Is The Rosary Prayed, Offered, Or Considiered A Scripture Service At A Funeral?

Manufactures & ESSAYS

Through interviews and personal recollections, this article discusses the custom of having a bereavement meal in the family home following a funeral. The author contends that this meal is a symbolic statement of togetherness and control over death.

Knowing How to Bury Your Expressionless: The Significance of the Post-Burying Habitation Visit

By Keagan LeJeune

Brad Hanks grew upwardly in the aforementioned boondocks I did, just since his father was chief of Hathaway Uncomplicated and Loftier School, we never went to the same school. I knew him from summer league baseball and later at the diverse retreats and catechism classes Our Lady Immaculate Catholic Church building conducted for all the Catholic kids attention the public high schools around Jennings. When we became college roommates, though, we developed a close friendship, 1 that lasts today. Nosotros are still very close and consider each other a role of the family unit. In June 2002, Marilyn Leleux, Brad'due south grandmother, the woman I knew as "Mawmaw" Marilyn, passed abroad. Geesey-Ferguson Funeral Home of Crowley, Louisiana, prepared the body and directed the burial services. Family unit and friends gathered for visitation on Tuesday, and that evening a member of her church led the group in the praying of the rosary and a priest officiated at the wake service. The following twenty-four hours, a funeral mass was held at St. Margaret Catholic Church building in Esterwood where she was a long-time parishioner.

During the services, two of Brad's cousins stood to read something they had prepared. "Marilyn Leleux knew how to bury her dead," they read. It was a phrase they had heard over and over once more since her death. Visitors to the funeral home, members of St. Margaret'southward, dearest friends of Marilyn, all of these people said it to them. Marilyn knew her obligation to care for her dead.her relatives, her friends, her fellow parishioners who passed. On besides many occasions to count, information technology was Marilyn who led the rosary at the funeral home. It was Marilyn who offered up masses and prayed for the sick. Information technology was Marilyn who brought food to a grieving family unit. It was Marilyn who, weeks later, greeted the widow or widower at church or checked in on them at home. Marilyn Leleux knew how to bury her dead, and the church community she was a part of cherished that about her, and relied on information technology.

After the mass, mourners followed the family and hearse to Woodlawn Cemetery in Crowley. We prayed again. Afterwards the service at the cemetery, the women in blackness high heels grabbed a husband'south or son's arm for rest equally they struggled back to their cars through the grass and clay, and the men in their church clothes debated going home and changing earlier they went back to piece of work or driving directly there. Every bit mourners returned to their cars, Brad walked over to me and said, "The family unit's going over to my Aunt Roy Lynn's house. Why don't you and Melanie [my wife] come over and get something to eat.. It wasn't a surprise. Brad and I are like family, and the family unit was gathering for a meal.

Over the form of the funeral services, people celebrated the life of Marilyn Leleux. They paid their respects and offered their condolences, and the entire thing proved the profound impact this woman's life had on the lives of so many others. Nonetheless, when I think back on that event, I recollect those two comments more vividly than any others. Thinking of them every bit a friend, I appreciate how they moved me, how I carry them around as retention of her, as proof of her meaningful and purposeful life. Thinking of them as a folklorist, I appreciate how they stand equally meaningful expressions of belief. One could argue that the acknowledgement of Marilyn's service to her church building community after a parishioner's death, while quite ordinary and seemingly insignificant, stood as a statement most the responsibility of lay individuals inside the Catholic Church building, or equally a statement about the grouping'southward belief about the continuation of community beyond the grave. In addition, one could fence that Brad'southward uncomplicated invitation to me could exist seen equally a powerful confirmation of identity. Unfortunately, it might be our inclination to ignore such small details. However, these small-scale practices become indispensible and meaningful components of the burial process, definitely worthy of attention.

When my father passed away in September of 2009, he and my female parent had already made well-nigh of the arrangements. He had the funeral home picked out, his catafalque and plot purchased, the times for visitation at the funeral home set, the wake planned, and the readings and music for funeral mass chosen. All the same, his planning wasn't done. He also prepared for his extended family unit gathering at his domicile. He knew they would come. They always did. They needed it, and nosotros needed it--and he needed information technology. For my begetter, the post-burying get-together stood as an important office of the burial ritual, a role he planned in the same mode he planned his wake service, funeral mass, and burial. During the event, as I walked around my parents' dwelling house and observed what was happening around me, I recalled other funerals and burials in my extended family. I soon saw these gatherings for what they are elaborate expressions of unity and identity and, I would assert, endeavors for individuals to maintain command over the intendance of their expressionless. By offering a detailed clarification of one of these gatherings and because its function in relation to funeral homes, this article explores the post-burying gatherings at family unit homes. By exploring the construction of the result as information technology relates to the social values and historical developments in the culture, it besides examines these events as expressions of core Cajun values and of the region'south cultural Catholicism.¹ Finally, information technology uses the event to ask a question about trends in Louisiana folklore studies.

