The southern funeral experience
Imagine a place settled ten generations back by moonshiners and vagrants and now overrun with descendants fighting over which family blew into these hills first. There’s piety and charm, warmth and sneering. Like most small towns, everyone roots in the same dirt on the same mountain. The great divide between haughty and ho-hum is about as wide as a frog whisker. But you feign distinction because it feels better to think you’ve risen above the croaking.
The name of the town doesn’t matter because it’s the same everywhere. Towns big and small, it’s all the same. We all find common ground in the ultimate unifier: funerals. Or more precisely, funeral homes.
In my hometown, there happen to be two rival funeral homes. We make a feast out of the gossip surrounding who lands at which one. One of them has a porch light that gets flicked on when a body is inside (the reverse vacancy sign, as my husband puts it). The other one has a hotline for all the recently-departed details left humbly on an answering machine.
Both locations are low-ceilinged, claustrophobic, overheated, burgundy-bedecked palaces of refuge where you can weave in and out of mournful loved ones, squeeze a neck, gaze at a body, scoop up a heap of funeral potatoes, and gnaw on a chicken leg all without batting an eye. It’s a place of comfort and distress.
But the funeral home, while certainly my favorite part, is only one memory-making opportunity. I reckon every good death extends out in five chapters:
Chapter One, Heralding the News
This stage alone can really exist in multiple phases, but it generally involves the publishing of the obituary, the hotline notification (if you’re classy and chose the right funeral home), and the ever-important Facebook announcement. If you do not have Facebook, find thyself a relative who does. Do not forget to inform the internet.
Chapter Two, the Gathering
Perhaps the most important chapter in the book is the public visitation at the funeral home. This is the presentation of the body, the showcasing of the casket (and the lining, of course), and an opportunity to visit with the family. There’s food. There’s always so much food just one room away from the body. This event, I find, is where you also have the greatest likelihood for theatre. Some people are just born for the stage, and in lieu of a platform, there is no better second chance on earth to strut your flailing ways than over the high-gloss arched lid of a casket.
Chapter Three, the Service
One preacher or five, 400 guests or twelve, picture slideshows and funeral sprays as ostentatious as the Kentucky Derby. This is the least exciting part to me. It’s the purgatory of the funeral process – you just got to bide your time and get through it.
Chapter Four, the Interment
Classically, this is the lowering of the body into the ground. This is also the most profound and intimate. Only the closest friends and family (if you have any dignity) attend the burial. I’ve seen rogues appear at these – riffraff or third-tier friends -- and it’s a fever of stink-eyed glares from the immediate family. Do not presume you’re invited to the interment. It’s the best advice I can give. Well, that and closed-toed shoes.
Chapter Five, the Meal
There will be more food. There is a lunch or dinner prepared for the hungry grievers. Mourning is exhausting, and with your soul depleted, we’re gonna at least fill your belly. It’s where you recount the last days, gossip about who did or didn’t attend, knit pick who wore what and who fought to prove they were grieving the hardest; it’s always a competition. The meal is important to digest what’s happened to you and how your life will forever be different.
When it comes to funerals, there are rules, and they’re never the same. What you wear matters, but it’ll never be the right thing. You need to grieve in your own way, but you’ll always be too dramatic or too stoic. You need to speak to everyone, but then you’re just trying to take center stage. You’ll send a casserole, but all they really wanted were funeral potatoes.
