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Thursday, June 18, 2009

Sittin' Up With The Dead

When I was a child growing up in small town Arkansas, with many kith and kin living in the country, I heard from my parents and grandparents about wakes held at home. The practice of family tending to the care of departed relative, and friends viewing the body at the house of the deceased, had only recently become a thing of the past.

Some of the stories creeped me out as a kid, though I delighted in being creeped out.

So I got a laugh out of this Ray Stevens video, Sittin' Up with the Dead. I hope you do too.

2 comments:

  1. Cute video! "Waking" the dead at home was still occasionally being done when I was a child. In fact, I was taken to the wake of one of my mother's uncles, right there in his living room. That's the sort of memory that never fades <:)

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  2. I remember those stories too; in my smalltown Ohio family, they were also only one generation back...

    I WAS in my beloved Grandma's house, when she passed away in a bed in the living room. She'd been released from the hospital that day, for just that purpose.

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