I do not wish to burden the reader with a discussion of the research arguing the value-laden nature of wakes, funerals, and burials. I doubtable that no-one underestimates the cultural significance of these rites, and few would demand proof that they vary based on environmental and cultural concerns. In brusque, archeologists, anthropologists, and folklorists often turn to deathlore and burial practices in club to gain insight about a culture'south mythology, religious beliefs, familial and/or social systems, etc. However, some scholarship seems particularly apt to mention here. The relevant literature centers on the emergence of the funeral dwelling in America (Mitford 1963, 1998; Editors of Consumer Reports 1977; Marks and Calder 1982; and Laderman 2003). In 1 fashion or some other, these works draw the commemoration's move towards commercialization. They lament the rising cost of funerals. They deplore its steady removal of the individual from the process of serving the expressionless and decry its displacement of the home from the process's heart. While all brand a similar point, maybe the best known is Mitford'south The American Way of Death (1963), which reached the top of the New York Times best-seller listing. At i indicate in her newer work, The American Way of Decease Revisited, Mitford writes, "The option of caring for your own dead, if it takes hold, will mark a break with the trend towards ever-more-costly and mechanically impersonal journeys to the grave." (1998: 272). To appoint in the contend nearly funeral homes is beyond the scope of this article, but these books and the quotation betoken to two cadre questions: How essential is the procedure of caring for our own dead, and what will people do to remain involved in the process?

Of class, the discussion hinges on the fact that before the appearance of funeral homes as we recall of them, individuals controlled the procedure of caring for the deceased. In my interviews, people recall the involvement of family unit members at every stage of the process, from those first few moments immediately following a person's passing to the excavation of the grave.ⁱⁱ Even if one person in the community held the job of tending to the body itself or making a coffin, families prepared the home for the wake or visitation, took on the immense responsibility of "sitting up with the dead," and completed any other necessary job. During all of these tasks, the domicile remained at the centre of activity. Harvey Dever, 94, told me that his uncle who owns the Snider Funeral Dwelling house in DeQuincy began equally a worker in Berden-Cambell, a large furniture company. "He was working as a salesman for Berden-Cambell, then this undertaker, he started helping him, and so he learned it. And then before they [State of Louisiana] started making them licensing them [funeral directors], he was grandfathered in, and he started. It was in his house." (2010). As the number of funeral homes increased, the role and responsibility of the private decreased. The custom of family unit members staying up with the dead through the night serves as an excellent example.

In the "Deathlore" entry of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Alan Brown claims that the belief that "corpses must not be left solitary from fourth dimension of death until the burying" originated with the Scots-Irish who settled the Due south in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Brown 2009: 74). The practice, he asserts, derived non only from matters of belief but the practical concerns of animals itch through windows or doors, which were oft open during the hot and humid southern nights. Near chiefly, he notes the do of sitting with the dead declined as funeral parlors began to spread at the turn of the century (74-75). Slowly, these tasks transitioned to the funeral homes. Kevin Klein, the current director of a funeral habitation in Jennings, relays his knowledge about the starting time of Miquez Funeral Abode and his experience with wakes in the dwelling:

Miquez opened up in October 1935, his own business organization. Prior to that, he worked for Mister Fred Gimbell, and Mister Gimbell had a store on Master Street hither in boondocks, and the proper name of the store was either Gimbell Furniture and Undertaking Company or Gimbell Cabinet Makers and Undertaking Company. Information technology was both because funeral homes were few and far between then. Most of your viewings, visitations, were done in the homes. They weren't done at a designated funeral habitation. They were done in the person's home. I've never had any. I've been here 18 years. I've never had whatsoever dwelling house visitations. (2010)

As funeral homes took control of these steps and as services moved away from the home, people noticed the alter. Sidney Fontenot, born in 1929, describes the attitudes surrounding the transition:

