Where I live in the Southeastern US, we have four season just like the rest of the country. The difference is that our seasons are Almost Summer, Summer, Still Summer, and Christmas. The upshot of this is that most southerners I know run their air conditioning and/or various electric fans from about late February to early November because it's just so flipping hot. Despite the heat though, life goes on and with it, so does death.
Death in the South isn't just something that happens when someone you love dies (or passes, as we say here). Nope, it's an event. As a child growing up in the South, I have some very clear memories of the unique nature of the aftermath of death in this culture. In the South, the post death protocol is as follows: notification of death, visitation, funeral service, procession, graveside service, and the funeral lunch.
I recall that as a child, funeral visitations were often some of the only times I got to see certain cousins, aunts, and uncles. I remember playing with my cousins outside the visitation room while all the grownups were talking and sometimes getting in trouble for being a bit too loud. My momma always made me wear a dress and my Sunday shoes to the visitation and then a different dress the following day for the funeral itself. Since most visitations were at night, I was often tired from a full day of school or just a full day and usually pretty hungry as they normally scheduled the visitations around the hours of 6-8pm. By the time we left, I was tired and really really hungry.
The day after the visitation is the funeral. Growing up, all the funerals I attended were done at the funeral home itself. I don't know why they were never in a church. Even the funerals that I heard about from others were at funeral homes. Most of the funerals I went to were fairly simple: a hymn or two, a brief eulogy of the deceased -- usually praising his/her strong faith in God -- and a short sermonette on the brevity of life and the need for us to all be ready to meet God face to face. Following the funeral, we would head outside into the hot sunshine (I don't think I've ever been to a funeral when it was rainy), clamber into our cars, and form a procession behind the hearse to go to the graveside. The procession to the graveside is another Southern tradition and there are certain protocols that go along with it too. The closer you are to the deceased, the closer you ride to the hearse. Some processions begin with a police cruiser leading the way and following behind the last car, but not all do. Either way though, when you are out and about and you encounter a funeral procession, you stop. It doesn't matter if you have to be somewhere in the next ten seconds, if you see a funeral procession, you stop and allow it to pass you by out of respect for the deceased and the mourners. Quite often a procession will go straight through an intersection with a red light or stop signs without even pausing.
Once you arrive at the graveside, everything is waiting for the burial. There is an even more brief service at the graveside and then a final goodbye for the family before the casket is lowered into the ground. The thing that always intrigued me as a child at the graveside was the tent and the lovely cushy looking chairs. Two rows of about six chairs or so and all of them covered in this soft, furry looking material that made you just want to sit down and run your fingers through it. I wanted to sit in one of those chairs SO badly. Usually by the time we got to the graveside, I was feeling pretty much done with the whole ball of wax and was hot and tired and just wanted to sit and luxuriate in the soft material covering those chairs. As a small child, I was never allowed to sit in the chairs. Instead, I was forced to stand at the edge of the tent beside one or both of my parents, getting eaten alive by the bugs in the tall grass of the cemetery, sweating bullets beneath my frilly taffeta dress, hurting from the blisters on my feet produced by the inevitable holes in the toes of my tights and my sweaty feet rubbing against the inside of my shoes. That simple canopy style tent seemed like a virtual paradise of cool comfort and I always felt slightly indignant that I was denied the privilege of sitting in one of those chairs. What really drove me insane was when not all the chairs were being sat in and I STILL had to stand out in the hot, bug-infested summer heat because "it wouldn't look right" for me to take one of those chairs. After the graveside service, we never got to just get in our cars and leave. We had to stand around -- again in the heat -- and talk to every Tom, Dick, Harry, Jane, Mary, and Sarah who had come to the cemetery. It was agony. Finally, after what seemed like forever, my parents would announce that we were leaving and we'd head back to someone's house for the funeral lunch meal.
I've never been to a true Irish wake, but I have a good idea that the traditional Southern funeral lunch/supper probably finds its roots in that tradition. The spread at one of these is a sight to behold. When your Great Uncle Bertram passes and his daughter Lily invites you to "Come on back to the house for supper" and then follows that with, "It's just simple stuff, sandwiches, some coleslaw and chips. I think Aunt Gertie might've made a pound cake. Y'all come on," then you can't refuse. When you arrive at the house, you discover that Aunt Gertie did indeed make a pound cake, Aunt Mabel brought her famous pecan (that's puh-cahn) pie, and that Great Aunt Rose (Great Uncle Bertram's widow) was worried that there might not be enough desserts, so she sent cousin Walter to the local Piggly Wiggly to get a couple of pies, some cookies, and two cartons of ice cream ("for the kids"). In addition to all the sweets, since Great Uncle Bertram was an ordained deacon and active member of the local Baptist congregation, you can also count of the ladies in his Sunday School class, some of the deacon's wives, and maybe even the pastor's wife to have brought over cold salads of every conceivable variety, multiple dishes of various vegetables seasoned with ham hocks and onion, several hot casseroles, at least one or two commercial sized pans of homemade mac and cheese, several bags of potato chips, fried chicken, barbecue pork and sauce, a gigantic ham, rolls and biscuits, gallons of sweet tea and several large bottles of coke, probably more desserts, and enough paper goods and plasticware to feed an army three times over. There will inevitably be way more food than the number of people who show up at the house, so Great Aunt Rose will grab your arm and tell you "make you a plate and take home with you, honey. Goodness knows I won't be able to eat all of this and I'd hate it to go bad." While you are there, there is usually lots of eating, lots of crying and sharing of memories, and very very often, some loud raucous laughter. The women usually congregate in the kitchen and living room, while the men find each other in another room in the house or out on the front porch. Invariably, despite the heat, some of the kids will elect to go outside and play in the yard while others will retreat from the adults into a back bedroom to explore or maybe play cards with cousins or perhaps a really cool aunt or uncle. Once everyone has eaten and everyone's tongues are tired, it's time to go home. As a kid, this is the point where you suddenly decide that you're having a great time and don't want to go, but your protests are ignored and your are firmly admonished to put on your shoes (because of course you've taken them off by this point) and are then ushered along to say goodbyes and give hugs to the remaining adults. It's so late by this point that as the car rolls along the highway, you find yourself slowly lulled to sleep by the motion of the car and the voices of your parents from the front seat as they discuss the day's events.
And with that final car ride home, the business of death is put to rest. Life goes on and while you may still cry a bit and grieve over the deceased, something in those initial rituals of mourning helps ameliorate a lot of the grief. At least that is the way it seemed to me as a child. The older I get though, I think it probably gets harder. I know the last time death touched me was about three years ago when one of my aunts died and I was shocked at how hard it hit me and how the grief lingered even after the funeral had come and gone.
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