There are a lot of good things Australians do well. Breakfast. Beaches. Pension schemes. Built-in storage. Putting barbecues in public parks. But death isn’t one of them.
We get all awkward and weird about it, even though there’s a 100 per cent chance it will happen to everyone. We don’t want to deal with it. Death is the turd that has turned up on the good carpet and we are the family dog responsible but refusing to look at it despite the points and the shouts.
Maybe in a sunny country built on constant, striving progress we don’t know how to meet darkness when it knocks. Death might bring down the “good vibes only” spirit that lives on in so many of my countrymen. Maybe years of economic prosperity have made us unable to deal with anything that isn’t good news.
In a way I am grateful that I was living in Ireland when my dad called to say that my nephew had died. Although they could not stop the full impact, Irish people crumpled around me like a protective shell of a car when they heard the news. Neighbours, friends, bosses, colleagues, readers, the postman and even complete strangers offered help or tea and sympathy. Food turned up at the door. People offered to pay for flights home. People didn’t say “let me know if you need anything, just ask and left it at that. Instead they just turned up. Sometimes to get me out of the house, sometimes to help out in it.
There are things Australians do better than the Irish. Death isn’t one of them
I’ve entered the world of weight-loss clips on TikTok. It’s like heroin chic all over again
Moving to another country is hard. You’re not failing if you’re not living up to a filtered social media standard
Her ‘no’ was clear. She did not want to go home with him. Still he went on. And on
I don’t remember how I told my bosses that the thing you hope never happens had happened and I would need to fly 27 hours back to Australia. But I do remember their response, which was to just go and not worry about anything to do with work. It was a gift. I didn’t know how long I was going to be away for. Australian burials can take weeks and there was a Covid backlog. I could not give a firm date for my return. But they saved me from being wracked with anxiety about losing my job on that long and terrible flight. My only job was to “mind myself” they said. They would sort out the rest.
I didn’t have to fill out a form or process paperwork. It was just taken care of. I was never afraid to tell a boss “I have to go to a funeral” in Ireland. It was always met with a nod. An acceptance that this was part of the business of being alive and part of the social fabric. It was not inserted into a confusing computer system or tracked. I did not have to apply to participate in grief.
In Australia, I was once denied compassionate leave to go to my cousin’s funeral. “It doesn’t usually apply to distant relatives,” said my manager, as if there was a limit to the number of people we could feel sad about dying and it stopped right after siblings and/or parents. It didn’t matter to her or her policy handbook that he had died exceptionally young and in tragic circumstances. That he had struggled with drug addiction. That my grandmother was having to bury her grandchild. That it shattered my uncle and sent shock waves through the family that are still being felt a decade on. I went to the funeral and I quit that job soon after. But her coldness still makes me shake my head, who does that to someone?
People drew away from me and my family, like death was catching. Because they didn’t know what to say, they thought it was safer to say nothing at all. At my nephew’s funeral we noticed mostly friends and family from cultures more comfortable with death turned up – Italian, Irish, Lebanese, Indigenous, Greek and Filipino. More generational “Aussies” stayed back unless they were expressly invited. Probably because they felt they were intruding, I’m not sure. In Irish and Australian-Irish culture, we see a funeral notice as an invitation enough.
Next week I will hopefully attend the funeral of a true gentleman and Irish diaspora stalwart. There is no check box in the compassionate leave form that covers who he is to me and what his passing meant to the community. I have always loved that some Australian Indigenous cultures call the grieving process “Sorry Business”. Because all the obligations, all the rituals, all the things we do for each other to get each other through death is a job. And an important one. Because who knows when we might have to do it for others, and when they might have to do it for us.