There were no funeral homes. The expressionless were kept for viewing in the living room, which besides served every bit the master sleeping room. The women sat within while the men viewed the body then went back outside. If information technology was cold or there were a lot of mosquitoes, they congenital a fire effectually which they sat or stood.... It was expected that some would stay up all night with the dead. To get out i unattended was unthinkable.... Being traditional and wearisome to accept change was near pronounced when funeral homes came into being. We were used to doing everything ourselves from dressing the expressionless and building the caskets to excavation the grave and filling it up. The neighbors were reluctant to go to funeral homes with their dead. Those who did were criticized. "They are besides good for their expressionless" would be said. They might add together, "I wonder what he might say if he could speak most this." (2007)

Currently, while many aspects of the funeral and burial rest under the control or domain of the funeral director/dwelling, a few portions, especially the mail-burial home visitation (what is besides known equally the bereavement meal or the meal, the latter especially in African-American communities), remain in the hands of the family. Even though individuals have surrendered some of their traditional roles in caring for the deceased, they accept maintained this tradition. In doing and so, they take maintained opportunities for gift exchange, to exert individual command over some of the process, and to make statements of unity and identity.

In many regards, the post-burying visit and meal is yet another instance of the region'southward many folk religious practices. Even though the pool of scholarship examining the connection between faith and Louisiana culture, especially the ties between Catholicism and Cajun culture, runs deep, Marcia Gaudet'southward contempo essay "Cultural Catholicism in Cajun-Creole Louisiana" provides one of the most lucid and over-arching statements about the human relationship between Cajun life and the Cosmic conventionalities organisation. In the article, Gaudet describes the "pervasive influence of non-official Catholicism in the region" (Gaudet 2000: 4):

In the civilization of the Cajuns and Creoles, the sacred and secular are oftentimes conflated. The Church and its rituals are fundamental in the life bike and throughout the calendar yr-evident from Mardi Gras (certainly at the secular or profane stop of the continuum) to All Saints Twenty-four hour period (where the sacred is more privileged). The unifying potential of cultural communion and sacramental renewal is nowadays in the rituals and secular sacraments of Louisiana's Cajuns and Creoles. An emotional connexion with the cultural rituals likewise as the official sacraments has colored their vision of the world. (four)

The bereavement meal parallels many other religious activities actualization in Cajun Louisiana, though some might non see the activity as a primarily religious event. Notwithstanding the gathering does provide ministerial services and multiple opportunities to express belief. In their condolences and conversations, attendees often cite scripture, recite prayers, or convey ideas apropos their religious worldview. In add-on, family members often create shrines or memorials for the departed, which usually incorporate objects illustrating both the sacred and the secular parts of their lives. The event, similar and so many other religious rituals in Cajun land, relies on the nexus of family and demonstrates a religious organization built on self-reliance and lay expertise.

The history of scholarship examining cultural Catholicism (though the works may not use the term) seems entrenched in the folklore subject area, only it includes less inquiry concerning death and burial practices of Louisiana Cajuns than one might expect. Many works briefly mention burial practices, usually offering brief discussions rather than thorough or thick descriptions. Regardless of the description's length, a few bits of data undoubtedly will sally. The word likely will include a mention of a superstition—the stopping of clocks, emptying all the domicile'southward water vessels, or some other custom. The piece of work also usually will include a statement about the tradition of the wake occurring in the habitation, and funeral parlors displacing this tradition.³

A pocket-size sampling of a range of works may make the bespeak while they pique the reader's interest. Revon Reed'due south Lache pas la Patate includes a few paragraphs on Cajun practices involving death. Along with comments about some superstitions and displays of grief, he notes the importance of the dwelling in the burial process and the deceased existence displayed in the dwelling house's parlor or front end room for 20-four hours (Reed 1976: 75). Mary Alice Fontenot and Julie Landry devote a department of their book The Louisiana Feel (1983) to burial customs. In the course of a 19-page section including illustrations, they talk over burial practices in the northern and southern regions of Louisiana, including "La Toussaint," "Mourning Customs," "The Blackness Customs," and "National Cemeteries." Grave houses, grave decorations, printed funeral notices, home wakes, memorial cards, and tossing clods of dirt on the coffin, all pop up in the work's series of descriptions. In its thorough description of the civilization, Cajun Country (1991) presents death as a meaningful and revealing function of Cajun life, cogitating of the social systems and worldviews driving the Cajun. For example, the work indicates that funeral practices often illustrate principles of group cohesiveness, Cajun sociability, and the prevalence of informally transmitted religious beliefs. Still, even this book does not describe funeral or burial practices in particular.

