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Old Man Hector Shaw died on Wednesday at the stroke of noon. We expected his death, but it was nonetheless sad and the glen united in mourning. As Hector’s wife had passed away some ten years before, his children organised the funeral and the wake, with my mother helping, as she always did on such occasions.
“There will be a wake in the church hall,” Mother announced to us as we gathered around the table.
“Yes, Mother, We chorused.
We had expected nothing else. There was always a wake for every death in the glen. It was a tradition as hallowed as the Sabbath and as old as time. A wake was a method of alleviating the grief and sense of loss caused by a death while lifting the spirits of the relatives of the deceased. People paid their respects, sang the deceased’s favourite songs, an
