Going to a Wake

As a child I asked my Irish mother why people read obituaries.

My mother used to call them the Irish Sports Pages.  Others have called them the Irish Comics or the Irish Racing Form.

Mom explained that in the first half of the 20th century obituaries were a way to plan your social life.  People researched where to meet friends and neighbors based on who was laid out where and when.  She remembered attending wakes on the southside of Chicago as a child in the 1920’s and 1930’s.  Her parents would scrub up their daughters and go to the wakes.  Mom said that at a wake she would be greeted as follows: “‘Tis Emmet’s girl, Peg, is it?  It can’t be.  Wasn’t it last spring she was at Phil Doherty’s mother’s do?  How awful she’s grown.”

I attended my first wake in 1963 at the age of eight.  The main attraction was my great grandmother, Maggie Murnane.  Maggie was 96 when she decided enough was enough.  She was born on a farm in Galbally, Ireland in 1867, two years after John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln. She only had eleven siblings. In 1889, Maggie came to America with her brother Billy.  Upon arrival she worked in a Chicago quilt factory.  She was twenty-two and single.  

She had a classic Southside Irish wake.  I did not know much about death or wakes in 1963. I did notice that the mood in the room formed a continuum, from grief to not so much grief.  Up front, near the coffin, things were quiet and somber; people exchanged condolences and said the rosary.  As the distance from the coffin grew the mood changed.  Rows 3 through 6 housed cordial conversations about the deceased and a smattering of people subtly catching up on the latest news about the family or neighborhood.  Rows 7 through 9 had a more positive vibe.  Back there Maggie was not really mentioned.  Here sat mostly respectful men and women talking about politics and sports.

Everyone beyond row 9 had a glow about them, and the rules changed.  I did not know that drinking had anything to do with that glow.   My parents planted me in this crowd and told me to stay there, probably thinking this is where I could do the least damage. These guys smelled of White Owl Cigars, Old Spice aftershave, and booze. Their noses were bulbous veiny things planted between a pair of ruby red cheeks.  Most had wispy red/gray hair, although a few were Black Irish with thick forests of dark hair.  They were not generally close to Maggie.  They knew someone who knew someone who kind of knew one of her children.  One old guy asked me if I was John and Peg’s son.  He told me about a Ford Model A my father sold him after the war.  It was apparently a good car, at least memorable.  I saw deeper into the gene pool when I met my mother’s cousin Micky Murnane (what a great name).  He was bald with a forehead so large you could lease it to a personal injury lawyer as a billboard.  Men, young and old, traded jokes, jibes, and stories.  It was a good time, but nobody commented about how awful I had grown.

Unfortunately, that was my last wake for the next twenty years.  I must have screwed up and never got invited back.

But I saw a group of immigrants and immigrants’ children who were making their way in a new country.  They had escaped famine and centuries of oppression.  Some came to America on what were called coffin ships because many did not survive the crowded disease ridden conditions with a lack of food and water.  Now they owned their homes, had a car, got their children into trade schools or colleges, attended mass and an occasional White Sox game. Some Irish could be stereotypical drinking/fighting folk.  But the vast majority only wanted something better for their families.  They were no different from other newcomers from Europe, Asia, Mexico, Central America, or South America.  Like those people the Irish weren’t welcomed here,  but what would we be without them and the people now fleeing here to make a better life.