Perchance many of these discussions in some way trace back to the noted Breaux Manuscript (1840-1901). Every bit it appears on the Louisiana Folklife folio, the section "Deaths and Funerals" begins with a series of practices often mentioned in other works: a mourner whispers to the honeybees of their master's death, cloths cover mirrors, blackness shrouds drape effectually door frames, clocks stop. The works continues. In one case relatives larn of the death, they arrive at the home, fifty-fifty if they must travel some altitude. The body laid out in the parlor and the business firm now full of company, visitors pass by the body to pay their respects and pray for the soul. "In some other room, a table is gear up up with refreshments for those who have come a distance," the manuscript'southward author writes. The discussion moves on to describe the procession of the body to the grave and the burial. Information technology ends, "It is an ancient custom to throw a clod of earth on the coffin after information technology has been lowered into the grave" ("Deaths and Funerals").

In Marcia Gaudet'south Tales from the Levee, similar details announced in her discussion of expiry rites. In addition to descriptions of "tying the chin" and closing the eyes of the deceased, placing black cloths on the door, and whispering the sorrowful news to the bees, Gaudet emphasizes the occurrence of the wake in the home. In this instance, some details nearly the issue are given, for example, removing the mattress and bed slats if the wakes were held in the sleeping room, placing a board on sawhorses and roofing it all with blackness cloths if wakes were in the front room, and mourners bringing "'a little thing of camphor to smell' while viewing the trunk" (Gaudet 1984: 23). Most pertinent to this article'due south discussion, Gaudet also describes friends and family gathering afterward the burial for a large dinner. She explains:

The food was usually prepared by friends and neighbors who began the preparations every bit soon as the expiry occurred. Since transportation was slow and there were no restaurants, relatives from neighboring areas would need a place to residue and eat before returning home. (23)

Gaudet turns to Arnold Van Gennep's Manuel de Folklore Français Contemporain (1958) for his explanation:

He says it is a counterpart of the baptismal and wedding dinners, and a symbol of the union of the survivors at a time of grief. Eating and drinking together is a rite of unity or togetherness on each of these occasions. (Gaudet 1984: 23)

Gaudet's option to describe the rituals after the burial is noteworthy, as well as her try to explain the cause of this ritual and willingness to include Van Gennep'south claim. If Van Gennep is suggesting that the funeral meal symbolizes the survivors' togetherness equally they assistance the deceased complete this last rite of passage, in the same style they had helped and so often during the different stages of this person'southward life, his position seems correct.

In one of its pronouncements about Cajun life, Cajun Land notes that in traditional Cajun culture "hospitality and conviviality were foremost, with the firm interim as the middle of social life" (226). Even though funeral homes have contradistinct the practices of home wakes, people still conduct large-scale gatherings at the home when a person dies. Maybe the time of the meeting has moved from earlier the burial to afterwards it, but the practise nevertheless remains for many Cajun families. Combining the core values of family, the social framework of cooperation, and the vernacular arroyo to faith and religious practices, the gathering of the extended family unit and close friends at the dwelling house following the burial stands as an intriguing and representative folk practice of the region and, more specifically, a rich case of its folk religious practices.

Of grade, at its core, the bereavement meal employs the symbolic nature of food and food sharing. In addition to the ritualistic practice of preparing and serving specialized food, such as funeral cakes, many people recognize the sharing of food as an of import part of the funeral and burial process. Kathlyn Gay and Martin Gay explain that "after most funerals in N America, information technology is customary for bereaved family members and friends to gather and share a repast" (Gay and Gay 1996: 118). Congenital on "carry-ins"--the dishes prepared by volunteers--the meals go a symbol of unity. However, the short description offered by Gay and Gay does not capture the extent of ritualized sharing that occurs, nor the mood surrounding one of these occasions as information technology unfolds in Louisiana. Gathering for a meal and visit after burial services stands every bit a widespread practice throughout the South (Brown 2009: 74-75), but in Louisiana, the bereavement visit is oft quite gregarious. Home visits later a burial service extend far back in my father's and mother'south families, simply in my father's family, these visits include his entire family, stretch long into the afternoon or evening following the service, and often plough into joyous occasions of reconnecting with family members, marked by laughter and raucous play, rather than mourning marked by loud lamentations and overt signs of grief. This sort of extended and gregarious home visit just occurs following services of older members of the family. I cannot recall or imagine them occurring after a death one might consider extremely tragic or unexpected, such as an infant.

