The Cemetery - French Style

Recently I officiated at my first funeral in France. The service was at the church, and though most of the attendees were French, the service was in English. The first real point of interest, from a cultural standpoint, had to do with the way that the casket was handled. First of all, the man who had died, so I am told, was a rather large person. His casket was made from solid oak, so it must have been extremely heavy. They do not use pall bearers like we do in the U.S. Instead, four (not six) men from the funeral home lifted the casket from the hearse, shifted it to their shoulders, and proceeded to carry it all the way to the front of the sanctuary, a pretty sizable distance. Then, it was set on a portable stand that was made for that purpose. The family and other people were already seated when the casket, in a very solemn and slow way, was moved up the long aisle of the sanctuary to the front of the church. I walked in front of the casket. There was no open casket. At the end of the service, the casket was carried out in the same manner. The people followed me and the casket out to the front of the church to the waiting hearse.


We proceeded to drive to the cemetery. We had to drive in to the cemetery, for it is quite large. We arrived at a parking spot, got out of our vehicles, and I waited for instructions. The casket was placed on a stand, and I was told that I should offer a prayer before the casket was moved to the gravesite. I did so. The funeral director then invited anyone else who would like to do so to come up to the casket and offer a prayer. Several persons did this.

Then, it seemed that out of nowhere, 4 young and strong looking young men, each with dress slacks and white shirt and tie came to get the casket. They proceeded to pick up the casket, shift it to their shoulders (with no padding!) and walk slowly the 100 or so yards to the gravesite. We all followed behind. When we arrived at the grave, I saw another cultural difference from the U.S. The dirt from the grave was piled on the sides of the grave – and there was no fake green grass to hide it! I have been told that this is customary, not only in France but in other European countries as well.


The family and friends gathered at the foot end of the grave and watched while the four men lowered the casket into the grave using two heavy ropes. I was then invited by the funeral director to offer a few words and another prayer. Afterwards, everyone walked by the open grave and paused; then, they walked on by and were led by the funeral director to a spot with some shade from a tree. The four men then proceeded to work rather quickly with shovels to fill in the grave. I was expected to stay near the grave.

The grave was filled in about 15 minutes, and the dirt was shaped into a mound. Flowers taken from the church were placed on the grave; then, the family and friends returned and gathered around the grave. Gradually each person moved close to the grave and offered a silent prayer. Some gave the sign of the cross. Others bowed their heads. Afterwards, in ones and twos, the people returned to the cars. I stayed at the gravesite until everyone had left.


It was apparent to me that the practice here is to allow the reality of the death to remain rather than to try to cover it up or even make it a beautiful scene. I was touched by the dramatic simplicity of the whole event: the carrying of the casket, the plain presentation of the dirt from the grave, the sharing of words from scripture and a prayer, all of us watching as the grave was filled in, and, finally, the closing goodbyes by each person before they departed. It all felt quite sacred.

Laon - A Medieval City

LAON. Nobody seemed to have heard of it!!! But, it is a perfectly wonderful, small, medieval city about 1 ½ hours (by train) north east of Paris. It was great to leave the city in the early autumn to see the changes of the seasons. The farmers were busy plowing, getting the fields ready for sowing the wheat seed, the corn is nearly ready for harvest and you can see just a tinge of yellow among all the green leaves in the forests.
The first view of the Laon is of a magnificent Cathedral that sits up on a chalky hill. The Cathedral is surrounded by other buildings with different spires and roof slants, and probably half of the inhabitants of this small city of 26,000 people live on the hilly part of the Laon.

The crescent shaped hill area is surrounded by some of the remaining stone ramparts that were built back in the 11th century. There are four gates,one which is from 778.

To go to the upper city from the lower area, where we arrived by train, is an interesting trip. You have three choices: walk up a long, steep, and sloping staircase, ride a city bus, or ride the “poma mini metro”. The last option is the one that we chose, and it was an experience!! After buying a mandatory round trip ticket, we boarded a smaller, enclosed metro like car which then whisked us up a track inside the curve of the crescent shaped hill to the top. The metro was pulled by cable and is like a funicular in that it had one car going up while the other was coming down….meeting in the middle at an in between station.

After arriving at the Hotel de Ville (city hall) we started wandering down the street in the direction of the Cathedral. There was a picture to be taken at every turn and many medieval remnants to discover. All of this part of town is old, with some of it very old. The age is obvious from the crooked walls, roofs of many directions and slants, old support beams exposed, narrow cobbled streets, dates exposed on doors, etc.

