Professional mourners

The tradition has died out, but up until the mid 1900’s, in certain Irish precincts, families hired a couple of keeners to show up at the wakes of loved ones. Keeners were paid a pittance, or a drop or two of the craythur, to sit by the body, crying and wailing.

I never saw a keener in action, but – like any good urban ethnic Catholic who grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s – I did go to my share of wakes and funerals.

It wasn’t a regular thing.

No, that was my father’s domain: a daily scan of the obituaries (a.k.a., the Irish sports pages), and then heading out to the wake of anyone he knew. Or once knew. Or knew the brother of. Or played baseball against. Or was a member of the Holy Name Society with. Other than his time in the Navy in WWII, my father lived in the same neighborhood his entire life. He knew a lot of people. He had a lot of wakes to go to.

I grew up in a neighborhood that had its share of taverns – Irish bars: Mulcahy’s, Hennessey’s, Breen’s, etc. – but my father wasn’t a drinker. He was a wake-goer.

But if wake and funeral going wasn’t a regular thing for me, it was a thing.

I went to my first funeral at the age of 8. I was 10 or 11 when I went to my first wake in the company of my father, and 11 or 12 when I went to my first wake unaccompanied by an adult, but with a posse of classmates.

For my first solo run, I asked my father – because who would know better – what I should say. (The wake was for the father of a 6th grade classmate.) My father told me to take the widow’s hand, look her in the eye, and say “I’m sorry for your troubles,” which is what the Irish traditionally – and quite peculiarly, as far as I’m concerned – said at wakes.

Having walked down to the funeral parlor from the church parking lot where we’d met up, my friends and I decided not to enter O’Connor Brothers en masse. We paired off and went in two-by-two. I rehearsed with my partner, Mary Agnes, that she would take the widow’s hand, and I would say “I’m sorry for your troubles.”

It didn’t quite work out that way.

Mary A was a shy and timid girl, and she held back, quivering and sniffling. I took Mrs. M’s hand and managed to get out “I’m sorry” but forgot to add “for your troubles.”

I can still perfectly picture the stricken look on my classmate Paul’s face, puffy with the crying, as he stood by his father’s (open, of course) casket. I don’t think any of us actually spoke to Paul. We just looked his way and teared up ourselves.

Mr. M’s wake was typical of the ones I went to as kid. They were for neighbors, or the parents or grandparents of schoolmates or friends.

The first relative whose wake and funeral I went to was a biggie: my father’s, a few weeks after I turned 21.

As I got older, the scene shifted from parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, to cousins, and the spouses and siblings of friends, to colleagues, and – alas – to spouses and friends.

So I have enough experience to operate as a reasonably adept wake- and funeral-goer.

And now I’ve learned that this skillset, while no longer of much use in Ireland let alone in the U.S., is actually in demand in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

There, in the country’s capital, Kinshasa:

…the mourning business is well-established and lucrative—you need not look far to find pleureuses (“criers”) to hire for a funeral. (Source: The Economist)

And now it’s spreading to other areas.

In Goma, Gilbert Kubali is establishing a professional mourning service, recruiting workers by offering tryouts to those who want the work. He’s the first mover in his city, and “hope[s] to monopolise the market.”

In the DRC, professional mourners don’t hold back. Convulsive sobbing, moaning and wailing help you secure a job offer. Sort of like those old Irish keeners.

Ostentatious grief is tied up with a traditional belief that the dead linger long after their pulses have stopped.

If those lingering dead don’t see a lot of gnashing of teeth, they’re apt to come back and screw up the lives of those who’ve been left behind. Reason enough to summon up some pros.

Running a group of pleureuses can be lucrative.

To hire ten women for a week of mourning costs some $1,500. On top of this the women expect food, drink and transport costs.

The article doesn’t mention how much the professional mourners take home, but in a country where the vast majority of the population lives on less than $2 a day, the job is probably a pretty good one.

Lest we think that a culture of professional mourning is a quaint throwback, something that would occur only in a backward nation, I’ve seen a number of stories of late on calls going out for mourners to attend the funerals of veterans who don’t have any friends or families left.

And there’s a local (Boston) funeral parlor that taps students from nearby Catholic high schools to come to the funerals of those whose funerals would otherwise be unattended.

Most of the wakes and funerals I’ve been to have been blessedly well-attended, those left behind well-supported by friends and families. But the thought of not having anyone to see you out the door is pretty depressing, although once you’re dead and gone, well, you’re probably beyond caring.

Anyway, I wish Gordon Kubali great luck. If he succeeds, he’ll be making a living, the pleureuses will be making a living, and the dead –just in case their spirits are still lurking around – will have someone to shed a few tears for them.

Oh, why not?