Carl Reiner, the late American actor, and humorist wrote: “If I don’t see my name in the obituaries in the morning, I eat breakfast.”
If you scan the obits every day as I do (it’s an old person’s thing), you will notice that there are not many wakes held as there used to be. The bereaved often opt for a memorial service at a future date.
Personally, I am not surprised. A while back we had a death in the family, then a friend unexpectedly passed on, and I was reminded how much I dislike wakes. And my distaste for them goes way back.
Some kids’ dads took them to the zoo, others out sailing, still others to the ballgame. My dad took me to wakes, a father-son bonding experience I would have preferred to avoid.
Growing up in a Portuguese family, attending wakes was almost a weekly event. If a Portuguese person’s obituary appeared in the local paper, my father, as a measure of respect, would make it a ritual to attend the wake, and he would drag me along just for good measure.
Going to a funeral home is never a pleasant experience. In those days, it was downright mystifying for a little kid. The rooms where the caskets were displayed were dark and foreboding, filled with people much older and larger than me. They were ideal settings to mourn the passing of a loved one who may or may not have ascended into heaven.
The chapels, as they were called, had few windows which were covered with heavy, dark maroon (always maroon) drapes. The shiny caskets were surrounded with flowers in white wicker baskets or formed into wreaths, hearts and upside-down horseshoes, which I thought was because the deceased was a horse lover.
Women mourners would kneel in front of the casket, say a short prayer, then quietly fill rows of chairs directly behind the family. The men, clad in black suits and black ties, would pass by the bier to pay their respects, ask forgiveness for some slight they may have done the corpse in life, then immediately retire to the smoking room in the back and disappear into a blue haze not unlike what I imagined the gates of Hell looked like.
The female members of the decease’s family would be seated directly in front of the casket swathed in black behind black veils alternately weeping softly followed by wretched wails, then sorrowful moaning. Someone would inevitably whisper that the deceased looked as though they were sleeping. Ugh! Who sleeps in a suit anyway? To my young mind, the whole thing was nightmare inducing.
Dad would keep one eye on the entrance, knowing that when the priest arrived it was time for prayers that would take two hours. That’s when we hightailed it out the door – we might have another wake to attend. It didn’t take long before I knew mortician would not be my chosen profession.
Today there are no more maroon curtains or smoking rooms. The chapels are called viewing rooms. They still have rows of chairs, but there is likely to be a sofa or two scattered about. Videos of happier times play on an endless loop … a celebration of the dear departed’s life.
To my regret, dad has long since attended his last wake, where unfortunately he was the primary participant. He was the popular town barber. The queue wrapped around the block. There were hundreds of mourners; every one of them felt obliged to offer their condolences by patting me on the back. Did I mention I had shingles at the time?
For years I would not attend a wake or funeral. When it is my time to shuffle off this mortal coil, there will be no wake, no sorrowful moaning, no horseshoe-shaped flower wreaths. Just put my ashes in a Tupperware container with one of those pressure-seal lids and bury me in the family plot beside my dad.
Father-son bonding, you know.
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on…
By Dick Morgado