I hate to say this, I really do. But I find wakes very interesting. No, I'm not talking about the kind of wake that a boat makes. You know what I'm talking about - the death ceremony where funeral homes dress corpses up like mummified Barbie dolls and give people the opportunity to pray and talk in front of them.Yes, I find those things very interesting.
If you're still reading, one, I'm surprised. Two, let me explain what I mean. It seems that over the past few decades, families only seem to come together (1) when someone gets married, and (2) when someone dies. I'm convinced that people enjoy themselves more during option (2), especially when the deceased wasn't especially close to them. And I think it makes sense; recognizing one's mortality really (and temporarily) changes people, for the better. I'm generally very stoic, but I can actually crack a joke or three at a wake. Then there's the alcohol. Irish wakes are particularly fun for this, and I've been to a few of them. I really enjoy sipping whisky out of a flask and singing songs where the only acceptable words are made up on the spot. I want one of those things when I croak.
Are people naturally kind? I don't know (and I don't think so). But I do know that when someone dies, you learn the truth about them. I've straight-up been to services where close relatives said of the deceased, "He/she was a real motherfucker." When my grandmother - who was a colossal pain in the ass - died, my family and I talked at great length about how annoying and mean she could be (to be fair, we also talked about how she was the best Italian cook, ever). Death ends a life, to be sure, but in its wake (Ha ha) it brings about this post-modern objectivity that I think is really damned accurate.
Death should terrify people. Sometimes, it terrifies me. I have these moments, right before bed, when I listen to my heart beat and think to myself, "Without fail, within the next eighty or so years, this modified bio-organic pump is going to stop beating and I am going to die. The interconnected neural network representing the thoughts, feelings, and goals that I've collected throughout my life is going to stop firing. It's all going to just go away."
But this is not what people think about at wakes, I think. Wakes inevitably (unless, you know, your family sucks) turn into a celebration of those who remain alive. Distant relatives reconnect and re-network. Memories are shared. And that, ultimately, is pretty damned cool.
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OK, who needs another picture of a cute puppy? That's right... YOU do.
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Stay classy. My next post will be from a different state... OF MIND!
1 comment:
This is the first time I think I disagree with almost everything, although I do think wakes are interesting... more in a "how humans deal with loss" way.
In my experience, there is waaaaaay more alcohol at weddings than at wakes (apart from *real* Irish wakes, there isn't usually an open bar at the latter). Also, people tend to glorify the dead, remembering the good times rather than the bad, again in my experience. Maybe my family is more superficially nice than yours. :P
I think I have a more somber view of wakes because I've only been to about four in my life, and one of them was for a classmate of mine who died. Which is somewhat less of a celebration of life and more of a "There is no God and life sucks and is random and pointless" event. The other three wakes were for elderly family members, which is objectively less sad, but my family is filled with criers and I tend to take my emotional cues from the people around me. So yeah, I'll take a wedding over a wake any day.
P.S: Whenever it happens, I will be very, very, very drunk at your wake.
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