The continued discussion on the OP's wake issue can be found in this thread:
I thought about closing this thread at the OP's suggestion, but thought it might be worth discussing a quick XBMC tip: If you go to Settings -> System -> Power Saving and make the chosen Shutdown function is Suspend, choosing shutdown from the menu system should suspend the box. Then the ShutDown function can be defined in Keyboard.xml and assigned to any key that flirc has mapped. Or, if the skin you're using has Shutdown as an option in the menu that comes up when you press S, just map a remote button to the S key in flirc, and when you press it you can select Shutdown from the menu and your system will suspend. The default Confluence theme has a Suspend option in the S menu, so you don't even have to define the Shutdown function to get it in there. Here are some relevant links:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=List_of_built-in_functions
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Keymap.xml
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Shutdown_Menu