When my grandmother, female parent of 14 children and grandmother and great-grandmother of countless more, died at the age of 94, family members congregated at the family farm in Egan, Louisiana. The visit and meal after the burial was an enormous matter. When Uncle Mickey Cooper, who lived in Alexander, died in 2001, Aunt Lois (Uncle Mickey's wife and my dad's sis) opened their habitation. Since most of the relatives lived in south Louisiana and couldn't bring perishable food from home, they transported the food that would keep (like a tray of brownies or an ice chest full of sealed packages of boudin) and stopped past grocery stores and markets to buy the food that wouldn't (like a box of fried craven or a sandwich tray from Albertson's). As people ate and drank, the kids played football game in the backyard. The adult cousins, standing on the dorsum porch and sitting in backyard chairs, defenseless up over beer or soda or water, while my dad'due south brothers and sisters, their spouses, and anyone else who wanted to sit in the air-workout visited inside over coffee, tea, or maybe even a picayune beer, too. When Uncle Elmo, one of my dad's brothers, passed in 2005, people gathered at Aunt Marie (Elmo's daughter) and Uncle Dickey'due south house in Iota. Food lined the tables, relatives took the opportunity to meet the new babies, and all the kids changed out of their church clothes or stayed in what they had on to climb the giant tree house and play center that wrapped itself around the oak in Uncle Dickey'due south backyard.

Knowing this blueprint, I was non surprised as my dad, facing liver cancer not responding to treatment, arranged for the bereavement repast every bit he made the final arrangements for his burial services and funeral mass. He wanted his extended family to experience comfortable at his home and relish themselves, and he wanted my mother not to worry about it. He scheduled the repair of the air-workout unit and a leaky toilet in a bath off the living room. He wanted the gathering to be similar the others in his family, and he knew that at most of these, at some point in the event, people drank a petty something. He put away some money for beer and wine so that enough would be in the firm to offering them. Typically, a grieving family would not be expected to cover this expense; however, he knew family members might non imbibe out of respect for my mother unless something was offered them, so he budgeted for this expense before he died. During the weekend my dad called his six sons and daughter to his home, my oldest brother, when he wasn't at my begetter's bedside, worked in the chiliad to prepare information technology for the visitor we all knew to exist coming soon.⁴ My male parent died tardily that Saturday dark, and in the time between my male parent's death and the funeral, my female parent worked, too, in preparing the home. She rearranged furniture, moved chairs from the dining room so people could walk effectually the dining room table that, she knew, would exist covered with trays of food. She bundled an area in the breakfast room where older people could sit together. She "put out ashtrays for smokers and did some general tidying upward" (LeJeune 2010). Her sisters came over to learn the layout of the kitchen, which drawers held what and what was tucked where in the dorsum of the cabinets. She talked to the managers at Piggly Wiggly almost her abode about the possibility of visitors using the parking lot, but each twelvemonth the Piggly Wiggly parking lot hosts the invading force that is the G Marias Mardi Gras. Our crowd wouldn't be a problem. Plus, they knew my dad.

Members of my immediate family began to telephone call my father's living brother and sisters, the spouses of his deceased brothers and sisters, and a few nephews and nieces to whom he was closest. The brothers and sisters and their spouses called members of their own families. When my family members chosen the extended family once again to tell them well-nigh the arrangements, they made sure to invite them to the dwelling house afterward the burial. For my brothers, my sister, and me, Mon meant work in cities other than Jennings, then a friend of the family came over that 24-hour interval. She brought a blank spiral notebook with a pen taped securely to the wires. She told my mother to go go some rest; she knew what to expect. Answering the door and taking the telephone calls, she wrote downwards the names of people who called, visited, and brought over food. She took their numbers and their messages. Page subsequently folio filled, not simply with the phone numbers of calls to return and messages of condolence and support, only too with the schedule of food—a list of dishes to be delivered to the habitation, the date and time each would go far, and the person(s) responsible.

The organizational feat is impressive in its own correct. Deliveries get organized, meals planned, needs met. Families can focus on something other than preparing meals for themselves and can count on a steady stream of visitors who will driblet by to cheque on things. My parents spent forty-eight years equally true-blue parishioners of Our Lady Assist of Christians Catholic Church, but information technology wouldn't affair if they had only spent iv weeks. The Bereavement Group of Our Lady Help of Christians was formed to handle the needs of families facing the loss of a loved one, and the group is committed to heeding that call. A service grouping of women and some men willing to donate their time and pay dues to generate the necessary funds, the Bereavement Society prides itself on providing a total meal to the family unit on the day of the funeral.

