians used to have raucous parties in the presence of the corpse, but it was usually based on Scottish or Irish tradition.
Obligatory link to Great Big Sea singing The Night that Paddy Murphy Died .
See also
It’s not what I consider a wake either, but when I did a poll in IMHO a while back, about 1/3rd of folks called the gathering after the funeral, rather than the viewing before, a wake. It strikes me as terribly odd that the same term is applied to both by different people, but it does seem to be the case.
Down this end of the planet, too. Though I’ve only attended them on Marae, some Tangi are held in urban homes, like three doors down from my place. Somewhere about two in the morning, they become indistinguishable from a regular party - except that regular parties don’t last five days.
Not really in Bangkok, but upcountry, where things are looser, several-day parties are the norm. If not at home, then at the temple itself! My own introduction to this was going to a temple to see an acquaintance’s recently deceased sister only to find much drinking and gambling going on in every inch of the place.
I’ve never been to an Irish-style one, although my favourite teacher in primary school was a spry, witty Irishman of near retiring age (I was in his last class), and he used to tell us stories of bodies being tied down to prevent rigor mortis from making them curl up, and some drunkard cutting the ropes to make the departed suddenly sit up in bed. Is this what was meant by “playing stunts with the body”? It sounded hilarious to me as a ten year old and still does as a 38 year-old.
The East Asian Buddhist deaths I’ve been involved with have been an almost sould-destroying round of obligation and commitments with the potential to last a full twelve months from time of death, depending on how close you were to the deceased.
Typically:
- Vegetarian “wake” at the deceased’s home before the funeral
-Funeral (takes three days of prayer [three FULL days] before actual cremation - sundry later “memorial services” ranging from a month to a year later.
Just to add to the above, the Asian funerals I’ve attended have invariably been open casket ones. The kids have been forced to take their turn in shuffling by the body and paying their respects. Call me soft and modern, but I do have a slight problem with that. Not a cool thing for a small kid to see, IMHO.
I kind of agree with you about small children and open caskets but I think the thought is only unsettling because it is not common in our culture.
If it is something that is normal then children won’t be unsettled by it.
When my husband died one of my closest friends (she lived with us) was Maori, she was incredibly supportive at the the time but sometime afterwards she declared she would “NEVER go to another pakeha funeral”. It was just too different to the open casket/5 day Tangi she was used to.
We deal with death the way our culture teaches us. In some cultures small children seeing the body is expected, in others it is abhorent.
Yeah, CK, I think that’s totally right.
Problems arise when the kid (my stepson) is western-born and educated, but at a funeral that is 100% Vietnamese. He’s piggy-in-the-middle, and although that’s normal for kids of migrants, it’s tough on him at age 7 (as he was). As a pasty suburban white kid, I’d have been freaked seeing a body at that age.