Sorry to hear about your DD, chip, what age was she?
I think in Irish culture response to hardship is very scripted and prescribed. For example, with death, everyone participates in a huge funeral and wake and for an "expected" death such as that of an old person, funerals are great, healing, joyous occasions because they fit the Catholic script, they're not too challenging and everyone knows how to deal with it. There's no need to talk about it, because everyone knows what to do. Talking is embarrassing and awkward and no one wants to do it.
When it comes to more "unusual" events like divorce (still unusual in Ireland), the death of a child or abuse, it's like people, particularly of the older generation, are at a complete loss. They just do the practical stuff, the well-worn scripted stuff and then can't go any further. People of my parents' generation and older have very little emotional understanding and intelligence - as you say they'd rather bury it and get on with things. They just don't have the vocabulary to talk about difficult feelings. Perhaps that does come from poverty and famine, where if you stopped for a moment to think about the hardship you were going through you would just crumble and die. I do think that Irish people have great ability to storm onwards in the face of mountains of adversity. My gran had what she considers a happy life despite not having two red pennies to rub together, an alcoholic husband, a tiny house and nine children. She became a widow in the late 70's and despite never having had a job, went out, got work and soldiered on. People may admire her, but she raised people who can't reach out to their own children, people like my mother. Is that a failure on her part, or just a fact of life when you live in such conditions?