Has There Ever Been a More Beautiful Funeral? A Gem from 'Yorkshire Pudding'

Participation in funeral rites is one of the most powerful and healing things we can do and witness when we lose someone we love. Individual participation can take the form of placing a note in the casket, sprinkling ashes on the sea or selecting music for the service. Community participation can take the form of a wake or a public procession. However, as this following excerpt from the 'Yorkshire Pudding' blog shows so eloquently, there is nothing quite like engaging in the hard physical work of digging out a place in the earth and carrying a loved one to their place of rest, or the timeless gift of sharing a word or song with family and friends at the grave. My heartfelt thanks to YP, for allowing me to share the beautiful story of his brother Paul’s burial in County Clare, Ireland.

Paul

We buried him in an isolated rural cemetery that is known locally as "The Island" - probably because that little hummock of a hill was once surrounded by swampy ground. As is the tradition, only male family members carried the coffin. Feeling his weight on my right shoulder was a wonderful discomfort.

He had known each of the gravediggers. They had prepared a hole some five feet deep, snug against the limestone boundary wall with a huge pile of Clare soil beside it in what has been one of western Ireland's driest years.

Ned Crosby, the priest, who also knew Paul personally, said the customary religious words by the grave. And then everybody applauded my dead brother. By the stunted hawthorn bush where an ancient chapel once stood, musicians played familiar tunes on fiddles, concertinas and pipes with Paul's daughter, Katie, accompanying on her wooden flute.

All was quiet and then an old friend called Michael stood on a rock with his chin raised slightly to the sky and with great passion recited in Irish Gaelic a famous poem called "Pearse's Lament". Roughly translated, it begins:-

Grief on the death, it has blackened my heart:

lt has snatched my love and left me desolate,

Without friend or companion under the roof of my house

But this sorrow in the midst of me, and I keening.

As I walked the mountain in the evening

The birds spoke to me sorrowfully,

The sweet snipe spoke and the voiceful curlew

Relating to me that my darling was dead.

At the end Michael wove in some few Spanish words which connected Ireland's freedom struggle with the battles of Spanish republicans before the second world war - "Viva la quinta brigada! No passaran! Adelante!"

People began to drift away. Some stood amongst the graves exchanging thoughts about Paul. I took a handful of earth from the pile and threw it on top of his coffin. Soon the gravediggers removed the flowers and began their timeless task, quietly filling in the hole where Paul will rest forever - well not really Paul but his human remains - that same wax model I reflected on in "Hands".

It was the best of days and the worst of days. Has there ever been a more beautiful funeral? I doubt it. I was filled with pride for my lost brother who was so loved by the people of Clare - the old and the young, rich and poor, intellectual and moronic, pub landlords and priests. Although he was only sixty two, he lived his life to the full with such goodness in his soul. By far, I am not the only one who will never forget him.

'YP'

All photos and text used by permission. For more wonderful Yorkshire Pudding, visit the blog at http://beefgravy.blogspot.com/

The Beauty of an Irish Lament: Marie Murray

February 11, 2010

Funerals are the means through which we travel from death, back into life. They are important and meaningful to us as individuals and as a culture. In contrast to the United States, where funerals and other memorial rituals seem to be on the wane, the people of Ireland hold fast to their funeral traditions. The following article by Marie Murray, (author of 'Living Our Times') and published in the Irish Times, on February 9th, conveys the importance and meaning of funerals better than any I've read in a long time. I'm grateful to Ms. Murray and her publishers for graciously allowing me to share this article with you. Thanks also to Charles Cowling for bringing this article to my attention.

WHATEVER HAS been lost in Irish culture, the tradition of funeral going has not died. Attending funerals remains an integral part of cultural life.

Funeral going is psychologically complex. It is comforting to those who mourn; recognition of the life of those who have died; and a celebration of their existence. It allows lament for their departure and acknowledgment of the loss for those who loved them.

Funeral attendance is a statement of connection, care, compassion and support. It encircles those who grieve and enriches those who attend because it connects each person there to the profundity of living and the inevitability of death. Funeral attendees witness the raw emotions of grief and the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to love.

Traditional Irish funerals have their own tone, history and vocabulary well documented in Irish literature, verse, story and song. They have their past and present rituals. They are comforting in their predictability.

At funerals there is consciousness of the pre-mortem vigil that will have occurred if the death was lingering or the shock for mourners if it was not. There is post-mortem display of the remains, requiring sensitivity about who should attend at that stage. There is the funeral itself drawing together people who may be disconnected from each other but connected to the event.

In the front pew the mourners are aligned, ranked by relationship to the deceased and by their shared memories of a collective past. There is the shuffling of attendees toward them, murmurs of sorrow for their troubles, of deep condolences, of handshakes and hugs, the squeezing of arms and promises of post-funeral support.