The group takes great pains to ensure that for each death, a bread dish is assigned to one member, a couple of vegetable dishes to others, and a dessert or two to other members. Organized by a ready schedule, the duties rotate. When it is a group member's turn, that person is called, given the grieving family's name and address, and told what to prepare and when to deliver it. The person chosen has the responsibility of buying ingredients, preparing the dish, and delivering it. The group uses funds from dues and other events to buy the meat, which someone from the group prepares and delivers. The size of the meal—for instance, the amount of meat that'south cooked or the number of vegetable sides prepared—is adapted to encounter the needs of the family. A big family ways more company and, as a upshot, a larger meal to be donated. The Bereavement Group carefully records the dish and time of delivery, and the group informs the grieving family unit. It is considered a failure of one'south duties not to make more than plenty or to arrive at a time other than the one scheduled.

Food sharing following a death happens in enough of other towns, in enough of other churches. My aunt Earline Oliver, a parishioner of St. Michael's Cosmic Church in Egan, belongs to her church'south bereavement group known equally St. Martha's Guild, later on the Biblical figure who served and waited on Jesus while Mary sat in praise.⁵ "Some people might swallow to live, simply Cajuns alive to eat," Aunt Earline told me. "Food's an important function of life hither. Someday at that place's a gathering, you [are] going to take food. This isn't different. (Oliver 2010). In fact, food becomes a central concern for families at this fourth dimension.

With footling fourth dimension or inclination to shop for ingredients or set up meals, grieving family unit members, usually all congregating at a single home, face the daunting job of feeding themselves. In add-on, visitors stop past, and politeness dictates that they exist offered at least a cup of java. Some of these visitors travel some distance, often making the deceased'south home their first terminate in town, and families feel these guests deserve something more than substantial than java. The big-scale meetings after the burial only intensify the challenges of feeding folks. The donation of food by family unit, friends, and groups helps to come across those challenges. Listing the many gifts of food to my family unit, from pounds of boudin donated past The Boudin King to a tray of cookies brought over by the mother of a high school friend, would not serve the give-and-take here, but citing i notable example might help to capture the nature of these large-scale visits to the home. After hearing of my begetter's passing and having the experience of hosting Uncle Elmo—s bereavement repast, Aunt Marie drove in from Iota with two red commercial-sized coolers, equipped with wheels and lids, to keep the soda cold for all of the guests. One cooler stood in the kitchen, ane in the living room as hand after hand reached inside for a coke, h2o, or something else common cold to go with a plastic plate crammed with food.

Other gifts of food arrived on a steady schedule, all written in the notebook, but the food constituted but a part of the gift-sharing ritual. When Cousin Leonard came over to drop off the broiled ham, macaroni and cheese, and baked beans prepared by his mother Aunt Margie, one of my dad's sisters-in-law, he brought along a framed memorial he made.a picture of my father standing with his brothers and sisters placed at the superlative of the memorial and a prayer titled "For Those Nosotros Love" written by Saint Ambrose of Milan placed at its bottom. My female parent placed the object, forth with a few cards and other tokens of my father'due south life, on a table for visitors to meet. Not uncommon in many Cajun households, shrines are created to commemorate the deceased. One appeared at Uncle Elmo'south visit and at Uncle Mickey Cooper's. For my grandmother, a tabular array displayed her picture, a prayer book, and her rosary.

In add-on to these examples of souvenir-sharing, my mother's sisters gave enormous amounts of time and energy. Before the bereavement meal, they helped my female parent make clean her house. On the day of the funeral, they answered the door while the family was at the services. During the gathering, they bundled the platters of nutrient, refilled trays, pulled dial and cafeteria meats out of the refrigerator, kept the brisket warm and the bread fresh, emptied trash and done dishes, and stayed after everyone left, to put my mother's home in order. They swept abroad thanks like crumbs on the table or dirt they pushed with the broom. When they could tell the fourth dimension was right, they left, and with them my mother sent the food she was able to force on them, then they could feed their ain families who had spent the last few days with their momma or wife out of pocket.

Based on my own experiences, observations, and conversations with people, my father's family unit visits are larger than nearly others are. Moreover, for my father's family the importance of having these gatherings in a relative'due south abode remains strong, and the tradition quite entrenched. Having said that, I realize that in many ways my experiences with my father'southward death do non seem all that unusual. Home visits and food sharing in these circumstances stand as practices well known to most Southerners.^half-dozen Harvey Dever explains the relationship his son--who is from Sulphur, Louisiana, only owns John's Bar in Breaux Bridge--forms through gift-sharing at these sorts of occasions: "What he serves on the dinner, he'll accept." That'd be brisket cutting upwards, and that edible bean meal, and one of them with the rice--every funeral...and his customers and all become that. They think he'due south God there. (2010). Interestingly, my family does not have a name for this upshot. I accept termed it the bereavement meal or the "abode visit" to distinguish it from the visitation at the funeral habitation, but during fieldwork for this project, I did encounter people who had a name for the practise.

