We’ve been in Guardialfiera for two months, and there have been at least a dozen funerals (that we know about) with eight just in the last three weeks. While this seems surprising, it’s not really that surprising.
towns in Italy have community boards with announcements about deaths and funeral services
we pass by the funeral home on some of our daily walks which is really just a garage building for the hearse and an adjacent building for the mortician’s office – funeral services are held at one of the churches
Guardialfiera is like a lot of other villages and small towns in Italy. The older, retired people live here, and most have lived here all of their lives. And I was quite shocked to learn that some have never left the village.
Of the younger generation, many have moved to bigger cities and just return to spend holidays with parents and other relatives. There are some younger folks who still live here with their kids – there is an elementary school here, and we see several kids in the streets in the afternoons and evenings. But the younger folks have to commute to other towns for work. From here, it is 30 minutes to Termoli and 40 minutes to Campobasso for work.
We walked down to the cemetery one day. It’s like many other cemeteries we hav visited in Italy with all of the graves in buildings above ground.
the entrance to the cemetery
some people are buried in family mausoleums
others are buried in above-ground structures
here are a husband and wife buried adjacent to each other – note that the graves always include a photo of the person
the oldest part of the cemetery has low-slung mausoleums
one of the oldest graves has been spruced up with a new plaque and flowers
The cemeteries here are quite beautiful, always located on the outskirts of town.
the view of the cemetery from our apartment
And then today there was a nice surprise with a wedding in the village. The streets and bars were packed with out-of-town visitors celebrating the wedding.
photos of the happy couple were taped up around the town
After the ceremony, the cars of the wedding party, family, and friends drove through the town, bedecked in white ribbons, and honking their horns in celebration of the wedding.
one of the cars of the wedding party decorated in ribbons
our little bar had bunches of rosebuds on all of the tables in celebration of the wedding – this bunch was in a Campari spritz bottle, other bunches were in beer glasses – pretty cute
and the tradition of throwing rice is honored in Italy, with rice trailing down the hill from the main church and up the street to the bars
The wedding was a nice counter-event to the recent funerals in the village.