one thing the Irish do right by is the dead it's actually only when you're dead they tell you they like you
they take the body (coffin and all) into the house where it's set up in a place of honour, open usually, and hold an open house, where anyone and everyone can come to pay their respects. The family usually have a few seats around it, so people can talk to them there is usually a couple of junior members of the family at the door to welcome people in and take the casseroles and sandwiches they bring (you don't cook in a house with a coffin in it, this isn't a restriction more oh they'll be too upset to bother with dinner, and so it turns into a huge thing to bring food [which in turn turns into a competition over who brought the best casserole] and often this is opened to share among the guests when this is done (two days later or thereabouts) they take the body and bury it with a mass, everyONE is in the church, including people who didn't get to go to pay their last respects, then the family and a selected few go to the graveyard THEN you have the wake, which is back to the house (there's still plenty of food left) and everyone brings a bottle, to send him on his way, and they get decimated drunk, someone will start singing, usually some Irish rebel folk song "that was his favourite" (everyone will have a different idea of what this was) and everyone will sing along. They share fond memories and there is laughter and more casserole (casserole keeps) and more liquor until they all one, by one, go home then the next day a few stragglers who kept reasonably sober will help with the clean up, or they'll send their kids to do it (usually b)
I must admit coming from that kind of background, I find America's whole (hide the dead, don't talk about them, don't even use the word) truly bizarre people LIVE, and that should be celebrated, if anything death makes the time you spent with them more precious as there can be no more, yes WE lost them, and yes WE will miss them, but WE are not the ones who died. A lot of death, I find, is very much catered to the living - but that's another rant. But I can't send you a casserole from all the way over here, I can give you a kick ass recipe though.
it's actually only when you're dead they tell you they like you
they take the body (coffin and all) into the house where it's set up in a place of honour, open usually, and hold an open house, where anyone and everyone can come to pay their respects. The family usually have a few seats around it, so people can talk to them
there is usually a couple of junior members of the family at the door to welcome people in and take the casseroles and sandwiches they bring (you don't cook in a house with a coffin in it, this isn't a restriction more oh they'll be too upset to bother with dinner, and so it turns into a huge thing to bring food [which in turn turns into a competition over who brought the best casserole] and often this is opened to share among the guests
when this is done (two days later or thereabouts) they take the body and bury it with a mass, everyONE is in the church, including people who didn't get to go to pay their last respects, then the family and a selected few go to the graveyard
THEN you have the wake, which is back to the house (there's still plenty of food left) and everyone brings a bottle, to send him on his way, and they get decimated drunk, someone will start singing, usually some Irish rebel folk song "that was his favourite" (everyone will have a different idea of what this was) and everyone will sing along. They share fond memories and there is laughter and more casserole (casserole keeps) and more liquor until they all one, by one, go home
then the next day a few stragglers who kept reasonably sober will help with the clean up, or they'll send their kids to do it (usually b)
I must admit coming from that kind of background, I find America's whole (hide the dead, don't talk about them, don't even use the word) truly bizarre
people LIVE, and that should be celebrated, if anything death makes the time you spent with them more precious as there can be no more, yes WE lost them, and yes WE will miss them, but WE are not the ones who died. A lot of death, I find, is very much catered to the living - but that's another rant.
But I can't send you a casserole from all the way over here, I can give you a kick ass recipe though.
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