It's a Dad's Life/Adam Brophy:The first time I saw a dead body, I was 12. One of the Dominican priests who ran my school had died and we were ordered to pay our respects.
Disregarding the fact that we brand new first years had never clapped eyes on this man while he breathed, our Dean, a frighteningly cold fish himself, though still alive (allegedly), instructed us to form a line, meander past the coffin and plant a kiss on the near translucent, waxy forehead that shone out at us.
At the time I had spent, I think, three days in the school. As new kids, we were startled bunnies, shifting from pillar to post at the barks of random adults while attempting to avoid the ongoing volley of thumps languidly administered by psychotic second
and third years. When we were dragged out of class and told to be upset because someone we didn't know had died, we duly obliged. When we were then pushed into a room with his remains, we again followed protocol.
Nobody asked if we wanted to take part in this bizarre practice. Nobody checked if we were upset or in any way traumatised by the experience. As I was quickly to learn, the priests into whose care we had been passed were concerned with what we thought or how we felt, providing it was what they told us to think or feel.
Of course we weren't bothered in the slightest. We were morbidly fascinated and emotionally detached. We gave him the demanded peck and belted on outside to recce the best smoking spots in our new domain. His funeral Mass meant a day out of class in favour of sitting in Church and a trudge in crocodile line to the graveyard. There were hundreds in attendance: every pupil on the roll and Dominicans flown in from the four corners, flapping seriously in their black and white robes. He was buried with pomp and ceremony, but if there was any sense of loss at his passing it went straight over my head. I have searched my memory but can't turn up his name.
I am reminded of this now because the experience was in stark contrast to the funeral of my wife's grandfather last week. Jack Fitzpatrick was 93 when he died. He had five children, 17 grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and two surviving sisters, the majority of whom managed to be present at what was a quite magnificent send-off. They sang for him, they played for him, they read poetry for him. There was no sense of anguish but there was a low-key feeling of celebration touched with constant sadness.
The Church was full, the ages of those present ranging from three months to 90-something. Everyone was there because they wanted to be, to pay their respects and support their family.
Most striking, for me anyway, was the behaviour of the kids. On the night of the removal, some chose to sit with their Great-Grandad and take him in.
What they made of it, I don't know. During Mass the next day all the children were remarkably quiet; far from silent, but nowhere approaching boisterous. At the graveyard they kept to themselves, moving forward at the end to drop flowers on his coffin.
When they got to the hotel reception afterwards, they cut loose. A polished dance floor area in the dining room demanded to be skidded on. Meeting distant cousins they rarely see was an invitation to run amok in an ad hoc game of chasing. They had grasped that a passing of importance had taken place and automatically paid it due respect. But when the shackles of formality came off, they whooped it up.
And nobody, bar the hotel staff and manager, minded. I'd say Jack was loving it.
