Irish deaths

[Champooforyou]

I'm not Irish by the way, but I was just reading another thread about how Irish people manage death so much better, and I wondered how?

I'm south wales valleys and we're very comfortable with death, if someone is dying everyone knows and you'll go and visit, say your goodbyes. The family keep a vigil so no one dies alone. If you've missed the death you'll go to the Chapel of Rest and say goodbye. Everyone you ever met goes to the funeral, even people who you never met if they have a link, like they work with your daughter in law or suchlike.

After the funeral the family get cakes and pies and babysitting for weeks or months afterwards. On the anniversary everyone goes to the pub.

Suicide is talked about, it's not tabboo. The only sad death is if someone died alone or of course if they were young and it wasn't their time.

Are things the same in Ireland, or are you even better at death? I can't help wondering if it's so bad in England due to all the repressed emotion and stiff upper lip type stuff.

Sure, individual approaches will vary, and I doubt anyone’s suggesting otherwise, but one undoubted advantage of a culture where people attend a lot more funerals is that it’s unlikely that you’ll attend your first funeral in adulthood for a close family member, thereby dealing with grief and an unfamiliar and possibly frightening ritual/process.

I saw this somewhere after my dad died and it's so true I think

"If you know someone who has lost a very important person, and you're afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died--you're not reminding them. They didn't forget they died. What you're reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and that is a great gift."

Being Irish I’d say we are good at death.

The wake does not commence until the person is returned home from hospital if that was necessary.

We wake to celebrate the persons life, lots of people coming in and out to pay their condolences reinforces how loved and respected the dead and/or their family is. The more stories about our loved one the better. As above said it will depend on the age and circumstance of death. If we don’t want visitors a sign on the door or a notice saying closed house is enough and people will not call. The priest will be in and out of the house, as well as the funeral directors, garnering information about that persons life to speak of in the sermon and advise on hymns and prayers for the mass as well as help the family through their grief.

During the wake there will be close friends and family at hand to look after children, make endless cups of tea and hand out sandwiches. You cannot go to a wake without being offered sandwiches, tea/coffee and a traybake. You reminisce on the deceased or pay respects to the family. Whether you partake on the aforementioned offerings depends how close you are, for me, if I’m not close the the family I won’t. You are almost always invited to see the deceased, who is usually in a different room and always with a family member present. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t, depends on the circumstances.

The funeral is usually within 2 days, it’s enough for the family and most people can get home within that time if they wish. mourners will gather in the house and outside if they are close to the family, but not that close. People will close their curtains and stand outside their houses and the shops will close knowing when funeral procession will pass. The coffin is carried by their family members on their shoulders as they make their way to the chapel. Those closest to the deceased or the family will take turns at carrying the coffin until it reaches the chapel and other people will join in with this procession as it passes them.

After the funeral mass there is likely an invite from the priest on behalf of the family for everyone to join in the after funeral food, usually some sort of buffet. It’s a celebration of that persons life.

I have learned though that we are shit at dying, happy to visit the dead but wary of visiting those that are dying. Usually the person dying wont accept or admit they are dying. God forbid we might intrude, or make them aware we are visiting because it could be the last time, better to stay away altogether!

This last quote. I love it and I will be using it

Sorry but this made me properly laugh 🙂

I work in probate (in England) snd apparently a new layer of beaurocracy has been added regarding obtaining the medical certificate which is needed for the death registration.

A friend (and client) lost their parent on 10th March and has an appointment to register tomorrow - 12 days later - even though we're meant to register within five days. Only then will they be able to arrange the funeral. It's a farce.

So you need a death cert before you can have the funeral?

@JaneJeffer you are totally off the mark there. Every single graveyard is council owned where I am there's absolutely no digging of graves. And bodies sometimes do stay for ages in the undertaker. It does sometimes happen

@AutisticLegoLover we don't need a death certificate. That's all done later. Mil needed a post mortem and it just depends what n how busy they are. So in her case death was Saturday night and post mortem on Monday and removal to the church on Tuesday and burial on Wednesday .

A man from Cork was in with his doctor. ‘Look, David. I’ve some bad news and some terrible news for you.’

‘God. What’s the bad news?!’, asked the patient. ‘Well’, replied the doctor, ‘You only have 3 days to live’.

‘You’re joking’ says the patient. ‘How on earth can the news get any worse’. ‘Well’, says the doctor, ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for the past 2 days’.

