A Death In The Family

There has never been any doubt whatsoever that when it comes to death, the Irish do it better than most. My grandmother, although not particularly attached to the country of her predecessors, having minimal allegiance to the Riordens and not especially bound to the Catholic Church, would generally come into her own on the occasion of a death in the family. She had an uplifting attitude to the conventions of a community. I clearly recall her determinedly putting out teacups on All Souls’ Day for the two aunts recently taken by tuberculosis, each one leaving a newborn girl. One of my older cousins said it was in the hope of the dead returning but in his opinion that was a load of baloney and it would be difficult if they did. This was because the one who still had a husband had just left him and both aunts had been sharing bedroom space in the ever more crowded house at the bottom of Iron Mill Lane. But he said all this softly and with hesitation fearing the clip around the ear it would earn him should he be overheard.

Despite their at times half hearted attitude to the One True Church my mother’s family was too intimidated by the thought of everlasting fire to completely ignore the rituals expected of them. Wakes were essential and held a day or two before a funeral Mass, usually at night. The women cried a lot into their white handkerchiefs newly ironed for the occasion and the men talked about how wonderful the deceased had been and then everyone got drunk and ignored the children who fell asleep under the nearest table. These affairs, looking back on them, were considerably more elaborate when the newly deceased were male. As we were a family overburdened with women the more emotionally charged gatherings were few. After the Mass there would be a gathering at The Jolly Farmers where everyone got drunk once again. Occasionally there might even be a Memorial Mass a month or so later.

My father, always a more devout believer than my mother might well have been seduced into the family in the first place by all the apparent devotion to the religion he had been raised within. Sadly, in the case of his own death few of the possible traditions were observed. Nobody would have thought to put out a teacup for him at the next All Souls’Day and the Wake, if indeed there was one, would have been a subdued affair. This might have been simply because my mother was theoretically making all the necessary decisions and she had always harboured a certain amount of hostility towards the Church and in recent years a great deal towards her husband. Decades later my brother’s demise occasioned a similar disregard, for similar reasons. No matter how elaborate the memorial event held some months later might have been, the stylish venue, the champagne and smoked salmon canapes could never erase the indifference to what basic Catholicism demanded and what he would have expected had he been able to voice an opinion. The imperiling of his immortal soul by dispensing with such traditions was glaringly obvious to all family members, lapsed though they might be if not to his cheerfully atheistic wife and her relatives, creating little pools of discomfort here and there. My cousin Margaret courageously observed that she had now outlived two Bernards and added that neither death had elicited the Send Off she would have expected. Then she fell into silence when her daughter, my Second Cousin Jane-Marie, who once upon a time was simply called Jayne, pierced her confidence with the kind of gaze intended to do exactly that. But a moment or two later her mother added in a voice both daring and tremulous that our grandmother would never have allowed such a thing to happen and Jayne, stuck to her mother like glue for reasons best known to herself, looked confused because she had little direct knowledge of her notorious great-grandmother. Unfortunately having little knowledge does not always elicit the most sensible reactions to situations of course, particularly where family is concerned and the deaths of family members, particularly when they are unexpected, throw up unexpected emotions. These are the times when even the most progressive among us are found to embrace the comfort of traditions.