Etiquette for a wake/funeral?
My wife and I attended our Neighbours Wake today.
What do you bring to a wake?
Especially when it’s at someones house (in this case, our Neighbours house).
Steve was a quirky guy. I mentioned before that he’d told me he was dying, and I didn’t know how to respond, other than “that sucks”.
He was a keen musician (drums), played in a band, so I figured taking beer was probably an ok way of turning up.
Let me tell you, it’s weird turning up to a wake .. not knowing any people, other than his brother (who lived with him), and another lady we’d only met once. 50 or so people .. it was just unusual. What do you have in common, a guy who’s just died.
Back to him being quirky .. we met a girl who’d flown in from Canberra for the wake and she also knew no-one. Aparrently, he rang her up a few months ago and said “I’m dying, what would you like?”
To throw me into a state of cognitive dissonance (i.e. Confusion) this is also the first non-religious someone’s died event I’ve gone to. It was drinks at someones house, with photos and discussions about him or whatever. There are no patterns I was used to. Just a whole lot of people who are know missing someone they knew.
So .. I am not sure I really understand what the protocol is now, but it seems a lot less formal than the whole church thing. People remember the person as they want to, with no reglious baggage other than your own.
Farewell Steve.