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11.5. Family Love in Finale
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For Aries, profound love for one's own would be at the foot of the modern denial of
death; the Newfoundland data provides particular evidence for this suggestion. Death
being treated with professional and euphemistic decency, cenain local customs, some
carried out in the very context of the funeral home, show the expression of personal
affection for the deceased unabashed by social pressures. Whereas the funeral ritllal
essentially promotes effective separation from the deceased, and modern ideology tends [0
rush the bereaved over this delicate process, local behaviour evokes personal "rites of
retention" of [he deceased-·in accommodation with the "official" ones marking hislher
separation from the living.
Mourning, which was once observed usually for about a year after the loss of a
husband or wife, and signified by dark clOlhing apart from abstinence from all happy
"socials," is completely "out" nowadays. Even the restriction of dress has been
transferred to the "professionals." R. B. answered unhesistantly:
IP: Do people dress when they come to a wake here [in the funeral home]?
RB: Well, at one time there was nOlhing else but dark clothes: the men had
dark black suits and the women had the dark dress, but that's nOt so
today. They just dress casually.
lP: They wear no armbands?
RB: No, no, nothing like that.
IP: Do they wear dark clothes on the funeral day?
RB: No, no.
IP: Not even the relatives?
RB: Not really.
IP: What about the pallbearers?
RB: Usually, if the fiml supplies them, we all have dark black suits that we
use, and if friends of the family act as pallbearers, whatever they wear,
whatever they'd normally wear in the street. t
Sharply contrasting with this "casual ignorance" of death, the oven and public "showing
off' of the embalmed body over the wake period could be counted among those "new
rites," as Aries calls them. Along with the embalmers' plastic statement that the body can
be restored to its "own self' notwithstanding disease, agony and death, and that it is an
object of admiration and comfort, the mourners' "gifts" to this "life-like corpse" oppose
the Christian teaching that this is merely the "remains" of a human being "emptied" of its
personality, affection, likings, etc. Father O. expresses his wonder at slIch practices:
lMUNFLA 87-159/C12044.