There is consciousness in that line of sympathisers of the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of words. There is tongue-tied compassion, frustrated by an inability to say something of comfort or understanding about what cannot be understood. This is because however formulaic funeral rituals may be, each grief, as each life, is unique.

While the three-day “wake” may be no more, there is hospitality that must be given, and offering sustenance to those who have travelled a distance continues to this day. While the lament or caoineadh may not be expressed in keening or song, the beauty of lament is still understood.

The funeral is the place where the details of the death are recounted, where memories are revived and connections made. As clusters of people gather together before or after proceedings there is an emotional edge that makes laughter louder and sorrow deeper, and the alternation of these emotions stark in the short spaces between them.

Each time we attend a funeral we confront our own mortality. If we have not yet experienced personal loss we are made aware of the emotions and rituals that surround it and the sacredness of sorrow. If the territory of death is familiar to us then resonances are evoked and we have the chance to revisit our own remembrance of others who have died.

The extent of funeral attendance in Ireland often bemuses our neighbours in England, when whole businesses close for a day as a mark of respect, when offices are abandoned to attend mortuaries and removals, and when all-day journeys are undertaken to be at the funeral of someone whom one may not have known, as a mark of respect for the bereaved.

But there is psychological reason, social solidarity and cultural cohesion in funeral attendance, and even as the ceremonies, the belief systems they operate from or the expression of grief may change, the meaning of marking death remains, and long may we travel highway and byway to do so.

mmurray@irishtimes.com

Artwork on this post, Copyright 2010 Patrick McNally

Irish Wakes Online

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/images/2008/1023/1224625123961_1.html

IRISH WAKES have gone online. Ireland’s first online memorial site, launched in recent weeks, offers families and friends of dead people an opportunity to record the life stories and their memories of loved ones in words, pictures and video. The site is the brainchild of business partners Hugh O’Donnell and Joe McGuiggan.
Contributors can tell the story of their nearest and dearest by uploading anecdotes, shared memories, photos, music and video clips. Mr O’Donnell, a restaurant and bar owner in Killybegs, Co Donegal, said: “The site continues online the tradition of the Irish wake where stories are told and memories shared.”
Co-director Mr McGuiggan, a Derry-based Library Service Executive, said: “Irish people have a strong love for remembering their dead as seen by attendance at wakes, putting memorials into newspapers and by sending out memorial cards. “They now have the opportunity to tell the life story of their loved one in a very visual and interactive way, and record it for future generations to appreciate.”
The website allows the person who creates the tribute to have editorial control of all shared memories which come in from friends and family. Nothing can be added without being screened by the tribute controller. -from The Irish Times- for the full article visit http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1023/1224625123961.html

Here are some photos and memories that have been shared on the site

http://www.inlovingmemory.ie/MemorialSites/MemorialSite.aspx?SiteName=NobleMorrow

I remember Noble as my adventurous brother always ready for a laugh.He once scared me half to death driving me to meet my father in Grange and told me the car brakes weren't working. He enjoyed seeing me squirm the whole journey. He lived life to the full and packed so much into 38yrs. We all miss him so much. Lets all try and be like him and enjoy every moment we have.
http://www.inlovingmemory.ie/MemorialSites/MemorialSite.aspx?SiteName=NobleMorrow

http://www.inlovingmemory.ie/MemorialSites/MemorialSite.aspx?SiteName=BernieKeeney

It was a great night of celebration as Bernie treated all her friends to drinks galore as she watched her 5 numbers come up on the national Lottery. It was to her dismay on returning home to check her numbers to learn she hadn't done the lotto that particular week, but the week before. Always professional, she kept the sunny side up and accepted congratulations from all asunder on her good luck during the following weeks. Much missed and often thought of. x
http://www.inlovingmemory.ie/MemorialSites/MemorialSite.aspx?SiteName=BernieKeeney

http://www.inlovingmemory.ie/MemorialSites/MemorialSite.aspx?SiteName=HughieODonnell

One of my fondest memories of my father was the time he made me a weather cock. I was in 3rd class in Niall Mor N.S when one day we were doing a geography lesson which featured a picture of a weather cock in the textbook. At the end of the class the teacher announced that each of us was to bring in a weather cock the next day. At the time my father was very busy with lambing but he never complained when I told him what the teacher wanted. That night as I was going to bed he was out in the cold bottling shed measuring and hammering. The next morning there was a fully functional weather cock on the kitchen table. When I arrived at school I was the only one with a weather cock and it was given pride of place on a pillar in the school yard. I was so proud of my father. In later years I was in Boarding School in Ballyshannon. Whenever there was a concert or school play on where I was taking part he would always travel from Killybegs to support me. Sometimes I used to be embarrassed to see the old brown wolsley car arriving smelling of sheep dip and bits of hay sticking out the back. But now I have treasured memories of the sacrifices he made and the greatest love he showed me by giving of his time. Deirdra. x
http://www.inlovingmemory.ie/MemorialSites/MemorialSite.aspx?SiteName=HughieODonnell