Do not die in the winter months, with Christmas at our throats or vanishing mercifully over the horizon, when people merely scan newspapers before returning to the credit card bill, unopened and as awesome as the Third Secret of Fatima. Do not die when the sun barely rises above the horizon; do not die when the year is at its shortest; do not die as virus spreads snuffles and sneezes through the ranks of the healthiest; do not die in mid-winter.
But that is when most of us will die: when human will is at its lowest, when the season is at its most unforgiving, when the spirit ebbs and life decides the time to depart has finally arrived. Death in such a time is so commonplace that it is harder to see its individual triumphs amid the host of souls simultaneously making the same journey; and it is harder to see because we have so many of our distractions - feast and family, fever and festivity - at every turn.
Stalwart
So I did not see news of Pat Smyllie's death, shortly before Christmas, nor of the death of Beatrice de Courcy Ireland on Christmas Eve. Pat was a stalwart on this newspaper for many years, and as decent a journalist as ever drew breath. Beatrice was one of the last voices of the old left of seven decades ago, a woman who served against fascism in the Spanish Civil War and was a founder member of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
It is a long while since I saw either of their spouses. John is better known than Gillian. He is very properly one of the legends of Irish life, indefatiguably in pursuit of what he thinks right. He is, first of all, pre-eminently a gentleman, and he has been, almost single-handedly, responsible for the recognition of our maritime history. I say with no disrepect: Gillian was just a housewife and mother. Housewives and mothers raise families, they make homes, they teach their children right from wrong, they built the bricks out of which our greater society is built. I take them very seriously indeed.
Beatrice and Pat did not die unnoticed by many of their immediate friends, but alas, their deaths did escape my notice, for I was close to neither and beset by the follies of the close of year. The season passed by, the funeral rites were read, and the new millennium begun. And by now, the best part of a month after either death, the rush of mourning and condolence, ceremony and service, is done; and the long period of mourning must begin.
This is the nadir of the year for us all, when spring seems no nearer and winter remains as intractably victorious as ever, but for the mid-winter bereaved, this is truly the darkest time of their entire lives. It as is if an iron night as dark and cold as the human soul can experience without actually perishing of it has descended; and the only enduring companionship available through the lightless watches of the season is provided by that malignant hobgoblin, despair.
Bereavement
How do people cope with a burden which must seem insupportable? The truth is that they do; but what adds to their burden is that the colossal emotional amputation, done summarily and without anaesthetic, confuses them. The unimportant becomes the overwhelmingly mighty; the absolutely vital well-night invisible.
Bereavement baffles. It is as if one has lived in bright sunlight for so long, and then one enters a tunnel in which the only light comes from nearly invisible stars. The senses which got one through a normal day are almost useless; judgement is distorted, confused, aberrant. Rules seem new and incomprehensible. The start of each waking day seems to be a ceaseless re-enactment of a Sisyphean nightmare, without break, without respite, and with fresh and imaginative torments in store.
A mutual friend has told me that John de Courcy Ireland in particular feels overwhelmed by the number of letters he has received since Bea's death, and is borne down by the prospect of answering them all. Bear up, John. Not one of those people expects you to reply; not one. Quite the reverse. If they had thought they were adding to your worries with their letters of condolence, they would have stilled their writing hands.
I promised John's mutual friend that I would pass on in this column an acknowledgment from John to those who wrote to him: he is grateful, deeply grateful, but for the moment anyway, and very possibly for very much longer, he is not up to replying to your letters. And you understand, of course.
Letters
I have made no contact with Gillian since Pat's death; I suspect that she too is gazing through parted fingers at an accusing heap of letters, wondering how she will tackle them. Gillian: You and John have enough to cope with. The letters will look after themselves. You will meet their authors sooner or later, and then words in the flesh will do. And those who want acknowledgement in the middle of this, the darkest of all nights, do not deserve it; they wrote to please themselves, not to reassure you that you are uppermost in their thoughts.
Your real friends wrote those letters to express friendship, not to add to your worries. But in grief, how can anyone know coal from gold leaf, silk from compost? It is almost as if one has to relearn the entire vocabulary of existence and the etiquette of life. And indeed, some things you must learn, rediscover; but do not be oppressed by invented duties or by guilt. Get those two impostors out of your brain. Remember: Do not reply to letters when their authors would only be appalled at the stress it is causing you.
God be good to you both.