Funerary traditions
It's funny how each of us assumes that our traditions surrounding death are the One Natural Way to handle it.
What I grew up with assumes calling hours to be held at the funeral home, an open casket, a funeral held at the church within the first three or four days, and burial at the cemetery, attended by family only. In April, when Mother died, this was what we did (minus the optional corteges between sites). It was a little embarrassing, however, since so few people came to either the funeral home or the church. (I come from a small family, which is not close, and Mother had survived most of her closest friends.) We could have used the smallest receiving room at the funeral home, and held the funeral either there or in the downstairs chapel instead of the main sanctuary (cap. 1000). And graveside it was just Mark and me, and the hearse driver and gravediggers.
jducoeur's traditions involve cremation and either a memorial service or a "celebration in memory of" at home.
Last night, marysdress and I went and paid a call on Barbara P and her daughters, who had put out the word that they would be At Home to receive condolence calls. I think that worked much better, especially given the kind of people who would be calling, than holding a receiving line in a funeral parlor. There were about 10 or 11 callers there at any given point, including madamebuttery and krisattiac and their husbands, sipping tea and encouraging B to remember and reminisce about the particularly fun bits of P's life and their marriage, along with telling us more about his last day. It was social, low key, less formal than a rented funeral home site. (In retrospect, if I'd had a place to do that in Mother's memory, I would have preferred it.)
Still, paying a condolence call on a widow my own age, who was married the same summer that Justin and I were, is a sobering experience and made me run home and crawl into his arms.
What I grew up with assumes calling hours to be held at the funeral home, an open casket, a funeral held at the church within the first three or four days, and burial at the cemetery, attended by family only. In April, when Mother died, this was what we did (minus the optional corteges between sites). It was a little embarrassing, however, since so few people came to either the funeral home or the church. (I come from a small family, which is not close, and Mother had survived most of her closest friends.) We could have used the smallest receiving room at the funeral home, and held the funeral either there or in the downstairs chapel instead of the main sanctuary (cap. 1000). And graveside it was just Mark and me, and the hearse driver and gravediggers.
jducoeur's traditions involve cremation and either a memorial service or a "celebration in memory of" at home.
Last night, marysdress and I went and paid a call on Barbara P and her daughters, who had put out the word that they would be At Home to receive condolence calls. I think that worked much better, especially given the kind of people who would be calling, than holding a receiving line in a funeral parlor. There were about 10 or 11 callers there at any given point, including madamebuttery and krisattiac and their husbands, sipping tea and encouraging B to remember and reminisce about the particularly fun bits of P's life and their marriage, along with telling us more about his last day. It was social, low key, less formal than a rented funeral home site. (In retrospect, if I'd had a place to do that in Mother's memory, I would have preferred it.)
Still, paying a condolence call on a widow my own age, who was married the same summer that Justin and I were, is a sobering experience and made me run home and crawl into his arms.