Quote :

Ken Cornett wrote : [quote]  Yes, I feel sad like everyone else, but the "it's a part of life" thing begins to enter your subconscience.   Does anyone else know what I'm talking about?

Yes, as close to home as my own Mother, who died in my arms, having been reasonably healthy 24 hours before.   Others were surprised at the routineness with which both Daddy and I dealt with the funeral, and how we've subsequently proceeded in life.  Others expected a deep mourning, while Dad simply said "We're in our 80's, we've had a long full rich life, and this could happen any day"  

In dealing with mid 19th century theology and religious practice, Protestant practice had a strong emphasis on a 'good death'--especially those denominations connected with Wesleyan/Methodist, Armeanian, or Brethern heritages.  Popular religious magazines of the period included specific death accounts, with common features.

To make a 'good death', in old age the person held to their health and mental faculties to the end, other than normal ageing processes.  Physical failure was sudden, but the mind remained clear--often with sufficent time to speak and extend blessings to family members and friends, to sing and praise God, to give specific personal testimony of faith.  

For those younger folks, struck in the prime of life, that good death was still marked by the opportunity to give witness to faith.

Each family makes its own choices, and medical intervention extends life far longer, but leaves little room for the 'sudden decline' that marked the onset of dying for many 19th century folks.  

Today, in dealing with the strong and articulate choices my parents made nearly 20 years ago concerning their end of days, I am glad that they chose those 'old ways'--though right now, it means that I'm running my legs off, managing two households. Simple as death and life,  the words are quite plain-- honor thy father and thy mother--one of the more important of the Commandments.  

As our own society has deemphasized that rich connection to God and faith, we've also distanced ourselves from the fact that dying is a part of living.    That's sad, as there is much to be learned from all of life, maybe moreso from the difficult parts.  

Our church congregation lost most of the back row at the end of summer; from mid-August to October, I was singing for one to two funeral each week.  I knew only a few of the people with any degree of familiarity, and funerals in my faith tend to be fairly upbeat (hope in eternal life and the bodily resurrection, etc), but even so, frequent funeral experience takes away the fear and anxiety of them, to the point that my husband and I were able to have some good discussions about the topic with our kids, without scaring the behoobies out of them.

A few points from reading the whole discussion:

I don't know that I agree that there's a certain point at which masses of women went out of the home to work; looking back at US history, there are certain *segments* of the population where working out of the home was anticipated and normal for women--else, we would not have tenement factories at any point.  Women working 14 hour days in a factory setting would be placing their children in "day care" for even longer, and not always in the hands of an adult, either.  Certainly, a farm wife may have far more responsibilities than just child care (though the children are on hand and able to help out, so that's a little different.)  While the mid-century *ideal* was "man as breadwinner", there are so many life situations mid-century that I don't know I can say that was truly the most common situation in all classes of society (as with anything, right?)

Death: great book called Buried Alive, discussing the rise of the funeral parlour in the mid-19th century!  Many of the sources are European, but there are American bits, too.

In a few ways, I find the mid-century habits surrounding death to be far more emotionally healthy than those of modern life.  Even if I, as a mid-century woman, do not don full mourning clothing, my local community is aware of my loss, and gives me the space and time and delicacy of feeling to "get over it"--rather than the modern expectation that a few weeks, some anti-depressents, and maybe a counselling session or two, and we should be fine.  Mid-century customs seem to give more time and space to the bereaved, allowing a way to acknowledge their grief without necessarily *talking* about it all the time.

Today, too, I think there is a sense of "prolong life at all costs" rather than "handle a natural death".  I know my mother and aunts had quite a lot of resistance from the doctors and nurses when the girls supported their father's wishes to cut back on pain medication, eat and drink as he wished (or didn't wish), and die, rather than continue blood tests and treatments and such, when it was very evident that nothing the docs could do would make any change, and he was just becoming a statistical set for research, rather than a person.  The medical establishment had a hard time understanding that it was truly OKAY to everyone in the family that his wish to naturally depart be honored.  Mom said letting things happen with less medical intervention made things easier--she had no fears that additional poking and prodding were causing him more pain, and she and her sisters had many lovely and lucid conversations with their hermit of a father before he died. She said her only regret was that they did not remove him from hospital altogether, and use home-hospice services to return him to his cabin on the mountain, and let him go there (he is buried there, however--and without embalming.  State laws vary, but there are ways around most commercial funeral practices, quite legal.)

