Funerals again!

Well my family is Irish and I wouldn't go to a funeral of someone I didn't know. My Southern Irish mother used to say that the Irish enjoy a good funeral

I remember people who did this on a regular basis. Nobody now though.
Tbh, I think it's quite nice, for the family to see the church swelling with attendants, and the guests to socialise. Notwithstanding the religious side.

I don't think so. I am from an Irish Catholic family on my mother's side and, being Catholic with big families, we seem to be always having to go to funerals.

I don't think any of us would want to go to any we didn't feel we had to attend as either family or friend.

I would not got to a funeral of someone I had never met. Apparently it was quite common during the era of the great depression in the 1930's. Many people did this because it meant they could get something to eat/drink and be in the warm for a little while. Sounds like today's equivalent of warm spaces. Times unfortunately do not seem to have changed much!

That's interesting. My Irish next door neighbour used to read the obituaries and then attend a funeral every other week. He could squeeze a few tears out, convince strangers that he knew the deceased and then come home and discuss the catering. Did it for the free food and drink.

Have been to enough to funerals these few years of people I knew and loved, have no appetite to go to a funeral of someone I don’t know.

My friend is similar I’m afraid. As she worked in a big Government/Civil Service sort of place and still accesses their intranet - she’ll go to the funeral of any name she recognises and maintains that they would’ve known her, because, in her role, everyone did!
I’ve got to say I was a bit miffed when she elected to come to my close friend’s funeral, saying her sons vaguely knew hers. I had to explain to her who the grieving relatives were and my DDs were warned to keep the peace!! DD1 was dying to ask her why she was there. I later apologized to my friend’s widower, as she was an unknown and made the best of the buffet provided afterwards.

When my father died, a woman contacted me and said she grew up with him in Ireland. I had never heard of her and she turned up at the funeral. No one knew who she was. She told me I should have had a viewing of the body before the funeral. No way were we going to do that. She seemed to enjoy the funeral

I lived on the west coast of Ireland in a small village for 6 years. Every evening at 18.00 the older folk, especially the menfolk wanted to have the Angelus on the radio. They all fell silent. After this, the local radio read out all the death notices and many of the older folk would travel a distance to go to a funeral. On the west coast meant families were related or knew the deceased.

Brought up as C of E, I found this very unfamiliar. If there was a death in the village, everyone would go to the wake, the removal (of the body to church) and then to the mass the following day and process to the graveyard. All the pubs would be shut as the funeral passed by and would not open until the mourners returned from the burial. At that point, the pubs opened and the ale and whiskey flowed.

I think that's fine. One of the lovely things about funerals is that you often learn interesting things about the deceased. It might be a comfort to the relatives to know that others saw him as a great man.

DH is going to another funeral later this months, I've not yet decided whether to go with hin or not.

We knew his parents, know his brother and his widow.
He (and probably me too) will go to support the family.

There have been so many in the last few years ☹

Have you read the Stephanie Plum Series by Janet Evanovich, set in New Jersey?
Grandma Mazur and her friends always enjoy going to the funeral parlour to view the casket as it's the social centre of the neighbourhood for older people.

When I was a child my grandmother seemed to be always going to funerals.She knew a lot of people in the town she had lived in all her life.Every evening she would sit down and scan the death announcements in the local paper and there would always be at least one person she knew or used to know, and would go to their funeral out of respect as she put it.
She was completely knocked sideways when two people, one a relative and the other a friend had their funerals on the same day, at the same time but different venues.
She went to the relative's, but always felt sad she had to miss her friend's. She had not seen her friend for some time but they had once been very close.This friend had been with her when my mother was being born, and had put her into my grandmother's arms straight after the birth.

pinkprincess
It's when your peer group goes one after another ☹

Allira
I know, it is frightening now.I seem to be going to many funerals now, all to my peer group.

I know a very kind lady from our cul de sac, who attended every single funeral in the area. They were only acquaintances, not friends, but she attended every one of them.

It was explained to me once that if you were friends with someone in the family of the deceased the tradition was to attend.

Indeed, they were just off to the funeral of someone related to their friend. They said the expectation was that the friend needed support because someone he was related to had died.

This was some years ago in West Cork.

I love West Cork, ayse.

My husband got my brother in law a job when he was made redundant from factory he'd worked in for over 20 years.

He was a lovely kind, gentlemen. Irish Catholic with lots of friends

He got dismissed after about 6 months for having so much time off to attend funerals. He never did understand why

Oh Ziggy62!