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While the material burden of funeral has been unloaded from the community shoulders, its
members are still called and depended on for moral and social support.
The essential concerns and meanings, indeed, have outlived their old form and context
the body is still honoured and "looking even better" (lifelike) than before, relatives are still
allowed the status of "mourner" over the wake period to "view" the realities of their loss
and progressively adjust to it through filling their social duty as host to their friends and
acquaintances. As for the most deficient part of modem death, that following the disposal
of the remains when the role of the undertakers is played out, Newfoundlanders have
found "new riles" 10 compensate for this lack through "cards of thanks" also functioning as
requests for help to dependents, and "In Memoriams" reminding them of one's unresolved
bereavement. So, while all the restrictions of the ancient one-year mourning rule, even as
to dress, have been lifted ("forbidden"), the "repressed" mourners continue to acknowledge
their state via the channels of the printed word. As well as with their social circle, the
bereaved resolutely maintain contact with their dead both through private and official
channels, personal and social rites, sllch as the intimate "smuggling" of tokens of personal
and lasting affection, the cemetery mass occasion, suggesting that in Newfoundland it
might still be some time before the living leave the dead to the dead.