A few things might help, firstly you can't organise a funeral in England before a death certificate has been issued, that will often take a few days to get. Secondly, many funerals in England include a cremation , which needs to be booked and will add to the delay, especially if you want it at a specific crematorium. Finally if there is an burial, the plot needs to be bought and paid for.
All of this adds to the pressure on the bereaved family who have to arrange it all (and pay for it). In larger towns and cities there will a queue of people wishing to organise a funeral, and that queue gets longer in the winter as the death rate climbs (add in Covid and it increases).

Not where I'm from.

@JaneJeffer yes but that's my point it's not x happens or y happens. There is a lot of generalising. No one in my huge extended family has held a wake with a coffin in the house. My mother in her seventies doesn't remember them since her childhood and no one has ever dug a grave
Also the removal to the church the night before is starting to die out as churches aren't keeping the coffins overnight any longer in some areas. This is only since covid so a new thing

Awa and speak shite!

It's not bashing it is discussing different customs 🙄

Also the removal to the church the night before is starting to die out as churches aren't keeping the coffins overnight any longer in some areas. This is only since covid so a new thing
It's not a new thing. Before Covid we kept my father at home and only took him to church on the day of burial.

That's a great quote @Flounder2022 and very true.

Whatever about funerals , there's a lot to be said for seeing a person while they are still living. I have regrets on that score now myself.

There is a culture of drop everything to get to the funeral too. I remember lots of driving for the ferry in the middle of the night to get there in time.

My cousin died tragically in his early 30's. People flew in from america to be there.

I'm having a direct cremation so there is no service at all or traditional funeral plans.

One of my neighbours had a direct burial with just a friend in attendance (although a few locals sneakily dropped by the graveyard to pay their respects)

The English are not great with death. I say that as an English person. It's too sterile, too hidden. It's become something to fear. I far prefer the Irish way.

Got to agree. Whenever I mentioned death or dying to my friends they shudder, it makes them uncomfortable yet we know it will happen at some point.

It’s interesting that things have changed so much for English people, because we certainly weren’t always this removed from death. There are corpse routes that you can walk in the Lake District, used to carry coffins from isolated villages to the nearest church, which have special flat stones that were used to set the coffins upon so the bearers could have a break. And the covered gates that many old churches have - those are lych gates, where coffins were set overnight before being buried. Go back a century or two, when bodysnatching was a thing, and some people would keep the bodies of their loved ones at home until they were decomposed enough to be of no use for dissection…! So why has one culture moved so hard away from dealing with death in a very personal way and outsourced a lot of it, while another culture which is just next door geographically speaking has not?

I'm English and I much prefer dealing with death in a low key way. We had no funeral or service at all for my Dad when he died. His body went for a direct cremation and we had no more to do with it. It was how our family wanted it and also what he wanted. We obviously were very sad when he died but had no need for any service. Several years on we are all still very happy with our decision. Our memories are very much about when my Dad was alive. His death was just a tiny tiny bit of the whole picture. We chat about him easily - there is no awkwardness about it. We also revisit what happened around his death occasionally. We aren't afraid to talk about death at all but we don't focus on it.

Why exactly do people think bigger, more public displays of grief are better? What is the actual reason for them being better than low key grieving. To me there is pressure then to have lots of people at the funeral, spend money, behave in a particular way in some societies. What happens when someone who is not a good person dies? Does everyone around them have to 'fake' grieve? In societies where it's the norm then I wonder if people end up spending money or attending funerals because they feel obliged too and not because they want to. I wonder if a lot of it is insincere - I'd hate the thought of people attending a funeral of someone they didn't even like but I bet that happens a lots in some places where you will be judged if you don't do the right thing.

There isn't a right way to deal with death and every family should try and work out what works best for them. However it's wrong to suggest that anything more low-key is a worse way of dealing with death than big wakes and funerals.

My husband is Welsh. His Dad died years ago. Basically his Dad was a nasty bastard and yet the big funeral still celebrated what a 'wonderful' man he was. It was so fake and insincere. Everyone knew he was a nasty bastard. Everyone would have supported his wife (my MIL) regardless. I thought it was strange.

Agree with this. I'm not Irish but grew up in a Catholic country.

Not leaving the dead alone is the crux of the matter. Burial is usually on day 1 (after day 0), 2 at a push.

Yes. Or a Coroner’s Certificate of the Fact of Death otherwise known as a Interim Death Certificate.