Destinee Delahoussaye and her family unit are members of Christian Baptist Church in Lake Charles. I met her when I lectured students at St. Louis High School near folklore. When I asked the form if their families did anything later on they buried someone, if they gathered at someone'due south home or had a meal together, she asked, "Oh, y'all mean like the repast?" Instead of gathering at a person's dwelling house, many people, perhaps faced with space limitations or the cultural traditions of their own church, gather at a church building'south fellowship hall or multipurpose building for the occasion. She explained that in her church after someone dies, people gather at their fellowship hall and accept a large meal for the family and church building congregation. Each person or family brings a dish, and people get together to connect, only "it's kinda like a political party. It's non sorry" (Delahoussaye 2010). Destinee's utilize of repast becomes even more interesting when compared to Gaudet's discussion of funeral practices in Tales from the Levee. Gaudet uses the phrase "les repas de funeraire":

. . . relatives from neighboring areas would need a place to remainder and consume earlier returning home. Withal, Van Gennep gives another explanation for les repas funéraire. He says information technology is the counterpart of the baptismal and wedding dinners . . . . (23)⁷

Most call up of the word repast equally meaning a meal. Repast, from the French paseure for "to feed," translates equally "to feed over again." Evidently, the term means something more than "a meal" or "to eat." The act is nearly service; information technology's virtually "feeding" those in demand. "To feed" is exactly the act that friends and church members perform. In fact, the group is feeding the family "over again" considering, we tin can assume, they have fed them during the preparations for burial. Perhaps this focus on the term digresses besides much, only the indicate seems clear. The act, especially when because its name, focuses on interdependence of group members and each person's willingness to contribute in order to tend to one of its own. When I contacted Destinee's mother most her church's tradition, she explained that the repast communicates "the continuity of life" (Mathews 2010). In the abode or in the fellowship hall, the bereavement meal becomes a symbolic statement of togetherness and control, the merging of the sacred and the secular.

In fact, moving the meal to church fellowship halls does seem to be a trend building momentum. Several people mentioned that they noticed this change.⁸ Perhaps this shift indicates a change in the community itself. As populations grow larger, belongings such events in the domicile becomes impractical, if non impossible. Yet, removed from the domicile and occurring in the steel and cinderblock of multipurpose buildings, a scholar surely wonders if the event loses some of its primal components that make information technology engaging. Perhaps the motility does lessen the event in some style, peradventure non. Either way, the gathering deserves attention. First, the event embodies the traits of Louisiana's cultural Catholicism. In addition, even for not-Catholics, the repast relies on those core cultural values so many scholars have argued as fundamental to south Louisiana: family, religion, sociability, and traditionalism. Finally, the event deserves report non for its unusual nature and rarity but for its ordinariness and prevalence, not for its oppositional or "folk religious" grapheme only for its alignment with the "official church."

Building on Don Yoder's work on folk religion, a great many of the articles business Louisiana folk religious practices that exist "apart from and alongside the strictly theological body" (Yoder 1974: 2-xv). On occasion, scholars distort this give-and-take to mean practices unsanctioned by the "official" religion or opposing the "official" organized religion hierarchy, belief arrangement, or tenets. Nonetheless, this approach stifles studies in folk religion or "cultural Catholicism," while a focus on how the belief arrangement is lived, experienced, and expressed in everyday life may offer different insight into a civilization, every bit many scholars have argued (Tyson, Peacock, and Patterson 1988, Primiano 1995, Gaudet 1997). Second, studies on Louisiana folk faith tend toward examining those events that are most unusual, or practices that seem especially tied to place or exist far beyond "conventional" practices. The desire to certificate the blessing of the shrimp armada or Dulac'due south "Living Fashion of the Cross" is stiff, and should exist. These interesting and powerful expressions of identity warrant considerable study, but neglecting other pocket-sized observances and less idiosyncratic religious practices obscures a big segment of the cultural Catholicism good in Louisiana, maybe diminishing the usefulness and function of folk studies on the subject.⁹ Information technology may also skew the depiction of the culture hither. The richness of the region'southward cultural Catholicism, the depth and pervasiveness of its conventionalities organization and that organization's function in shaping the civilization.calls for scholarship that celebrates a diverseness of folk practices, the unusual and the ordinary.

Sources

Ancelet, Barry Jean, Jay D. Edwards, and Glen Pitre. 1991. Cajun Country. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Andrepont, Verda. 6 April 2010. Interview past author.

Brownish, Alan. 2009. Deathlore. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Folklife Vol. 14. Chapel Hill: UNC Press.