For one example of old, Don discovered that over the portal entrance to one small court yard there was a plaque that said “Hotel De Ville” built 1736. The portal is all that is left of the Hotel De Ville building. Interestingly though, on the side wall of this entrance were iron rectangles embedded into the wall. According to the information those rectangles were the official sizes of the bricks and tiles that were made during this time. They were necessary because the official metre had not yet been calculated and thus no measurements could be written down.

The city of Laon was founded by the Romans in the first century. It was elevated to a bishopric in the 5th century by St. Remigius, a native of Laon, and the one known for converting Clovis to Christianity. The mother of Charlemagne, Bertrada, was from Laon which gave special status to the city. Louis IV of France was also born in Laon. Because of this special status a great Basilica was build. After it burned in 1143, a new even more splendid Cathedral was built starting in 1150. Chapels were added to both sides during the 13th century. This Cathedral served as a model for the Notre Dame in Paris and the splendid Chartres Cathedral.

The Cathedral is early Gothic, massive with four ornate, airy towers, (two more were never finished). Statues of oxen decorate the towers as a tribute to the animals who worked so hard towards the construction of the church. It has finely carved portals and lots of gargoyles including a rhinoceros one!! The first stained glass rose window dates back to 1210. There are four rose windows in all….three with religious themes. The fourth one contains scenes representing the sciences as practiced and understood in the 13th century: philosophy, rhetoric writing, grammar, dialectic, astronomy, medicine, geometry and music!!

There is much more stained glass in the Cathedral now. Some of the original windows were simply light colored glass with no pictures. But the later ones are a story book in color. Two large windows with many small “pictures” that caught our attention were themed “Mary and the childhood of Jesus” and “Jesus from entrance into Jerusalem until Ascension”. We chuckled at the one of the Nativity where Joseph just can’t stay awake.

Of course there are many other old churches, gates, portals, and buildings to note… much too much to view in a day. Now if you ever need a medieval “fix” you will know a place to go!!! And, we also have a good place to suggest for your lunch….

A Beautiful Saturday

This morning was a beautiful morning without a cloud in the sky. The sky was even blue like in Montana. This is quite a contrast with yesterday’s downpours. We only had a couple of hours before Don’s appointment at eleven, but we decided to check out another Saturday market and the neighborhood around it.

The market was beautiful and about the same as usual with counters of fresh veggies and fruits, cheese, fish, meat, rotisserie chicken and a few other things like leather goods and scarves.


There were a couple of differences however. We noticed at a tomato stall that there was a very long line of people waiting to purchase the fruit. We wondered why there was such a line and decided from the way the many varieties and colors of tomatoes were boxed that they must have come directly from the farm. Evidently the people knew that this was a treat!!

As we neared the end of the 4 block long market, we noticed a film crew filming the people leaving ….or so we thought. After exiting the market we noticed that they were intently filming a nice young lady who kept picking up an apple and smiling at them. As usual, we had no idea what was really going on. It may have been a commercial for television or a picture taking session for the apple company or ????

As we walked back down the other side of the street we noticed that there were several Parisians doing what Parisians like to do….sitting at the sidewalk café drinking their morning coffee and watching the people over at the market. To bad we didn’t have time to join them….

When is a Casino not a Casino?

Well, in Paris of course!! The other day we were beginning a neighborhood market/walking tour in the south of Paris. The market was nice, but very small with only four stalls of nice produce which included some Marabella plums from Nancy, France. The plums are yummy and sweet and make a delightful liqueur which we sampled when we visited Nancy last year.

Right in front of the market was the entrance to the Casino Supermarket. It truly is a supermarket in all ways….big with a large variety of foods, wines, flowers, breads, etc. It takes up about half of the ground floor of the building that it is in….described below.




As we walked through the store Don found a true “prize” for him…a jar of pickled hot peppers. They are paprika peppers instead of the jalapeño ones that he usually buys. I think that they are pretty wicked looking but he swears that they are the best ever. The label says that they are a product of Turkey.

But even more interesting than the Casino store was the building that it was in. The bottom part is not a complete half circle, but is perhaps a quarter circle. On top of the first building is a second wavy one. It took a very creative architect to design this in such a way to make it stable, I should think.

Now if you can think of the prior building as 1/3 of a group of buildings built on a triangular plot of land, what would you put in the middle? Well, in Paris it is a park with playground equipment for the kids, park benches for the older citizens and some strolling paths, trees and flowers to finish it off. There are entrances to the park from all the buildings on the ground level and also an entrance for the general public at one end. The name of the park is The Grand Pavois. I translated the word and it means bulwark…a 15th century English word for “solid wall-like structure raised for defense”.

We couldn’t decide whether the park received its name for the buildings that it was tucked inside of, or because of its location on the south side of Paris. You can still see many remains of fortifications from Paris’s earlier history in this area.