Madam, – The report on actor Gabriel Byrne’s visit to the Hospice-Friendly Hospitals Programme (Home News, November 9th) quoted him as saying, “death used to be a community event, a social event . . . that has changed and death has now become a business . . .”
What a load of nonsense.
He has obviously been away too long or is presuming that the materialism of the infamous Celtic Tiger years also destroyed our high regard for the community and social aspects of death and funerals.
I never cease to be amazed at how we Irish continue to celebrate and embrace death so excellently.
The morgue is now giving way to families’ increasing desire to bring the body home for a wake, not just for a few hours but overnight, so that neighbours and friends can gather as a community for lashings of tea, cakes, sandwiches, etc, all prepared by the neighbours as genuine gestures of friendship and community.
The importance of the community wake is also to be seen in the new development of taking the body directly from home to church, not on the evening before burial but on the morning of the service, with the community present in full support to the bereaved.
We Irish celebrate and embrace death so well that a good funeral is still a more social event than a good wedding. – Yours, etc,