Deaths and Funerals. Early Louisiana French Life and Folklore from the Anonymous Breaux Manuscript as edited by Professor Jay K. Ditchy. Selected, arranged and trans. by Geroge F. Reinecke.

Delahoussaye, Destinee. 28 April 2010. Interview by author.

Dever, Harvey. 22 April 2010. Interview by author.

Editors of Consumer Reports. 1977. Funerals Consumers' Last Rights. Mountain Vernon, NY: Consumers Wedlock.

Fontenot, Mary Alice, and Julie Landry. 1983. The Louisiana Experience. Baton Rouge: Claitor'south Publishing Sectionalization.

Fontenot, Sidney. 2007. Unpublished recordings.

Gaudet, Marcia. 2000. Cultural Catholicism in Cajun-Creole Louisiana. Louisiana Folklore Miscellany 15: 3-twenty.

------. 1984. Tales from the Levee: The Folklore of St. John the Baptist Parish. Lafayette, LA: Heart for Louisiana Studies.

Gay, Kathlyn, and Martin Gay. 1996. Funeral Foods. Encyclopedia of North American Eating and Drinking: Traditions, Community, and Rites. 1996.

Humphrey, Linda T. 1979. Small Grouping Festive Gatherings. Journal of the Folklore Constitute 16 (three): 190-201.

Klein, Kevin. 27 Apr 2010. Interview by author.

Laderman, Gary. 2003. Rest in Peace: A Cultural History of Death and the Funeral Home in Twentieth-Century America. New York: Oxford University Press.

LeJeune, Cherie. 12 Apr 2010. Interview by author.

Marks, Amy Seidel, and Bobby J. Calder. 1982. Attitudes Toward Death and Funerals. Evanston, IL: The Center for Marketing Sciences.

Matthews, Demetre. 24 May 2010. Personal communication with writer.

Mitford, Jessica. 1963. The American Way of Death. New York: Simon and Schuster.

-----. 1998. The American Way of Decease: Revisited. New York: Knopf.

Oliver, Earline. 25 April 2010. Interview by author.

Primiano, Leonard Norman. 1995. Vernacular Religion and the Search for Method in Religious Folklife. Western Folklore 54: 37-56.

Reed, Revon. 1976. Lâche Pas la Patate: Portait des Acadiens de la Louisiane. Ottawa: Editions Parti pris.

Tyson, Westward. Ruel, James L. Peacock, and Daniel Westward. Patterson, eds. 1988. Diversities of Gifts: Field Studies in Southern Religion. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Van Gennep, Arnold. 1958. Manuel de Sociology Français Contemporain. Tome Premier, Paris: A. et J. Picard et Cie.

Yoder, Don. 1974. Toward a Definition of Folk Organized religion. Western Sociology 33: ii-15.

Notes

1. Of course, other families and other churches have like practices, but this commodity follows my family, which is Cajun and Catholic, so it examines the outcome in this context.

two. Other than the specific interviews mention in this commodity, fieldwork for this projection comes from many collecting sessions. 1 of these was a project involving approximately forty-five St. Louis Loftier School students who conducted interviews with parents and grandparents about their recollections of funeral and burial practices.

3. In my interviews about funeral and burial practices, this argument about the wakes being in the home stood by far to be the almost common and usually the very first slice of information they shared.

four. On that Thursday night, my eldest brother arrived from Baton Rouge and saw my father's status. He chosen his repairperson and yardman, Joe Kidd, and asked if he would drive in from Billy Rouge that Saturday to assist him with the yard. Joe Kidd came in with a helper, worked all day long, and refused to be paid. I will never forget this act of generosity.

5 In my experience, Cajun Catholics fully comprehend the message of this biblical story; they effigy, too, that Jesus had nothing against hard work and realize there are limits to all things, even the stagnation brought on by awe and wonder, specially if a funeral is to be planned or if company'south coming.

6. Come across Kathlyn Gay and Martin Gay's Encyclopedia of Due north American Eating and Drinking: Traditions, Customs, and Rites.

7 Gaudet's citation hither is "Ibid., II, 652."

viii, Both Kevin Klein, the manager for Miquez Funeral Home, and Cherie LeJeune mentioned this.

9. For a discussion on the form, meaning, and part of small group gatherings, run across Linda T. Humphrey's "Small Group Festive Gatherings" in Periodical of the Sociology Found.

This commodity was first published in the 2010 Louisiana Folklore Miscellany. Keagan LeJeune is a folklorist who teaches at McNeese State Academy.