Sitting Up With The Dead

From the journals:

A discussion of funerals can be a morbid subject but let us look into how funerals and the preparation for such rites were treated in Bath County prior to the advent of funeral homes.

Upon notification of the undertaker, the body of the deceased was taken to the undertaker’s place of business ( which was not a funeral home) and embalmed.  The body was then returned to the home or church to await burial.  It was customary for the mortician to have funeral notices printed out and distributed, mostly to places of business.   Funeral notices usually gave the name, date of birth, place of burial, date and time of the service, and the pall bearers.  In some cases, active and honorary pall bearers were listed separately.  Usually, the notice was edged in black, but like other things, this changed from time to time.

It was a custom for friends and neighbors to ‘sit up’ with the corpse, and most people insisted that the body of the deceased be attended at all times.  Many of you reading this have probably ‘sat up’ with the body of someone.

Customs in any kind of life event change.  Perhaps strain, sadness and anxiety have been relieved somewhat by our modern funeral homes.  The author vividly recalls ‘sitting up’ with the body of a friend whose life had been suddenly snuffed out by an auto accident.  The corpse was a beautiful young lady whose body had been mangled by the accident.  Of course, the body was at her home and the young lady’s mother, father, sister, and brother were there.    You can imagine what such a night would be like – heart rending and such a helpless feeling overall.

On her blog Adventures in Cemetery Hopping, Traci Rylands offers a nice overview of the practice of "sitting up with the dead," as well as other Southern traditions surrounding funerals.