Anyhow, long ramble, to say that while it may now be a national "norm" to try to avoid death, there are still segments of the community that get familiar with it--certainly, studying the mid-century has coupled with my own death/funeral experiences to remove a great deal of the mystery and anxiety over it, and that's been helpful in talking with others about life in the mid-century.  

(For a young punk kid from the mountains, I think I've attended more than my fair share of funerals, and sat my share of wakes (though without a body present... just the family and friends gathering at home)--particularly this past summer. I find I don't mind it too much, but that I have definite opinions as to the least-depressing ways to arrange my own memorials some 70 years hence.)

Adding a bit to Terre's comments on a "good death"--my great grand-uncle Melvin died in 1998, in his own bed, in the company of his wife and children and several grandchildren.  They'd all been keeping company for about a week, knowing he was going sharply down hill, and on a Friday, he announced that he intended to go home first thing in the morning on Easter Sunday, as that seemed a good day to go to God.  The family sat up all Saturday night, visiting quietly.  He was holding his son's hand as the sun came up and into the window.  He smiled at everyone, looked out the window and said, "Oh--my!  Everything is alright now."  Then closed his eyes and left.

While there was no grand pronouncement of deathbed faith, it still meets the "Good Death" of the mid-century--family surrounding, faith affirmed, and life going on as it should.

[cit]Linda Trent wrote :  

Is that the reason that we don't hold wakes in homes?  I thought it was because today people tend to die in hospitals, and the law requires that bodies for burial be embalmed and that happens at the funeral home.  Besides, funeral homes are bigger and have more room for hundreds of people, and parking, and can more easily arrange for the transportation of the coffin and funeral procession to the cemetery today.



I am glad this subject has been brought up. It is a very interesting topic.  Being in the fields that I chose,I deal with death on a constant basis.  I am like the citizens of the 19th century.  It is a part of everyday life.

Having a wake,or a complete funeral in one's home is still an option if one so chooses.  I am only aware of the laws  pertaining to funeral practices here in Arkansas,they may be differant in the region that you reside.
Contrary to most people's thinking, you do not have to be embalmed,however,in most states if the family so chooses not to have the loved one embalmed,then the deceased must be interred or creamated within 24 hrs.  That is according to Arkansas Law,again it may be differant in the state that you live in.  That is why when we remove the deceased from the hospital or wherever, we always ask the family of the loved one about their wishes,burial or creamation.  We have to ask according to law.  There are some religions that do not allow embalming.
One of the reasons that it is now called a living room was to separate what once was practiced as having a funeral or wake in one's home. The funeral parlor became a standard practice in the early part of the 20th century.  

--Last edited by Parault on 2008-01-29 22:49:04 --

My father died a couple of years ago and it was a “good death.”  There was no mystery about what was happening and nothing medical science could do to prevent the inevitable.  My father did not wish for any type of life support and he died according to his wishes.  Being the micro-manager that he was, he had planned his own funeral.  He did everything except write what the preacher was going to say, but he did set the time parameters for getting it said.

Daddy was an educated man in a time when sharecropper kids were marginally literate, if even that.  My father became a man of influence and wielded considerable behind-the-scenes political and financial power in an age when tenant farmer kids hardly escaped the drudgery of the cotton fields.  In spite of his successes, he never ventured far from his modest beginning.  

He carried a buckeye in his pocket and refused to leave home without it.  Once, when Daddy was entertaining a Congressional delegation in Washington, DC, Senator John Stennis asked Daddy if he still had his buckeye.  Daddy pulled it out and showed him.  Then Senator Stennis showed Daddy his buckeye.  They were great friends.  Daddy insisted his only grandson, my boy, have a buckeye and adamantly instructed that youngster to keep it with him.  Those lessons were not only well received, but they stuck.  That boy is grown.  And, yes, the boy now has his own masters degree.  He is working on the opposite end of the country in two Milwaukee, WI, museums.  He has a buckeye in his pocket, but it is not the one his grandfather gave him.  Prior to his burial, the buckeye my father had given his grandson was placed back in Daddy’s pocket.  That grandson is now carrying his grandfather’s buckeye.