Mourning

(I updated a new mourning blog with more information on the mourning practices of the 19th century. Click here to go to it)

As many social historians may know, mourning the loss of a loved one was quite different in the 19th century as compared to mourning today. In fact, I sometimes wonder if people truly even mourn in this modern time in which I'm stuck.
In case you might not be familiar with the stages of mourning during the mid-to-late 19th century, here is a run-down:

Mourning pertaining to women was in three stages - heavy/deep mourning, full mourning, and half mourning.

Mourning a spouse generally would last one to 2 ½ years:

For a parent: 6 months to a year

For children over 10 yrs old: 6 months to a year

For children under 10 yrs: 3 to 6 months

Infants: 6 weeks and up

For siblings: 6 to 8 months

For aunts and uncles: 3 to 6 months

For cousins: 6 weeks to 3 months

For aunts or uncles related by marriage: 6 weeks to 3 months

Grandparents: 6 months

For more distant relatives and friends: 3 weeks and up

Heavy/Deep mourning lasted the minimum of a year and a day and could last as long as 2 ½ years to life. Black clothing, jewelry, veils, bonnets, outer wear, and crape characterized it. The use of crape to cover outer wear and bonnets usually lasted a year and a day, and then could be removed. By the 2^nd year the woman could add lace. Hats were not to be worn for mourning; bonnets covered in crape would replace them. The veil was of black crape, and very long, but by the 2^nd year it could be shortened. Mourning clothes were expected to be plain with little or no adornment.

Full mourning collars and cuffs were replaced by white, veils were taken off, crape was discarded, and jewelry of a wider variety was worn.

Half mourning included the addition of lilac, lavender, violet, mauve, and gray. The woman was no longer limited to just black. She would use black and white ornaments for evening wear, bonnets were white, lavender silk or straw.

For specific periods of time a widow would not leave her home and did not receive any visitors. After a respectable time, she would then send out black edged cards advising friends and family that her time of heavy mourning had passed and she could now receive visitors. Parties, weddings, and other social affairs were hands off to those in mourning.

I write of this because we recently had a death in our family - my wife's mother, only a couple months ago, passed away quite suddenly at the young age of 61.
Death has been a visitor to my wife's family frequently since this new century began - besides her mother she also lost her father, a sister, and a brother - all rather young and all unexpected.

With death seemingly ever-present, my wife has not truly been able to mourn - to grieve - as she would like. She has been told that "life goes on," to "get over it," and "why do you mourn if you're a Christian."
Yes, these comments have been said to her over the last few years, believe it or not.

A couple weeks after my mother-in-law's death, we had a memorial service that included our very close friend who just happens to be a pastor and presided over the ceremony. During the service, my eldest son played the guitar and sang a very heart-wrenching version of "Wayfaring Stranger." Nearly all were brought to tears. In this gathering we had many friends and family, some who traveled quite a distance, giving their happy remembrances of my mother-in-law. A beautiful eulogy read by my wife also brought nearly every visitor to tears. And to complete the service there was a nice setting of food.
But, even though this memorial was supposed to bring closure, I could see that it didn't, at least not for my wife. You see, mother and daughter were very close and spoke to each other daily on the phone (we live in the Detroit area and my mother-in-law lived 2 1/2 hours away in Battle Creek, so visits were not as frequent as all would have liked). And the time of day the phone calls had been made (late afternoon) is particularly hard on my wife.
She still cries herself to sleep many nights and she still has bouts with depression, but she still can't mourn outside of our home it seems. Society does not allow open mourning without sending the mourner to a psychiatrist, who will invariably put them on some anti-depressant.
I do my best to comfort her, but I can only give the moral support she needs.

On the day her mother died - November 1st - we were in the midst of having a period dress gathering at our home with our Civil War friends, so we rushed to the hospital without changing (which garnered some looks from everyone around!). I say this because the day after Christmas we had a few friends over to help celebrate the holiday. And, just as we have done the previous two years with these friends, it was a period dress Christmas get-together once again. As our friends have repeatedly told us, "This is our Christmas!"
But, this year I noticed that, instead of wearing her nice flower-print brown day dress, she instead wore her lavender day dress with a mourning brooch I bought for her earlier this year while we portrayed mourning practices during re-enactments.
http://passionforthepast.blogspot.com/2008/07/mourning.html
Although she was not 19th century accurate, she was showing our visitors that she was in mourning - that she still had grief. And, afterwards she told me how good it felt to wear the badge of mourning for all to see and to give her the respect that folks should give one in such a state.
And that lead me to finally fully understand the mourning practices of the 19th century: it gave one - including men, albeit a much shorter length and less rules - the opportunity to mourn, and to let others know. It gave the mourner the right to cry whenever and have others understand. It gave the mourner the right to be angry whenever and have others understand. It gave her the right to be moody and have others understand.
It gave her the right to grieve whenever she needed to.
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And, that's what my wife cannot do in this modern day and age. She needs to mourn and to know it's OK to mourn without anyone saying "It's been a couple months, she should get over it by now!" and having some doctor wanting to shove pills down her throat. Not necessarily mourning to the extent of our 19th century ancestors, but, in her heart she needs to mourn - - not for three days; not for a week or a month. But for however long she needs to.
Our ancestors were much smarter than today's society gives them credit for.
They knew...

(The image shown here in this blog, by the way, was taken with an 1860's tintype camera and shows Michigan Soldiers Aid Society members (including yours truly) during another mourning scenario that we did in Hastings, Michigan at historic Charlton Park. Many styles of mourning clothing are shown.)
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