je vais à la funeral

When you are learning a foreign language, you do little "culture" sections. Not so much geography and politics as just crap like "A la plage!" (je porte un maillot?) and whatnot.

What you don't get are "At at funeral" or "When someone dies". I'd think at least the latter if not also the former would be important, especially if you were planning to someday live in the country where that langauge was spoken. Of course, English is sort of all over the damned place, but so's French and that sure didn't stop Madame Higgins from using books and materials which were France only.

Today an international student asked me "so what happens now?" regarding our friend whose mother just died. I talked a little, made reference to "holy week" and the problems this entailed for funeral planning, then noticed he looked very confused. I asked him if he knew anything about US funerals and death customs. Nope.

If you don't want a comprehensive and detailed answer, I am a bad person to ask. I assume if I and a non-local get into what could be an awkward topic, the best thing to do is to give them as complete an answer as possible. My sense is questions like "what do you do with used pads" are hard to bring up in another country, so I like to be sure the person gets the most out of the exchange.

It was sort of odd to phrase so much of it in terms I tend to reserve for anthropology papers..."and the preist....er...any of the christian...I guess clerics, would be quite busy with all the Easter, um, rituals this week..." But we got through it. About 15 minutes later, he had gotten the "everything you never wanted to know about US or at least New England funerals and death rituals" lecture. With an Irish Catholic Boston spin to it (e.g. "Whenever anyone is in the room where the dead person is laid out, they tend to be very quiet. Some people approach to kneel and pray. Generally it is expected that the people in attendance approach the coffin. Even if you don't have anything in mind or anything...it's part of the 'paying respects' thing. Family members usually drift in and out, sometimes hiding out in a back room chain smoking and telling incredibly stupid jokes...sometimes someone shows up drunk.