The Public Performance of Private Grief, Ritual and Authenticity in Mourning

“ And they do it with such a hearty good-will and enjoyment. Their motto is that you cannot have too much of a good thing. They have almost made funerals unpopular by over-elaboration and display, especially what are called public funerals, in which an effort is made to confer great distinction on the dead. So far has it been carried often that there has been a reaction of popular sentiment and people have wished the man were alive. We prosecute everything so vigorously that we speedily either wear it out or wear ourselves out on it, whether it is a game, or a festival, or a holiday. ”

“ He must be buried as "society" is buried. He must have a fashionable funeral. He must, to the last, bear witness to the power of Mrs. Grundy. It is to please her, that the funeral cloaks, hatbands, scarves, mourning coaches, gilded hearses, and processions of mutes are hired. And yet, how worthless and extravagant is the mummery of the undertaker's grief; and the feigned woe of the mutes, saulies, and plume bearers, who are paid for their day's parade! ”

“ Do yards of crape and bombazine never express the opposite emotion? Is real heart-breaking grief to be gauged by the width of a hem, or the length or thickness of a veil? Have not many a widow and orphan woke up, the morning after a funeral, to find the little left by the deceased, expended in funereal carriages, for people who would not lift a helping finger if it would keep them out of the almshouse? We all know that, or if we don't, we may wake up to the fact, some future day, when the sunshine of prosperity is clouded over. ”

“ Then again the newspapers will be filled with advertisements of families giving an invitation to their friends to be present at the funeral, also announcing the masses which are given from year to year on the anniversary of the funeral, and inviting their friends to be present at this solemn service. At the church servants will be posted at the door to receive the cards of those who go in, or those who send their regrets, the same as they would at any other social occasion. ”

“ The funeral pageant moves,—a dozen carriages preceded by mourners on foot, clad in white, their heads covered, their feet bare, their grief insupportable, so that an attendant is at hand to sustain each mourner howling at the wheels of the hearse. An orchestra heads the procession; the air is flooded with paper prayers that are cast hither at you to appease the troubled spirit. ”

“ We have no right to cast a gloom over happy natures by our heavy weight of crape, by serving the term prescribed by Society for wearing the livery of mourning,—as if real grief thought of a uniform. We have no right to syndicate our grief by using notepaper with a heavy black border as wide as a hatband, thus parading our personal sorrow to others in their happiest moments. ”

“ Let the tresses be torn and the garments be rent,— Funerals and memorials sometimes are to honor the dead; sometimes to cater to the vanity of the living; sometimes seemingly to strengthen an organization, social, religious, political, but in every instance following custom’s ways. Were not the public funeral display the custom, it would be sacrilege—custom sanctifies barbarity. Averse to personal display Clara Barton was also averse to the use of any custom of public mourning. ”

“ Friends and relatives joined the procession and the demonstrations became the louder. If the deceased person had been of wide repute, many other people went into the line of mourners and hired mourners were employed to increase the lamentations and thereby enlarge the public display of respect to the dead. For seventy-two days the mourning was carried on in the house, lamentations were made, the funeral dirge was sung, all amusements and indulgences were abstained from, and the men allowed their hair and beard to grow. ”

“ The mourning of poor people is very coarse, very; quite different from that of persons of quality. Canvass to crape, Sir.’ The lady next asks if he has a variety of half-mourning; to which he replies: ‘O, infinite—the largest stock in town; full, and half, and quarter, and half-quarter mourning, shaded off from a grief prononcé to the slightest nuance of regret.’ The lady is directed to another counter, and introduced to ‘the gent. who superintends the Intermediate Sorrow Department;’ who inquires: ‘You wish to inspect some half-mourning, Madam? ”

“ But to her mind numerous funerals conferred a certain distinction upon a family, and it was a duty which she owed at once to her relatives and to society to see that the mourning was properly attended to. So the dead man was put under the sod, and in time came to the one good appointed to all men,—to nourish the grass and the daisies. ”

“ The custom, growing in some of our cities, of private funerals, of limiting the attendants to the family and nearest friends of the deceased, is there in good taste. The parade of ceremony, the pomp of numbers, the homage of civility, and all the show and tricks of hollow conventional life, are never more out of place, never more revolting, than where death has come with its resistless power and awful truth. But a country funeral has, beside its quality of general sorrow, somewhat of the nature of the Egyptian court that sat upon the merits of the dead. ”

“ Beecher, in rose-colored funerals; not in those which are gray and ghostly with ashes. There is too much convention about these things. Why do we have all the formal funerals, when the only real sentiment is attended to by the hearts of the bereaved? When the body is dead it should be put away quietly, kindly, reverently, but without any display of tears—and without the cards and flowers. ”

“ If my friends have alabaster boxes laid away, full of fragrant perfumes of sympathy and affection, which they mean to break over my dead body, I would rather they bring them out in my weary and troubled hours, and open them, that I may be refreshed and cheered by them while I need them. I would rather have a plain coffin without flowers, a funeral without eulogy, than life without the sweetness of love and tenderness and sympathy. Let us learn to anoint our friends beforehand for their burial. Post-mortem kindness does not cheer the burdened spirit. ”

