https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/us/its-not-the-living-dead-just-a-funeral-with-flair.html

Admittedly I was dependent on modern American household architecture, there being generally an entranceway, perhaps what we here call a “den” (family room, tv, maybe a pc, videogames) then a “living room” which purpose serves for visiting; more infrequently a “great room” which is multi-purposeful. I do recall rooms my Mom mentioned as above alas, “parlor/parlour” having pretty much, passed from fashion.

As you’re a Brit – the name Galloway ring a bell? Over on David Duff’s blog his son Lawrence speaks well of the name. Seems to intimate that that fellow Hadrian built some kinda fence owing to the likes of the Galloway family. Anyway, that’s my Mom’s maiden name. Hence, Granddad’s.

A lot of what you describe is still part of a Catholic funeral in the UK.

(Not so uncommon Romeo, see my reply to your’s on the previous post.)

Anyway, not “wakes” rather “vigils.”

And another criticism from my Mom – she considers it important that I include that, “at that time the loved one’s remains waited for burial in the visiting parlor.” (What today I think would probably best be understood to be the living room.)

Though it’s no longer so Sister Wolf, prior to my reaching about ten or so it was far more uncommon that wakes occurred in a funeral home. The actual burials however always taking place after three days.

My Scots Grandfather’s death being my most “spectacular” experience from those former times. The womenfolk (but not my Grandmother) washing and preparing his body. The menfolk placing the old friend in his stay-open casket, all through the three days sitting alongside him and talking about “old times” (apparently) Granddad involved in the regaling (one of his friends[?] even going so far as to lift him so he could “share” a good shot of the neighborhood’s finest[?] whiskey (moonshine) product – the womenfolk for the only time of my memory not taking the menfolk to task for even having Spirits in the house in the first place!

Mind. The only environs I witnessed these things were in deepest Hillbilly Arkansas. Also as I’m typing this it occurs to me musicians were about (fiddlers prominently) playing what I’m thinking now were most probably dirges and such from “the old country.” Mournful for sure, real slow but beautiful sounding in my long distance memory’s ear.

Another thing occurs to me as I wind toward finishing this – a post a boyhood pal of mine who’s now a professor of English at an overseas university posted to his blog which, may go some distance helping explain to your audience’s understanding these particular weirdnesses:

http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2007/08/finding-myself-lost-in-translation.html

So far as I’m aware these wakes no longer occur.

But you know something Sis? I’m finding myself sorta wistful for the times that gave me such memories as these. Everything today seems so … oh I dunno, “industrial” mebbe?

When my grandmother died she was gone; the thing the funeral creeps did to her body (authorized by my shitass uncles against her will) yielded a grotesque abominable mockery of the woman she had been.

And also too as well I find that the odors of the living are hard enough to tolerate. Sure, keep the dead on ice for an extensive viewing but don’t hug them by the humid river banks or perfume them and bring them in for lattes at the CB&TL. Gross.