“ Those who attend a funeral should dress quietly, but they need not wear black unless they prefer to do so.
While few persons would be guilty of attending a funeral out of curiosity, there are undoubtedly some who do. Sensitive people are growing to realize that the last ceremony for the dead is too sacred to be shared except with those who are really entitled by close ties to be present and have signified by personal messenger those whom they desired should be present. ”

“ Very often the women of the family, or perhaps just one woman, finds her grief uncontrollable. Even though the funeral is private, and only relatives and close friends are present it is the privilege of the bereaved to keep to her room and find solace in solitude. The world will not censure her for being absent; it is a time when petty conventions may safely be overlooked. When one is grieving, suffering, miserable ”

“ It sounds paradoxical to say that those in sorrow should be protected from all contacts, and yet that they must be constantly asked about arrangements and given little time to remain utterly undisturbed. They must think of people they want sent for, and they must decide the details of the funeral ”

“ To lose a beloved one in death is to be conscious of the intangible something that binds the world together, and upon which all civilization is based. We call it love; and we know that it is the deepest tie of affection—indeed, the deepest emotion—of which human nature is capable.
And so, death brings with it sorrow and misery. Those of us who are most directly concerned can think of no rules of etiquette, no customs of good society, when we are suffering a deep bereavement. We think only of our great loss, and of our great sorrow. ”

“ Perhaps our sorrow may be of such a nature that we cannot reveal it even to our best-beloved. Our secret grief lies like ice upon our hearts, sending its chilling influences through every member. The hands hang down listlessly and the feeble knees smite together; the aching of the head is only exceeded by the aching of the heart. Yet no one knows the agony that paralyzes our life. Or, sadder still, the heart-friend may be snatched away, and while our hearts are breaking by reason of bereavement, we may have no one left to whom we may turn for comfort in our affliction. ”

“ It is for this reason that funeral and mourning practices are highly conventional. Another reason, perhaps, is because death is a shock, and a round of conventional ceremonies alleviates that strained feeling during the period of readjustment.
Thus, the members of the bereaved family should be left as nearly alone to their grief as possible. Nothing in the nature of business should be thrust upon them. A male member of the family should take complete charge; or the immediate duties may be left in the hands of the nearest outside relatives. ”

“ What good purpose do these ceremonies serve, with all the doleful shows that are paraded before a dying man in his last moments: the very tears of his family and the grief of his friends exaggerate for him the loss he is about to sustain.
We are so blind that we know neither when to mourn, nor when to rejoice; our mirth and our sadness are nearly always false. ”

“ Would it not be wiser for people to rejoice at all that they now sorrow for, and vice versâ? To put on bridal garments at funerals, and mourning at weddings? For their friends to condole with them when they attained riches and honor, as only so much care added? [Pg 10]
If in a village it were a custom to hang a funeral garland or other token of death on a house where some one had died, and there to let it remain till a death occurred elsewhere, and then to hang that same garland over the other house, it would have, methinks, a strong effect. ”

“ The tyrannous custom of making funerals and weddings an occasion of useless pomp is perhaps one of the most reprehensible of all. The fashion has insensibly grown till one's perverted sense of what is "fitting" has almost acknowledged it to be a necessity. ”

“ I have seen weddings and witnessed funeral processions where the family on either occasion wore exactly the same expression. In emotions of any kind that conventional smile alone betrays their feelings. ”

“ Friends make pretence of following to the grave, But before one is in it, their minds are turned And making the best of their way back to life And living people, and things they understand. ”

“ When the funeral pomp was over, the remains of their benefactor lowered into the earth, and the proud procession of the great had moved away, then would these simple children of the soil steal noiselessly to the edge of the deep grave, and, with their hearts full of grief, whisper in low voices to each other of all that they had seen and known of the good stranger's acts of charity and kindness. ”

“ And you that are young weep too, because the end of life is not the ripeness of old age. The poor too wept, and, which is of much more worth, and much more fruitful, washed away his transgressions with their tears. Those are redeeming tears, those are groanings which hide the grief of death, that grief which through the plenteousness of eternal joy covers over the feeling of former grief. And so, though the funeral be that of a private person, yet is the mourning public; and therefore cannot the weeping last long which is hallowed by the affection of all. ”

“ Third, that mourning garments are absolutely useless: for if they are intended to remind us of our affliction, true grief needs no such reminder; if to point out our grief to others, they are an impertinence, for true sorrow courts seclusion; and if as a consolation, they are only powerful to remind of an irrevocable past. Fourth, their inconvenience: too often the house of death is turned by them into a busy work-shop; and the souls bowed down with grief are made to trouble themselves about mourning ornaments and becoming weeds. ”

“ With the growing taste for privacy and simplicity, many of the foolish demonstrations of grief, expressed in outward display, have been eliminated. It is now a very rare occurrence for the room in which the dead body lies to be filled with wreaths and masses of flowers, for people are beginning to realize that this is a relic of ancient and savage burial customs, and that it is not so much a manifestation of grief as a display of vanity. ”